“Being Sensitive” as a Man
Being sensitive as a man is not just difficult — it is rebel work. Because the moment a man embraces his emotional world, he is going against centuries of conditioning.
Most of the things I remember when I think of my childhood, are the ones where I was holding a cricket bat, and playing outdoors somewhere.
My elder brother is 5 years older and so were most of my cousins, so I started playing at the age of 4-5, and most of the time I was playing with people much bigger in size and age than me.
And when you play sports, there are so many times you get hurt, and I would get hurt and bruised very often. Somehow I was shaped as a boy who was very strong, even as a little kid who wouldn’t cry and would take any hurt or injury with strength.
I don’t know if I was pretending to be strong, or it just came to me naturally, but as I grew up and reached teenage, getting hurt and getting bruises was so common that I wouldn’t even flinch when that happened.
But this identity of being strong also transcended into my emotional life.
I started taking pride in not crying.
I would often say it out loud to people that I never cried while watching any movie — only once I had a tear watching Taare Zameen Par. :p
And while this way of being continued till college, there were instances where I felt so hurt and broken that I cried, but again it was such a struggle to cry… like I had to force myself to cry.
My life reached a breaking point towards the end of my college, and that’s when I realized something was fundamentally wrong with the way I was living, and it started with my lifestyle.
So I made some changes in my lifestyle, started reading books, quit some unhealthy habits and started watching content on Youtube related to mind-body. Suddenly I was on my exploration journey.
And it didn’t take me long to realize the many patterns of conditioning I carried — how unskilled I was to deal with my emotions, how I was mostly suppressing them or expressing them in unhealthy ways, how I used to overthink, and how so many of my mental patterns were of absolutely no use.
And in the midst of all this, I couldn’t run away from the fact that I am actually quite sensitive.
Thankfully by this time, I was mature enough to embrace it, rather than run away from it.
While crying was still not so easy for me, I accepted the fact that I feel deeply about things.
I fall in love intensely. I deeply care about my friends and family even though I struggle to express my love to them.
And there is so much suffering in the world, which also affects me quite a lot.
But at the same time, I saw how beautiful it was to be sensitive.
I could deeply think and wonder about life.
I found beauty in small things such as
Watching sunsets and the skies and clouds changing their shape,
Walks in nature, sitting around water bodies, cycling, playing with children.
I had beautiful friendships.
My conversations were meaningful, and I loved talks on the meaning of life, God, death and everything we don’t talk about in most conversations.
Movies, poetry and art affected me so deeply, though often I couldn’t express those emotions.
Now, it’s been 7–8 years since I had this realization. My choices have taken me on a very beautiful journey.
I have been continuously on this inner exploration journey — not only have I read books, written a lot, and taken professional help to release so many of my blocks and face my shadows, it has also been a journey where my relationship with God has changed.
It’s like my total outlook towards life has changed.
And I find myself living at a beautiful farm, surrounded by trees.
I have a YogShala to meditate, a pool for swimming, and also an open ground to work out and play sports.
While my work has been about helping people with emotional awareness, self-love, and becoming aware of their limiting thought patterns and transcending them, it is also expanding into creating spaces where slow life becomes more and more accessible to people — where people can not only come to heal themselves but also experience the joy and magic of a like-minded community.
I am also learning about different plants, animals, and most recently I have ventured into learning about farming and permaculture.
Yes, when I think of all of this, I am so proud of the life I have created, because yes — it has taken a lot of courageous choices to be here.
Not really hard work, but patience, resilience, courage, self-belief and of course the support of so many people in my life.
Coming back to being sensitive, in the last few weeks,
Even after continuously doing inner work for years, I came face to face with so many of the patterns and emotions I had buried, identities that don’t serve me anymore, suppressed guilt, shame and grief, and my own darkness.
And to my surprise, I cried a lot. Not only did I cry a lot, there were times when I felt I could burst into tears any moment. And I realized — wow, it was never so easy for me to cry like this.
And suddenly I felt the impact of the work I’ve done, and the beliefs I have let go of all these years.
Yes, being sensitive is not easy — for both men and women.
But Especially for men, because crying is equated with weakness in our society, and men are supposed to be the embodiment of strength.
While my mother cries often when she is sad or facing something uncomfortable, I have also seen how quick she is to judge a man when she sees a man cry.
I am not blaming or judging her; I know that’s just how she has been conditioned to see the world.
Being sensitive as a man is not just difficult — it is rebel work.
Because the moment a man embraces his emotional world, he is going against centuries of conditioning.
Every boy grows up carrying not only his own fears but the unspoken expectations of his father, and his father’s father — men who survived through silence, who never had the luxury of softness, who equated emotions with danger.
So when a man chooses sensitivity, he isn’t just changing his behaviour.
He is breaking a generational pattern.
He is choosing a path no one in his lineage ever walked.
And this is why it feels lonely.
It feels like building a new identity from scratch.
You start questioning everything you were taught about what it means to be strong.
Most men are not afraid of emotions,
they are afraid of what emotions will do to the identity they have built.
Because sensitivity requires:
• slowing down when the world wants you to push,
• listening when you’ve been taught to act,
• receiving when you’re conditioned to give,
• surrendering when you’ve been told to control,
• feeling when the world prefers you numb.
And when a man finally opens this door, he doesn’t just feel today’s pain — he feels decades of suppressed hurt, childhood wounds, shame, heartbreak, disappointment, loneliness… everything that was never processed.
It hits you like a wave that’s been waiting for years.
This is why most men close that door again.
Not because they are weak,
but because they feel too much for the first time.
But at the same time you cannot truly experience the beauty of this life without being in touch with your sensitivity, because your sensitivity is the very core of your feminine aspect.
Yes, being sensitive as a man is a completely different ballgame but you get to choose at what level you want to play it.
Because when you are not in touch with your feminine, here is what you miss out on:
the capacity to feel the full spectrum of life
the softness that makes love possible
emotional depth in relationships
intuition — that subtle inner guidance
creativity, imagination and wonder
the ability to receive support, love and care
connection with beauty, art and meaning
the inner fluidity needed to adapt to life
a sense of belonging with nature and the world
the ability to surrender, trust, and let life move through you
When you are disconnected from your feminine, life becomes mechanical.
You feel dry inside.
You may look strong on the outside, but you feel hollow on the inside.
You live in survival, not in wholeness.
And your heart — your greatest intelligence — stays locked away.
In the last few days, I have also realized just how content I feel with my life. I am living my purpose/dharma.
I am learning something new every day. My inner world keeps getting richer and wider. And while I feel deeply content with where I am and who I am, my vision for this lifetime keeps expanding.
So yes, I am very grateful for being sensitive — and finally reaching a point in my life where I didn’t run away from it, but started embracing it more and more.
Love and Cheers