“I Am Too Much”

… or so I believed

“I’m too sensitive.”
“I’m too emotional.”
“I’m too much.”

For most of my life, these words have lived quietly (and sometimes loudly) in my head. Not always spoken out loud, but felt - in raised eyebrows, in awkward pauses, in people drifting away without explanation.

I’ve lost friendships that I thought were solid. Friends I believed really knew me, only to discover that at some point, for reasons I still don’t fully understand, I became… too much for them. The confusion and heartbreak of that has stayed with me far longer than I’d like to admit.

When people walk away without answers

When someone disappears from your life without explanation, your mind fills in the gaps, and it’s rarely kind.

I have spent countless hours replaying conversations, analysing messages, picking apart moments, trying desperately to work out what I did wrong. Was I too intense? Did I overshare? Did I listen to them? Did I hear them, Did I even let them get a word in… Did I care too much? Not enough? The soul-searching has, at times, felt desperate and utterly heartbreaking.

When I was younger, particularly in my teenage years and early adulthood, that questioning tipped into something darker. I convinced myself that I must be fundamentally unloveable. Not because of one thing I could point to, but because people kept leaving, and I couldn’t understand why.

The cost of caring too much about what others think

I know now that I have spent much of my life as a people pleaser. Making myself smaller. Softer. Easier to digest. What I didn’t know is that was my ADHD and I had no control over it.

I have made big life decisions based not on what I wanted, but on what I thought other people expected of me, only to live with years of regret afterwards. It’s telling that when people ask, “If you could give your teenage self one piece of advice, what would it be?” my answer is always the same:

Care less about what other people think, and instead follow your heart.

That advice didn’t come from wisdom. It came from lived experience.

Oversharing, enthusiasm, and wearing my heart on my sleeve

I have overshared more times than I can count (and I frequently still do). Opened up too quickly. Trusted too deeply. Then lain awake afterwards wishing I’d kept my mouth shut.

I feel things deeply. I get excited. I care - a lot. My enthusiasm can spill over. My emotions are rarely hidden. Wearing my heart on my sleeve has been a common thread throughout my life, and for a long time I saw that as something to be ashamed of.

Sometimes my intensity has been misunderstood. Sometimes it has been enough to scare people off.

For years, I took that as proof that something was wrong with me.

Impulsivity and “act now, regret later”

My impulsivity was another tell-tale sign. I have always been an act now, regret later kind of person, jumping in with both feet, full of conviction, only to find I’ve handed myself yet another stick to beat myself with when things don’t turn out the way I’d hoped.

Despite the many regrets, I’ve never been able to curb it. I’ve been told it’s because I’m an Aries, and for years I half-laughed and half-winced at that explanation. But only now is it starting to make sense in a much wider context. What I once saw as recklessness or a lack of self-control was, in reality, another expression of a brain wired for urgency, intensity, and big emotional leaps, without the pause button others seem to have.

The missing piece I didn’t have back then

What I understand now, and desperately wish I had known decades ago, is that many of these so-called “character flaws” were never flaws at all.

Like so many women, I grew up without any understanding that ADHD doesn’t always look like the stereotypes we’re taught. No one told us that it can show up as emotional intensity, rejection sensitivity, overthinking, people-pleasing, or a deep fear of being “too much”. No one explained how much effort goes into masking, adapting, and trying to fit in.

Instead, many of us internalised the message that we were the problem.

My sensitivity.
My emotional depth.
My tendency to overthink, over-share, over-care.

These weren’t defects, they were adaptations - coping strategies, a neurodivergent brain trying to make sense of a neurotypical world, without the language or support to understand itself.

If I had known then what I know now about how my brain works, perhaps I could have spent less time trying to change who I was, less time beating myself up and less time believing I needed to be less in order to be loved.

Reclaiming “too much”

These days, I’m learning to sit with a gentler truth.

Maybe I was never too much.
Maybe I was just unseen, unsupported, and trying my best.

Self-acceptance hasn’t arrived in one neat, Instagram-worthy moment. It’s slow. It’s messy. Some days I still shrink myself without realising. But more and more, I’m beginning to understand that the very things I once tried to suppress: my empathy, my enthusiasm, my emotional depth; are not weaknesses to be fixed.

They are part of who I am.

And perhaps the work now isn’t about becoming less, but about learning to take up space without apology, and trusting that the right people won’t need me to be smaller to stay.

Over time, this growing understanding of my own brain has reshaped how I show up, for myself and for others. I’ve come to believe that real change doesn’t come from trying to “fix” who we are, but from understanding how our brains work, and learning to meet ourselves with compassion rather than criticism. When we stop pathologising our traits and start working with them, everything begins to feel a little lighter: relationships, decisions, and most importantly of all, the way we speak to ourselves.

You can read the follow up to this post I am too much Part 2 here