You Are Not Too Much: The Art of Reclaiming Your Wholeness

July 14, 2025

If you’ve ever felt like you were too much—too sensitive, too creative, too loud, too emotional, too “something”, this is for you.

And if anxiety has ever felt like the very thing getting in the way of feeling good, you’re not alone.

It’s actually one of the most common threads I see that connects all the women I work with: strong work ethic, intelligent, accomplished women who feel deeply and are quietly wrestling with an internal storm. Women who’ve been labeled as sensitive, misunderstood, or have been told that they’re “too much” and who now find themselves shrinking, second-guessing, or feeling like they don’t belong in rooms they’ve earned a seat in.

But what if your anxious thoughts weren’t the enemy?

What if they were simply asking for your attention?
What if the messy, emotional, creative, sensitive, brilliant parts of you were actually your unique access point to peace?

Let’s explore this together.

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1. 🌱 What is Anxiety, Really?

I’ve been having many beautiful conversations with others about anxiety lately and what always opens my heart a little more is when someone tells me that they don’t have anxiety because they don’t have anxiety attacks and don’t take medication….because this is what I used to believe too. Until I realized I had created such a resistance to the meaning of the word itself that I couldn’t allow myself to notice the obvious signs within myself: nervous, worrying about the future, worrying about what others may think, ruminating on how a situation or conversation went or “should have” gone, etc, etc, etc.

When you peel back the layers and see what anxiety really is, the answer becomes simple but profound:

“Fear of something.”

That was a turning point for me. I stopped judging my anxiety and started listening to it. What was I afraid of? What meaning had I attached to the situation?

That’s when I began to realize:
The damage isn’t always from the painful event, it’s from what we make it mean about ourselves.

Anxiety is often a response to a story we’ve unknowingly adopted. It’s not just about the fear in the moment, but about the belief it planted:

“I’m not safe. I’m not enough. I will be rejected. I don’t belong.”

A woman holds up her hand with a pink sticky note displaying a cross symbol, conveying a clear message of refusal.

2. 🌸 How Anxiety Can Show Up & Why Intuition Gets Silenced

Sometimes anxiety looks like perfectionism.
Sometimes it looks like procrastination, people-pleasing, or even constant doing.
But often, it’s a disconnection from your own inner guidance.

Your intuition—the quiet knowing inside you—can’t get a word in when your mind is spinning in fear. But here’s the truth:

Your anxiety is not a flaw. It’s an invitation.

To slow down.
To come home to your body.
To remember the safety of your own breath. Because your breath actually holds so much wisdom, so much insight into what your body is feeling even if your mind is trying to act cool and collected.

3. 🧠 What You Made It Mean

When I experienced trauma, I didn’t have the words or safety to understand what had happened.
What I did understand, or thought I did, was that it must have meant I was less than. In other words, that I was inferior.

Even as I excelled through academics, I lived with a quiet belief that I was never enough.
I hid behind work and the hustle. I made friends everywhere but never let the groups mix because deep down, I didn’t want anyone to see the full picture of me.

I unknowingly wore different masks for different people. And underneath them all, I was terrified someone would realize I didn’t belong.

But the truth is:

You don’t have to prove your worth to belong. You already do.

It’s not whether or not you belong. It’s whether YOU believe you do.

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4. 🌼 You Are Not Too Much

You are not too much. You never were.

The world is often more comfortable with women who are quiet, agreeable, and easy to define. So when you show up assertive, vibrant, opinionated, emotional, intuitive, and bold, it doesn’t know what to do with you, or rather “where to place you”.

But don’t take yourself out of the game because of that discomfort.

The labels others gave you are not your truth.

Just like if someone told you your brown hair was red, you wouldn’t believe them because you know who you are.

So if their opinions feel like daggers to the heart, ask yourself these two questions:

Why have I ranked their opinion higher than my own?
Why does their approval feel more valuable than my inner knowing?

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5. 🦋 You Get to Choose How You Show Up Now

This is your life.

And you get to choose who you let into your circle.

You get to choose who stays, who earns your trust, and what you need in your relationships moving forward.

For example, there’s are people in my life who I love deeply.
But to keep this relationship healthy, we’ve had to agree on a few non-negotiables:

Certain topics are off the table. I need space between hangouts. I’ve asked for respect. They don’t need to understand it, but they need to respect it.

And they’re honouring that. Not because I explained it perfectly, but because I finally owned what I need.

But others haven’t.
They’ve ghosted. Gone quiet. Pulled away. And yes, it hurt. But it also revealed where I’d been outsourcing my self-worth.

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6. 🔥 Helping Others ≠ Abandoning Yourself

I’ll share a line that my therapist once told me and I’ll never forget:

“You don’t have to light yourself on fire to keep others warm.”

That one sentence brought me to tears. Because I had been doing exactly that for years.
Even when it looked like I was choosing for me, I was really choosing in a way that wouldn’t disappoint others. In other words, I was looking for their approval because this felt like love.

But here’s what I’ve learned since:

You can support others without sacrificing yourself.
You can help people without becoming their crutch.
You can offer love without abandoning your own needs.

And when you stop over-giving, you’ll start to notice who truly wants to grow with you and who just wants you to stay small.