What If You Were Never Too Much?

What did you learn about yourself when you felt big feelings as a child?

Maybe someone told you to calm down, or that you were being dramatic, too sensitive, too needy, too intense.
Maybe it wasn’t said outright — maybe it was in the sighs, shifts in body language, the way people changed the subject. Maybe it was in how others praised you when you were easy, quiet, agreeable, and subtly withheld warmth when you weren’t.

So you learned to take up less space.
To be good. To be palatable. To not make a scene.

And you got so good at it — so good at reading the room, shrinking your needs, second-guessing your instincts — that sometimes even you forgot you were ever too much in the first place. You just knew something about you felt like a lot. Like maybe your emotions were inconvenient. Like you had to earn belonging and love by being less of yourself.

But what if being your full self was never the problem?

What if your sensitivity, your intensity, your capacity to feel deeply — were never flaws to fix, but parts of you that longed to be met with care?

The Message We Internalize

This message — that we are too much — often arrives quietly. Sometimes through words. Sometimes through silence.

It might come from caregivers who couldn’t regulate their own emotions, so yours felt overwhelming.
Or a school system that rewarded stillness and punished curiosity.
Or a faith community that taught you to perform goodness while hiding your fear and grief.

These moments add up. And if we receive the message enough times — explicitly or implicitly — we begin to internalize it. We start to believe that there must be something wrong with us for feeling so much. For needing so deeply. For not being able to just get over it.

The Cost of Shrinking Ourselves

When we adapt by shrinking, it often keeps us safe — especially when we’re young. But over time, that adaptation begins to cost us.

We might struggle to access our own feelings or trust our instincts.
We might stay quiet in relationships, even when something hurts.
We might apologize constantly, unsure if our presence is a burden.
We might feel disconnected from our needs, our creativity, our aliveness.

The problem isn’t that we’re too much. The problem is that we’ve been taught to believe we should be less.

Reclaiming What Was Lost

Healing begins when we stop trying to be less, and start turning toward the parts we were taught to hide.

The sensitive part. The passionate part. The part that cries during commercials or gets angry at injustice.
These aren’t weaknesses — they’re signs of being human.

When you start to make room for the whole of you, things begin to shift. You realize that what once felt like “too much” is often just a sign of your depth, your intuition, your empathy. The parts that were once shamed are often the same parts that make you beautifully alive.

What Healing Can Look Like

Therapy can be one of the few places where you don’t have to tone yourself down.
Where you can cry, rage, laugh, question, grieve — and not be met with discomfort or silence, but with curiosity and care.

It’s a space where you can say the thing and not feel ashamed afterward.
Where you can feel deeply without having to make yourself smaller.
Where the question isn’t “how do I stop being so much?” but “what does this part of me need?”

You Were Never Too Much

You were never too much — only ever trying to be enough in spaces that asked you to be less.

The truth is, you’re not too sensitive. You just feel deeply.
You’re not too needy. You just long to be known.
You’re not too intense. You just care deeply about things that matter.

There is nothing wrong with your bigness.
There is nothing wrong with you.