‘it’s not that deep’ is avoidance disguised as a lack of empathy
maybe it was always that deep
“It’s not that deep.” A sentence tossed into conversations like a shield.
It protects people from discomfort, from reflection, from responsibility and sometimes even from themselves. It allows emotional avoidance to look like logic, detachment to look like strength, and dismissal to sound like rational thinking.
We say it to move on quickly. To avoid sitting with discomfort. To escape responsibility for what we feel or what someone else feels.
Social media has normalized detachment. We praise being unbothered, reward emotional distance, and mistake indifference for strength. Somewhere along the way, we forgot that caring deeply is not a flaw. It is a skill.
Empathy requires depth the willingness to understand why someone feels something, not just label it as “dramatic.”
As Brené Brown reminds us - “Empathy has no script. There is no right or wrong way to do it. It’s simply listening, holding space, withholding judgment, emotionally connecting, and communicating that incredibly healing message of ‘you’re not alone."
This mindset shows up everywhere: in relationships, at work, in everyday interactions people refusing to go deeper because it feels uncomfortable.
Maybe it feels uncomfortable because no one talked about these things before. Maybe it feels strange because you think you’re the only one who feels this way.
You’re not. Many of us learned to shut feelings down because it felt safer than expressing them. We weren’t taught emotional language we were taught emotional survival.
Numbness is easier than feeling but it slowly disconnects us from ourselves. Detachment may protect you in the moment, but connection is what heals you over time.
If everyone stayed quiet, no one would take the next step. Naming our emotions and acknowledging our flaws isn’t “too deep.” Pretending they don’t matter is just another way to act tough. But the truth is, they do matter to you, and to someone else.
When someone tries to drag you down for expressing what you feel, it often reveals that something in your words touched them or said what they haven’t yet learned to say.
Carl Jung wrote - “People will do anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid facing their own souls.”
Being someone who feels deeply is often mistaken for weakness. It isn’t. Feeling means you are willing to face yourself, offer compassion to others, and choose understanding instead of judgment.
“It’s deep” often comes from a place of love and care, yet somewhere along the way depth became confused with oversensitivity and vulnerability.
It is supposed to be deep.
Many people move through life disconnected from their inner world, moving through routines while ignoring what lives beneath them.
When you begin to recognize that the mind and soul exist beyond the body’s automatic motions, everything shifts. Life feels different because yes, it is deeper than what we see or say.
We are all learning how to feel in a world that taught us how to hide.
As Glennon Doyle writes - “Being human is not hard because you’re doing it wrong, it’s hard because you’re doing it right.”
Emotional awareness and vulnerability reflect strength and maturity. A lack of emotional education or self-recognition is far more dangerous.
You can excel at your job, follow every rule, and still miss the point that when you are alone, with your family, or with yourself, the real work is learning to reconnect your body with your soul and recognize what is truly hurting or exhausted within you.
Joan Didion wrote - “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.”
It is that deep because humans are complex, and empathy doesn’t require justification. Maybe it isn’t incompetence. Maybe it is fear. Fear of feeling. Fear of being seen. Fear of meeting oneself without distraction.
And maybe depth was never the problem. Disconnection was. Feeling is not weakness. It is evidence of being alive.
Maybe healing begins the moment we stop pretending it isn’t that deep.
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Sometimes it is really hard to acknowledge what we feel and express it. On the one hand, it takes a lot of courage to admit to what is hurting us and face it; on the other hand, we are often told that we "take things too seriously", that we need to "lighten up", to "stop acting like crybabies". We are therefore encouraged to ignore our feelings and emotions and hide them within ourselves, until we are unable to even name what brews inside us. What a truly sad society we are building... It is getting harder and harder to come across someone who is willing to listen to someone else and empathize, and as a consequence, it is getting harder and harder to express ourselves. We are all becoming empty shells, unable to communicate, unable to experience true happiness and peace because forced to behave like everything is fine, even if it isn't, and nothing really hurts, though we hurt all the time...
No one's ever told me that fortunately. I think if they did I would probably punch them in the eye and then say "it doesn't hurt that much."
There's certain things that people say these days they really get under my skin. Things and attitudes that just show an absolute self-absorbed egotistical un empathetic Dismissive flippancy that pisses me off to be honest with you. There's no simple kindnesses anymore the way there was growing up in the 90s. I miss the pleasantries and social graces yes it might've been contrite and even boorish at times but no one cut you off mid sentence with an "Anyways".
That said get off my lawn you damn kids and turn that music down.