The Fear Series: I am too much to be loved

Shoreline at Point Reyes

Feeling. 

Feeling has been my greatest power, yet my greatest source of suffering. I've been deeply sensitive since I was a small person. As a power, my feelings have enabled me as a natural empath who can pick up on nuanced, interpersonal dynamics and effectively support people emotionally. As a source of suffering, my feelings, left unseen, cause me to be unnecessarily defensive, difficult, and self-loathing. To deal with them, I tend to feel quickly, "process" quickly, and show it quickly. Part of the quick pace has been conditioned by my family.  My feelings represented weakness, disrespect, and a lack of gratitude. They needed to disappear as quickly as they came. 

How could you be crying? What is there to cry about? We love you, we feed you, we house you, and we keep you physically safe. You're in America! It's not like you fled war! Save your tears for something worth crying for. 

So, you might be thinking, well at least you can feel your feelings. In truth, I can feel my feelings, BUT I never learned how to be with my feelings, to tend to my feelings, to be kind to my feelings, and to create the space for my feelings to breathe as they needed. 

As a result, my way of processing them has been to quickly move on from them, to stay blind to what they needed, to resist their existence in some cases, and to place them after the needs of others. Where do you think all these feelings went? Buried deep in my body. 

My feelings are too much. My emotions are unreasonable and inconvenient. My emotional needs can't be met by anyone.  I am too much to be loved. 

This has been my age long story, and it ran rampant within my family and marriage. Consequently, I often over-apologized for my feelings and the circumstances of the conflicts, even if I wasn't fully responsible. I suppressed parts of my feelings in fear of being too much. I set aside my own emotional needs while tending to others needs first. In many ways, the unconscious behaviors of this story enabled the people I loved most to feed the story and extend its storyline. In many ways, my natural tenderness and vulnerability were often rejected by and felt uncomfortable for others because they weren't able to access these places in themselves. I was not taking care of my own emotions and at the same time, harshly telling myself that I was too much. The people who I loved most weren't capable of telling me otherwise. 

Today, at 33 years old, I am in the humble process of re-parenting myself. I've taken meaningful steps over the past couple years to unpack this fear story, become mindful of my emotional processing, learn how to draw boundaries and keep myself emotionally self, tend to my emotional needs first and foremost, and deepen self-compassion for myself today, as well as the younger versions of myself. 

Thank you to my community of beloved friends who have been my saving grace all these years, for being there to tell me that my feelings were true, and that I was never too much to be loved.