I can relate to being 'overly' sensitive. I can also understand that it can be exhausting to feel like you have to watch everything you say when you're around someone sensitive. I don't know what your friend was talking about, but behaving ice more than necessary sounds so wrong to me, like, what's wrong with being nice? Wouldn't the world be better if we tried to be nicer?
Up to a certain point is a good idea to grow a thicker skin, the world is a harsh place, but it shouldn't be like that around your friends.
I'm sorry you're hurting and you're frightened, you don't have to change who you are in order to fit in, but the same applies to the rest of the people, they won't change for us, and sometimes friends take different paths in life at some point.
Feel free to contact me if you feel like talking :)

I also totally relate. I am highly sensitive and grew up feeling ashamed and apologetic for my nature. Over time I've realized highly sensitive people also have the right to be ourselves. Lately I have also reflected on the notion of hurting or offending others. The question I now ask is "Who determines if someone is as hurt by an action or statement?" If the person was hurt, doesn't that make the statement hurtful, regardless of the intent? I also agree with Noehmimi-- the world would be a better place if everyone were just nicer.

It's normal to feel hurt when someone close to you reveals their truth. Especially when it is about you. I can only imagine how that made you feel. Just keep on going girl and be you. There should be more nicer people in this world anyway!

I had a person in my life, actually she was a careers consultant fixing up my CV for me. Hyper sensitive she was. Just like I used to be.

Mum was like this too, well, one of her personalities...

It's an intense state. Highly sincere. A rawness, and a lack of shell. the thing about a shell, or even a pig's bladder to contain one's soul, is that other people don't want to see the naked soul within you, and other people don't want to share their naked soul with you. Any covering be it never so small is deeply appreciated. Fragility is hard to cope with. And I don't mean wepying and wailing, I mean courageous fragility. Dignified fragility. The sensitivity of the lisianthus; delicate, refined, exquisite.

Only your lover should have that level of direct access, if you're lucky and he is capable of opening his heart up to you that completely.

Where am I going with this? I can find mum intellectually exhausting. And also this counsellor. Exhausting. Because we're in rarified, low-oxygen territory when we're together. I have to be so careful;. I have to choose words carefully because I am taken so very seriously; there's no wiggle room. I will ask a flippant question and get a half hour, considered, important, sincere response. It's pretty hard to take in anything other than very small doses, and once the avalanche has started there's no way to say 'um I was just joking'. Not without hurting their feelings. And their feelings are so very .. real.

I'm not saying they're cowards. They're actually outstandingly brave. But I don't like beating small children and I don't like hurting these extremely intense and sincere people. What they don't realise is that I too am equally sensitive, so I can see how they are feeling clear as day. and I don't want to hurt them. But I keep my sensitivity tucked away. I keep my pigs bladder on. I turn things into jokes. Jokes help privacy, and help sensitivity. You can keep face when you can keep joking.

So it's hard work being precise and serious and sincere and not joking at all. It's too much work for my free time.

Now where it comes from I think is a lack of self. A lack of sense of you-ness. Where you are the most important person to you. I found when I had this supersensitivity when I was younger, I was so eager to please others I came a dead last. I didn't have an identifiable self to myself. I was just there to understand others far too well, and endure their bad behaviour because I could see what was driving it, and generally never bite or show my teeth to anybody.

Just only ever accept, and kindly endure.

It's terrible. It's a terrible way to live. I did it because the anxiety was too much to bear, but I think looking back it caused more anxiety than it solved. Being that rare, that fragile, that open and vulnerable meant I took far too many knocks. I did not want life to make me hard. And so I had to openly accept all pain without judgement. Now I've gone for the middle ground: some kind of flexible leather. I can still grow, I'm not encased in steel so I can still feel, I can still hurt; but I'm not as vulnerable to every gust of wind or snowflake.

You have to look inside yourself and wonder if you're too sincere. If you tell dreadful jokes. If you are ever ribald, or naughty, or teasing or mean; or if you're just good. Because good is a killer. It's sickly sweet. There's only so much people can take. :D

It's also important to note that it's not part of your personality: it's part of your power base. When you have full power you will find out how sensitive you prove to be, and if it's oversensitive or undersensitive. Everyone, in 'omega' position, is sensitive to others. I believe they call it stockholm syndrome.