Too Much

A long time ago, in a state far away, I was a young graduate student learning to be a therapist. I knew a lot of therapists, and I had been to therapy, so I had this image of what therapists were supposed to look and sound like.

I thought that therapists were supposed to be calm and tranquil, mildly stoic, and speak slowly and softly. Humorously, this does not actually describe many of the therapists I knew. But it was the mold I imagined therapists were supposed to fit into, and I knew that I did not fit that mold. I tend to talk fast and (when I get excited) loud. I use my hands when I talk. I have a lot of big feelings and am naturally expressive.

I’ve made this disclosure before, and it’s always embarrassing to admit. With my first clients, I worked very hard to “sound like a therapist.” I talked softly and slowly. I worked to communicate active listening with my posture and intense eye contact and understanding nods.

I probably freaked those clients out.

Because whoever I was trying to be in those sessions was not at all true to who I am. I thought that I was supposed to put the truth of who I am aside to become a serious psychologist. I didn’t know that my big feelings, my laughter, my energy, the way I talk and feel and move and experience the world, could be an asset, not a liability. I didn’t know that my self and my personality could be some of the greatest therapeutic tools I had to offer.

I thought that who I was at my core was way too much. Too much for relationships and certainly too much for my professional life.

I had this idea so deeply stitched into the way that I thought about the world that it informed everything I said and did. As a child and adolescent, I was often described as over-dramatic. But I never felt like I was being dramatic at all. I felt like I was saying and acting the way that I was feeling, which was often big and intense. Intense. There’s another word that I heard that always made me squirm and feel like I was just too much. My feelings were too big, I over analyzed and over thought everything, and I was prone to talk too much if given the space to do so.

For a long time, I thought it was just me. I thought I needed to be smaller, quieter, more pragmatic, and less emotional. Then, one of those wonderful therapists (who did happen to talk slowly and quietly) challenged my idea that I was too much. I started reading things by Stasi Eldredge, Anne Lamott, and other women who wrote about their intensity, their big feelings, and working through their fear that they were too much for the world.

I started realizing that there is a beautiful and bright side to having big and intense feelings, to being full of thoughts and emotions and intensity. I learned that people who feel deeply are able to be deeply compassionate. I learned that with intense feelings comes empathy, and that my tendency to analyze and evaluate my world was an important tool for gaining wisdom and insight. I learned that my expressiveness could be a tool to help people feel safe and connected.

We live in a world that tells us that we need to be smaller, that we need to take up less space, physically and emotionally. We need to be less dramatic and less messy and less complicated. We need to be less spicy and less sweet and perfectly palatable for everyone.

And a part of me lived in that message for a long time, even after I started challenging the assumptions that I was too much and that my intensity was a bad thing. But then I had my kids. And I will tell you this, my kids are a lot. They are loud and full of energy and passion and life. All three of them feel their feelings with a grand intensity. One of them thinks about everything at a depth that astonishes me. And the thought of them believing they are too much breaks my heart in a million pieces.

Because I can look at those kids with complete and total wonder. I believe that their fire and intensity and big feelings and questions and thoughts are treasures, gifts to share with the world. Sometimes it scares me, and I question how to best parent their complicated little hearts.

So I practice telling them how much I love them, how much I love their big feelings and creativity and wandering thoughts and random questions. I love the things that make them unique. I work hard to see them and to encourage them to be who they are. And I keep working on accepting myself, believing that the world needs me, just like it needs my child and all their intensity and brilliance and emotion.

And the world needs you. If you have big feelings, if you tend to deeply think about and reflect on things, if sometimes you feel messy or complicated or intense. If you feel like you say or think or feel too much. If you are spicy or sweet or not perfectly palatable to everyone. The world needs you. With those pieces comes compassion, comes insight, comes empathy. With those pieces comes so much goodness, so much safety, so much connection, so much beauty.

We are not too much.

#emotions #relationships #laurenshaw #arlingtoncounselingassociates #thearlingtoncenter #therapy #parenting #feelings #communication