When something would happen that I absolutely couldn’t bear, I would go on google searching for articles like these: how to feel less, how to be less sensitive, how to not take things too personal, how to not wear your heart on your sleeves, and so on. Many articles with those titles would come up and I will be comforted by the fact that I am not the only one in this world asking these questions. I will literally spend hours reading these articles, remembering the steps and implementing them in my life.
I would think I have mastered these steps but it will only last till something else happened, when my feelings will overcome me, then its back to these articles. searching for new “how to’s” because the last articles didn’t work. I still felt too much and it was too much for me to handle.
Feeling too much means you are unstable. It means you are prideful because anyone that takes offense easily is a prideful person. Feeling too much means you are weak and fragile. It means you can’t handle anything and things have to be kept away from you. Feeling too much means you are dramatic and selfish and you make everything about you. I’m not sure how true these statements are but that’s what “they” say about people who feel too much.
I’ve spent a good portion of my life trying not to feel too much and I have failed miserably. Mostly because I would pretend things didn’t bother me and I would tuck it away until one day, I would just explode in the quiet of the night. I have distanced myself from people even though I crave relationships because I think that if I don’t open myself up to people, I wont be exposed to their life and the hardships that they deal with. For a person who feels too much, other peoples problems become theirs and instead of being there for the person, they begin to grieve with them, which ends up being unproductive.
Figuring out what was and is wrong with me has taken up so much of time and I still can’t figure it out. I sometimes feel like, maybe, I am unstable.
I do not think feeling too much is as bad as people make it seem. I think there are some good things that can come from it. I think people that feel too much are able to empathize with people more and can fully offer themselves in service to others.
There is no resolution here for the people who feel too much, but if you’re like me at least now you know you are not alone. And although sometimes our intense feelings can be, lets admit, a bit irrational. It is who we are and we can channel it into something positive if we really tried.
So, a toast to all the feel-too-much-ers! are you one? do you know one? how do you deal?
