For as long as I can remember, I have felt like who I really am is “too much” for the world. My version of “too much” looks like overly effusive, loving, affectionate, and caring behavior. Of course writing this as an adult and reading these words back to myself leaves me with the thought, “Well, what’s wrong with being a loving, caring person anyway?” However, for the majority of my life I have had the distinct experience of feeling that there was something wrong with this part of me…something absolutely alien about my big heart and desire to hug just about everyone!
As a child, one of the hardest things we encounter is the arduous task of “fitting in.” To be accepted and acknowledged by our peers… to be invited to the birthday party, asked to sit with at lunch, chosen to play on someone’s team during recess. These were all external signals that we were “doing it right” that we were good enough for our circumstances. However, when these things did not happen, we were left feeling sad, upset, broken, or inadequate. When faced with the disappointment of not being accepted, we decided we must change ourselves. We observed others who were well-liked, we mimicked their behaviors, we tried to “be cool,” to be like everyone else, for the sake of being accepted. In this shift between who we were and who we thought we needed to be, we alienated ourselves from our selves. We learned to deny our instincts and adopt other attitudes we deemed socially appropriate. We left behind our natural tendencies in hopes that an altered version of ourself would lead to the social inclusion and happiness we so desperately longed for.
For me, it took a good amount of time but this tactic eventually worked and I made friends. Finally, I had a group of people to call my own. This felt comforting, yet I could not shake the feeling that I had to keep up this charade to maintain my spot in my social circle. Of all of the things I had to do, feigning “not caring” was the most painful. You see, where I am from (and likely where you are from too) not caring about things was cool. It was acceptable to be smart, but to care too much about a particular subject or book or project was not exactly “cool.” You weren’t supposed to care what people thought about you, you weren’t supposed to care about anything outside the realm of “normal.” In fact, what you were SUPPOSED to do was to play it cool! Just be super chill about it all and let absolutely everything roll down your back. Now this …this highly endorsed and seemingly uniformly practiced attitude could literally not have been more contrary to my genuine nature. You see, I am a sensitive soul, an extreme empath. I literally feel everything so deeply that when speaking to a person about their own pain, I often feel tears welling in my own eyes. I care SO MUCH about other people, about their well-being. I want to know people to their core, to show them they are cared for, loved, adored, thought of…and yet, this part of me was absolutely the least cool part of me growing up. In my observations of others, I saw that they did not share these traits, they didn’t communicate the kind of affection I so badly wanted to display, and everyone pretended like they didn’t care about anything…all the time. Perhaps it wasn’t even pretend for some, perhaps many of my peers simply didn’t care…but not me. I cared about it all.
Reconciling these differences, between who you are and who you believe you need to be in order to be accepted, is so incredibly challenging. Add to that that we are children when we learn to do this for survival, and the complications pile on. We get lost in a sea of wanting to conform to the world around us so that we don’t get left behind, while simultaneously leaving parts of our own selves behind. There seems to be no good solution here. Either we stay true to who we are while feeling ostracized, criticized, or weird (could there be a worse schoolyard criticism?) OR we become another version of ourselves and have friends, but neglect our need to self-express. What a quandary for such young souls to traverse.
The unfortunate part of this routine however, is that most often we propel into adulthood and do not unlearn these social strategies. We believe we must maintain them in order to be liked, to have friends, to do well in business. Perhaps we drop some of the childish things we did in high school and adopt more mature ways of relating, but our internal sense of self, our internal belief that we must be someone different than who we really are, persists. These altered versions of ourselves become so deeply engrained, that many of us don’t even realize that we are still wearing a mask. We don’t even realize that we have been neglecting ourselves for much of our life. We remain stuck on this social merry-go-round, unsure how to get off or how to re-embody who we were before we thought we needed to change.
Throughout my own life I have negated my extraordinary heart, regarded it as something to suppress and push down. Believing, that if I really shared its contents people would think I was “too much”, that I was the weird girl. Believing that since other people so rarely treated me with the kind of acceptance and love that I had for them, that my instinctual behavior was somehow an aberration and in need of constant correction. However, as I grow and develop deeper self-acceptance I am learning that this is not the case. My big heart is who I am, it is my contribution to the world, and if I don’t share it with others how can I expect that they will share anything with me? Beyond that, my big heart is my thing. Every individual has something beautiful they contribute to this world, and we should not expect others to be like us in order for us to be like ourselves.
Conformity breeds one brand of being without room for individuality or uniqueness. Everyone who ascribes to it acts according to an unwritten set of social rules that they believe they must follow for fear they will be cast aside if they don’t. This was the fear we felt as children when we were not accepted by our peers. Fear that there was something inherently wrong with us as a result of our differences, fear which propelled us to change our beautiful individual selves. This fear is strong and often persists throughout our lives unless we consciously choose to change it.
So for now dear ones, I invite you to think about your own experience here. For me, it was my heart, but what was it for you? What did you feel you had to suppress, erase, or abandon in order to survive in the social context of your life? What parts of you do you continue to self-monitor, shut off, or regard as wrong or bad because you are worried that if you don’t, you won’t be liked? What parts of you do you miss the most?
So as you muse upon your own experience I will leave you with one caveat…there is no guarantee that if you reintegrate these parts of yourselves that other people are going to love them. In fact, when I’ve been brave and acted from my big heart, there have been times when it has given others room for pause or created what seemed like internal discomfort. Nonetheless I am now aware that people’s reactions to our authenticity has nothing to do with us and everything to do with them and where they are at. Not everyone can receive what we have to offer, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t offer it anyway! What about the people who can receive it and are missing out because we deny them? What about denying yourself your authentic nature? What could be more important than that? More so, the more you act as you are, the more you demonstrate that this is an ok thing to do, giving permission for others to be as they are too . That in fact, it is so beautiful to be who you really are in this world! I want you to know that when you do so you will attract exactly the right people into your life, the people who can receive you in your wholeness.
So, I bid you a beautiful experience rediscovering your YOU-ness, filled with remembering lost parts, making space for you to be who you are, loving yourself as you are, and knowing that who you are is absolutely perfect.
From my big hearted self, I love you! Thank you for reading ❤