Growing A Tougher Skin Isn’t Going to Make It Hurt Any Less
“Stop crying. Toughen up. Get yourself together.”
And of course: “Grow a tougher skin.”
Having tough skin essentially means being less sensitive. In our cultural (mis)understanding of sensitivity, it means being less easily affected by negative external forces. For many people, growing a thicker skin means learning to evade the emotional problems associated with stressful events.
Not only does this make thicker skin widely misconstrued, but in fact, being sensitive instead is often the better solution to the issue at hand.
Tough skin can mean resilience and perseverance…
Of course, thickened skin has its perks.
If you are able to persevere through hardship and withstand challenges, you may develop a stronger resilience against the negative outcomes of stressful events. Your thickened skin would act as a protective barrier against sources of harm. This would make you more capable of handling the inevitable low points of life and come out on the other side thriving.
Within psychology, there is also talk of dandelion children: individuals who can survive any environment due to their hardiness and resilience. Tougher skin would grant you the ability to weather the storms of any turbulent environment or life period. Few needle points would successfully manage to break your outer barrier.
Despite its benefits, though, tough skin is not all that it initially seems.
…but it can also mean passivity and unresponsiveness.
Sadly, having a tough skin means that very little passes through.
This can mean many things. First off, tough skin can make you more passive and unable to process and respond correctly to the emotions that provide a richer meaning to your everyday experiences. Ironically, your thickened shell might make you more defensive and vulnerable, because when you don’t know your emotions, you won’t know how to properly deal with them.
Secondly, growing a tougher skin might make you more emotionally immature. You become less in tune with how different situations affect you (that is, how certain aspects or your life or personality might actually be harming you). When you let so little through to your heart, you might learn to sacrifice your needs, wants, and boundaries in the name of being tough.
Not to mention, when you thicken your skin, you suppress your sensitivity — and that is another, worse problem entirely.
Sensitivity is immensely misunderstood.
The thing is, you cannot unlearn or remove your sensitivity.
As Jenn Granneman and Andre Sólo explore in Sensitive, the trait is both genetically and environmentally based, and it is, therefore, in every sense of the word, irremovable. It is not even something worth removing. Being sensitive, as the two claim, can grant strengths beyond (and above) the grasp of those born and raised with thicker skin:
- Sensory intelligence: You are more aware of your environment, and you are better able to utilize it to reach your goals and adapt to its demands
- Depth of processing: You are more thorough and intentional with the information you process and the decisions you make
- Depth of emotions: You experience life with more color, and you have a deeper understanding and a more constructive mastery of your feelings
- Empathy: You are better able to understand other people’s perspectives
- Creativity: You are more original in your work and problem solutions
Therefore, sensitivity is not the same as reactivity. Being sensitive allows you to be more adaptive in the face of external and internal challenges. It also allows you to be more aware and attuned to various aspects of your life, and thus more greatly serve your personal growth.
In this sense, embracing your sensitivity might afford you more resilience and self-protection than that of thicker skin.
It won’t hurt less if you are tougher.
Tough skin is not the right solution to your problem.
You might be sensitive, responding to difficult situations with tears or boiling blood, and this might cause you embarrassment and shame. But growing thicker skin isn’t going to help, because putting a shield against your emotions is only going to worsen those emotions. Feelings have to be felt — and no amount of pretending that it doesn’t hurt will remove your pain.
You have to actually process your emotions. Ironically, this is how you actually become more resilient: by growing acquainted to your emotions and approaching them with patience and care. If you want to control your emotional reactions properly, you need to understand your feelings and give them room and time to change naturally.
Otherwise, you will just be suppressing them.
And in that case, the flood that finally breaks the barrier may come from the inside rather than the outside.
