Sometimes I feel this strong pit in my stomach thinking about whether I’m ‘too much’. I have a mental illness, I wear my heart on my sleeve, and I need to talk out everything that happens – regardless of how major or minor it is. When I say too much, I really mean too honest, emotional, angry, and possibly even mean.

This feeling is all too familiar for me. When I was actively posting on Instagram I would have these same pangs of fear every time I posted wondering if I was being too much and what people thought about me.

“She’s so emotional.”

“She’s erratic.”

“I wouldn’t work with her, she’s too unreliable, always struggling with something.”

I’m paraphrasing, of course, but these are things people have actually written about me. It’s like these words have been tattooed to my skin, because, if I’m being honest, I carry them with me day in and day out. Small, flippant phrases written by strangers that have had a monumental impact on me. Anytime I think I’m being too much, I think about these words. Then, I yearn to retreat. Close myself off, like a turtle going back into it’s shell. Complacency.

I am always puzzled about the people behind these hurtful words. As someone who, as I mentioned earlier, wears her heart on her sleeve, I always want to dig deep into the psyche of the people who say and write these things, given they sit anonymously on a forum spewing vitriol about someone they don’t even know or haven’t met. I like to believe that we are all a product of our personal experiences and what is happening is an unconscious projection.

It also plays into this tired trope that women who are using their voices are nothing more than ‘emotional’. And being emotional, in this context, means you aren’t being rational or thinking clearly. Emotional is bad. As a result, everything about the woman is questioned. Her legitimacy, her ability, her personality. And this harmful stereotype isn’t just perpetuated by men; women can be just as guilty of reinforcing these false gender norms.

In my case, this has led to self-doubt and has caused me to question a lot about who I am as a person. Am I too much to love? Too much to have a friendship with? Too much to handle? I’ve spoken with my therapist at great lengths about this and she always pulls me back down to earth and helps me reframe this though process.

Why is being too much a bad thing?

Maybe being too much means you are passionate. You love wholly and completely. You are unapologetic. You refuse to shrink yourself to adhere to other people’s standards. You aren’t made to fit inside a glass box, after all. You’re meant to burst through it.

If you’ve ever been told you’re too much, this is for you. Embrace your too much-ness even when you have moments of doubt like I do, and know that it’s not you who needs to change, it’s them.