Why are we so sensitive?

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I don't know why but I get offended by the slightest insult and that I am always dwelling on what people are saying about me afterward. People would tell me that "I am to easy to pick on" or that "I am not worth the time to be picked on." I don't defend my self and that I am to peacefull to fight back. I am not a violent person and everyone thinks that they could just get away with me and pick on me. How can I defend against myself and whoever picks on me? Sorry if I keep making new threads I just don't have that many people to talk to. But I would like to know how do I try not to be so nice where everyone walks over me? I am male and 17.

17 is a tough age; when your friends mature I'm sure that you will be picked on less. This may not be the best advice for you, but when I was that age I kept a low profile (avoid situations/people who could potentially pick on me) and tended to my special interests alone or with friends who shared that interest. Sometimes getting picked on is inevitable but the key is not to let it get to you. The world is kinda crappy like that; I am 23 now and I have had friends in the corporate world laid off for really fickle reasons (ie not being flirty enough with the boss etc.) but one can usually find a way out if he keeps faith in new opportunities.

I also struggle with being overly sensitive. A few days ago, through a conversation with my mom, I had an epiphany and realized that the root cause of my sensitivity was low self-esteem (and a little paranoia).

I always felt that my views and opinions were inferior to other people's. No singular relationship in my life caused me to feel this way; I believe it is probably just the sum of all the bullying I've experienced over the years from my siblings, my peers at school and various trolls on the Internet.

I developed the thought that whenever someone insulted me or even disagreed with me in a respectful manner, they did so because they secretly thought they were better than me and believed I was stupid for having different views. That's why I took everything from differing opinions on movies to playful joking around as being an insult.

I find that what is helping me gain a sense of self-worth is mentally reminding myself that my beliefs and opinions are just as valid as anyone else's, and that having differing views/opinions doesn't make me a lesser person.

I'm also a very sensitive person. I take a lot of things to heart. There are some things that I'm very sensitive about. Gender issues for example. I feel like a man trapped in a woman's body and I don't like being reminded of my birth order. I was pretty nasty about the OP of a thread about looking like celebrities, almost a year and a bit ago. I was being sensitive, that's why.

I'm not very sensitive about my body size, however. It makes sense to lose weight, but I'm taking my time.

I'm very sensitive about the R-word. I was called that word so many times in Elementary School so many times, that it's not funny.

Maybe it's the way our brains are wired. Some of us are just more hyper-emotional (more sensitive) as suggested by "Intense World Theory":

The fourth axis in the Intense World Theory is proposed to be hyper-emotionality as an inevitable consequence of limbic hyper-reactivity and hyper-plasticity. The amygdala, a key part of the limbic system, plays a pivotal role in modulating and regulating emotional responses (Davis and Whalen, 2001; LeDoux, 2003; Zald, 2003; McGaugh, 2004; Adolphs, 2006) and a malfunctioning in this particular brain region has been proposed to underlie the social deficits in autism (Baron-Cohen et al., 2000; Sweeten et al., 2002; Amaral et al., 2003; Bachevalier and Loveland, 2006; Schultz, 2005).

Thus, based on the human subject studies and our VPA rat model data the Intense World Theory suggests that the autistics perceive their surroundings not only as overwhelmingly intense due to hyper-reactivity of primary sensory areas, but also as aversive and highly stressful due to an overly reactive amygdala, which also makes quick and powerful fear associations with usually neutral stimuli – fear of a color for example. A natural coping strategy to deal with this kind of emotional overflow could be social avoidance and withdrawal. In further support of this view, decreased amygdala activation has been linked to genetic hyper-sociability (Meyer-Lindenberg et al., 2005), whereas increased activation is observed in social avoidance and phobia (Stein et al., 2002).

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/article ... -00224.pdf

We are sensitive because we are born in that way.

Its all about how we adopted ourselves in years we spent.

Perhaps we are sensitive because we've been brought up in a world that doesn't understand us, and thus makes us very insecure about ourselves. It has certainly been true of myself.