“Too Emotional”
On two separate occasions just this week, the same general topic of conversation came up and that’s usually not a coincidence for me – I take that as something worth exploring.
Growing up as a child, and something that carried with me to most of my young adult and early adult years, I was considered “emotional”. By whom? Well, the most striking reminder was my mom, who would tell me, “you’re too emotional” and “you’re too sensitive”. It was a common refrain. It routinely came about when she would be teasing me for something. It showed up a lot when I was teased by others or hurt by something a friend did or didn’t do, and I would tell her about it, hoping for sympathy. Sometimes it was simply getting upset by something I heard going on in the news, in the neighborhood, or maybe something my father or brother would say.
As I look back on it now, I see that being “emotional” in this way meant that I was being impacted by the things that were happening around me.
My presumption is that adults (at least those I was surrounded by) didn’t think that as a kid, I was capable of feeling so much – let alone able to process it. And so, emotional gets construed as something else. Whining. Complaining. Letting my “sensitivity” get in the way of logic and reason. And yet, as a kid, I can still remember my sense of justice (and injustice) that wanted to come out. Not able to just accept things as they were said but questioning why that injustice seemed to be tolerated, why it was OK. I started journaling and writing to let out the feelings I did have, and yet my thoughts were constantly interspersed with “what’s wrong with me?” and “why can’t I just be like other people?”
I believe that as a society – at least at the time and place I grew up – people have become hardened. Emotional and sensitive are weaknesses to be preyed upon and so even if you feel that way, stuff it away, hide it, cover it up. They are things you can’t control, and others will take advantage of you. I can only imagine that as a parent, my mother thought she was doing the best she could for me by trying to get me to suppress my emotions, to protect me in the way she knew how.
We are taking some of the best qualities of children and telling them they are wrong.
For me, the result of being told I was “too sensitive” and “too emotional” was to feel like I never fit in. Even when I learned to suppress my emotions on the outside, the thoughts were always there inside. It was exhausting to constantly keep stuffing the feelings away, rubbing me raw inside. Always worried it would sneak out and feeling like being caught would be the worst thing.
It meant continually putting an inauthentic face to the world, and so no wonder I continually felt like the imposter in whatever I did. No matter my level of success, it wasn’t even really “me” achieving that success. It also explains so much of the frustration I felt in my career, because I held back the places I could make the biggest difference and was most passionate about because I felt like they were outside of my “actual” work - extracurricular activities – or worse, they proved that “as a woman I was too soft for the role”.
What if, rather than hiding, I was able to find my people – my sensitive people? The people who were hurting like me, feeling left out, feeling isolated? Those that felt like they were crazy and had to shut themselves down so no one would find out? What might have been possible if rather than shutting down, I had been nurturing this feeling all along?
What might that life have looked like?
I could dwell there. I could “what if?” and point fingers and blame the past for everything I haven’t had that I wanted, now that I have this wide-open look into what created much of that way of thinking for me.
Or… I can celebrate the fact that the experience made me who I am today, in a way that I can share the experience with others going through it. I can help shine some light in the dark places and help them discover and choose a different path that is authentic to them. I can know what it’s like to be separate from the things that I love about myself – my superpowers – and choose to live a fully authentic version of myself.
If anyone asks me why I’m a coach, I point to this. I want those that have not been free to discover freedom in their thoughts and actions. You may know what that “missing” is in your life, or you may just have a sense that something is missing. Once you discover it, it’s yours.
Tired? Frustrated? Lack of freedom, even in the areas where you have had success? Feeling like there’s something you want to do, to say, and can’t find the voice? Give me a call, let’s explore together.