You Are Not Too Much

We were sitting outside on a patio at a small restaurant in the city. It was loud and quiet all at the same time, as outdoor patios often are. There was no echo from walls sitting outside, there was instead a soft steady stream of city noise and other conversations that makes saying vulnerable things in public still feel like it is private. Like a cocoon of soft background noise. It was the kind of weather where you just need a light jacket, but you’re not cold. There were lights on wires hanging across the patio above our heads. Plates were served, glasses were refilled. Everything was dim, and comfortable, and perfect. We were forming a tribe. A group of women who engaged with the world in a similar way. A tribe that wouldn’t be perfect, one that would have differences, but one that was built on a commonality, a similar way of being in the world. Maybe it wouldn’t last forever. But that wasn’t the point of what I was learning that night. 

I have always been a deep thinker and a deep feeler. And I have found individual soul best friends throughout my life that were life savers, life givers, compasses, and wells of grace. But I’d never met a group of them at once. Who saw and felt things, not identically, but with a similar lens. Here, at this table, depth was cherished. There was a similar disdain for small talk. And ok, they all happened to be therapists. 

A couple weeks before that evening I had been reading my toddler an old classic Golden Book: The Saggy Baggy Elephant. The book follows the elephant through the jungle as everyone laughs at his shape, his skin. And the elephant thinks it is him. His differences must mean there is something wrong with him. Have you ever felt that way? Like the way you are made seems to be from a completely different mold than those around you? Like you are the only one? Maybe it is in your school, your work, your friend group, or your family. The funny thing is we rarely question the grouping; we think it must be us. And like that elephant you march on not knowing you place. Maybe you are not laughed at, but maybe instead you have developed a fantastic mask to conform.

I felt my sensitivity was often misunderstood, or just not a match, and so sometimes I hid it. I preferred connecting deeply. I feel deeply about most everything, and I probably take life far too seriously. And frankly some of the people closest to me had no idea what to do with me. Maybe that sounds like you? Maybe you are highly sensitive even. This can feel isolating, and without a proper understanding of the reality that you may have just not found your people yet, you think it is you.

I remember an intentional moment of vulnerability with my family, sitting on the back porch of my parents’ house when I was home from college on a break. I shared some hard feelings, and the response was a surprise. Just to give you a picture I was very calm, and I cried and I shared my deep wrestling and thoughts, nothing crazy. One of them, I think genuinely befuddled looked at me and said: Do you always live like this?? Their shock shocked me, and named how different we were and are. It was almost a relief even though it was painful. I had always felt different from my family. It wasn’t bad they weren’t like me, but it also wasn’t bad that I am not like them. I replied, Yes, yes I do. Letting that declaration settle in with both the grief and the freedom it held. Let it be. Let it be that you are different. Because the alternative is compromising who you are and all the good things you can do with that makeup.

This is how I am made. And I learned over the years that it is on purpose. I do think a lot, I do feel a lot, that doesn’t mean messy slopping my feelings all over others irresponsibly. It means that I am going to chew on a thought, an idea, or a belief for a long time, and I am going to treat my feelings as well as yours with great intention and respect. I am easily moved by people, art, music. And I really wasn’t born with the ability to play it cool - although I have tried, one of my masks I developed. People often ask how I handle being a therapist, and I sometimes think, well, I am always swimming at this depth. It is how my lungs are formed, and so I can swim with others as they are in their deep places, that often involve pain. It is not that it is easy, it’s just that it makes sense. 

Now back to our saggy baggy elephant. I had never read this old classic children’s book. And as I rocked my daughter in her room, and grimaced at the mocking parrot laughing at the elephant, I wondered too, what was going to happen next? This poor little elephant. He felt so alone, and maybe you have too. Well he unexpectedly comes upon a group of big, saggy, baggy elephants. All their skin is droopy and loose, and they welcome him in. He is home. And then they dance. They actually stand up on their thick elephant legs and they dance in a circle, what a celebration of belonging, and  of home.

And so, on that patio, the bulbs hanging above us, casting warmth and shadow all at once. I looked around to these women as we were deep diving into some topic we all found important, and I saw my elephants. And I told them, a little nervous to be comparing a bunch of  almost middle aged women who’d all bore children to saggy elephants, and they all nodded. They knew the feeling, and were finding what I was, a kindredness of belonging. We then would text elephants to each other in the years going forward, on our never-ending text thread.

We don’t meet together as often as we did, and we have expanded, and yet the exact group as it was that night is not the point. The point is that if you feel like you are too much, maybe you haven’t found your people yet.

Here is what I want you to know. You may not have found your group. But that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. I want you to take this story out on loan. They are out there. And although the people are important, they are not the deepest truth here. The biggest insight for me, now that the elephants are older and not able to be as delightfully tribal…is that I am not too intense, or too much, I just hadn’t found my people yet. That experience taught me, what I want to pass onto you. You are not too much, you just may be trying to match yourself to people wired differently than you.

I made a whole lot of sense to the elephants, and there is someone you make a whole lot of sense to also. And I internalized that message and affirmed that I actually make a whole lot of sense to me too. The same is true for you. You belong, you have a home. You are just who you are supposed to be.

So what’s the lesson? It’s not you it's them. No, I’m serious. And I don’t mean this in a negative way. I mean to say this: If you feel that you are too much, then you need to change the filter you are looking at yourself through. We are all delightfully different. You are not made to be like the people you feel you are too much for. And somewhere out there, or inside, or right here right now, you can claim that circle of elephants for yourself. You are just who you are supposed to be. I will celebrate that with you just like those elephants did dancing in that circle of belonging.