Why Feeling “Too Much and Not Enough” Is Actually Your Superpower

Have you ever felt like you’re just too much for people, but also never quite enough? Like you’re either coming on too strong or somehow still not doing it right? I’ve been there too. And in this episode, I’m giving you three ways to stop second guessing yourself and start actually liking the way you show up. Intensity, emotions, and all.

This show is for women who’ve been labeled, misdiagnosed, or misunderstood. Whether you have a diagnosis or just know deep down that you experience life differently, this is your space to stop fixing yourself and start trusting who you already are. My name is Amanda Hess. Let’s go.

Hey my friend. Welcome to the podcast. So happy to talk to you today.

Today’s topic, feeling like you’re too much and not enough at the same time and having that exhausting push pull, is something that I really have seen show up in so many women that I have coached. And it’s something that I definitely have experienced in my own life.

It’s really fascinating and difficult to grow up in a world where on one hand, we are taught that the way we are is too much for other people. And then on the other hand, we’re also told that we’re really not enough. We’re not good enough, smart enough, pretty enough, likable enough, lovable enough. So we’re not enough, but then we’re also too loud, too emotional, too sensitive, too demanding, too whatever. And that both things are true for us, and then we sit there and we’re so broken by being unable to navigate the minefield of where is the middle.

And I find that this tends to show up in sensitive, neurodivergent, high achieving women especially. That we are the ones that experience this the most. And so what I want you to know is that if you’re having this experience of being both too much and too little, you are not broken. I promise, there is nothing wrong with you. It’s just you’re trying to exist and even you’re trying to thrive in a world that doesn’t always get you. So the goal of this episode is to reframe the story and give you back your power.

I remember many occasions where I have been told that I’m a lot, that I’m too much. I have had a recent experience of that where somebody in my family had said that to another family member and that had been reported back to me. And it really can hit you like a gut punch, right?

I remember constantly feeling like I wasn’t doing enough and I wasn’t being enough. That I wasn’t friendly enough, that I wasn’t pretty enough, that I wasn’t easygoing enough, that I also wasn’t performing enough, I wasn’t producing enough. That the way that I was approaching things wasn’t enough, that the amount I needed to rest was not appropriate. Just really having that experience of my life.

And I think that the turning point for me was when I stopped chasing being just right for others. It’s sort of like that Goldilocks story, right? Where the bed is too soft and the bed is too hard, and the porridge is too hot, and the porridge is too cold, and the chair is too small, and the chair is too big. The Goldilocks story where nothing is right, nothing fits, nothing feels like us. And what you have to do is you have to stop chasing that just right for other people and find the just right for you. We need to start owning what is right for me and being able to really run our life from that place.

One of the things that shows up for a lot of us is our intensity and being intense, being too intense. And maybe you’ve had this experience of having a conversation and seeing people or hearing people say they don’t want to talk about it. It’s too much. They don’t want to talk about something negative or they don’t really want to get into a serious topic, right? And feeling rejected in that moment because you want to talk about something that’s really interesting. You want to deep dive. You like being intense. You like having intense conversations. You like having deep conversations. You like to talk about the way the world works and talk about hard things and be involved in an intense fashion. That this person’s going to have your rapt attention because you are so intently interested in the topic and what you were talking about and what you were doing.

And what I will say is that there are going to be people in your life that reflect back to you that intensity is a problem. When that happens, it really can start messing with our self-esteem. It really can start making us feel like who and how we are is a problem. And what we’ll do is we’ll try to dial down that intensity. But it is a form of masking because at the end of the day, we feel how we feel and our interests are our interests and we like talking about what we like talking about. And so we don’t need to dial down our intensity.

What I will say is that your intensity is your magic. It’s unfamiliar potentially to others, but it’s not bad. And I would say that those of us that have that emotional intensity, we bring emotional range and depth that other people haven’t developed. The truth is you might be a really deep thinker. You might be somebody who spends time being curious and interested in things and bring a different perspective to other people and this could be your gift.

And I will say that my intensity is my gift. Without this intensity, I wouldn’t have this podcast. Without this intensity, I wouldn’t have my business. Without this intensity, I wouldn’t have my life. And the same is true for you. Without your intensity, you don’t have the life you have. And I guarantee there are things in your life that really do fit.

So we want to celebrate our intensity and we want to notice that it’s normal to be different from other people, actually. And that it’s a good thing. That if we were all the same and if we had all the same levels of intensity, none of us would talk about anything ever. Like if we were to exist like my husband, who I love deeply, we would just talk about the Oilers being in the playoffs and McDavid and all of the hockey all the time and that’s all we would talk about.

And that’s great for people that want to talk about that all the time. But we also need the people that are the thinkers, that are the introspectives, that are the thought leaders. And that is us. That is us, my friend, and that’s pretty amazing.

I also want to offer that oftentimes what we’re doing when we’re trying to be just right is we’re using someone else’s measuring stick. And so not feeling enough is often just internalized expectations. So you’re not failing, you’re just not matching a standard that doesn’t fit you. And that is really important to understand. It’s a skill to learn how to self-validate and to decide on how you’re going to evaluate yourself. This is a coaching conversation that I have all the time with my clients.

I just had a client before this where we coached on this, where we talked about how are you going to evaluate your performance in your business? Because if we only evaluate it by how other people receive it or by what other people do, in her case like actually hiring her, then we don’t have any control over our own personal satisfaction. And I would suggest that you want to be feeling personally satisfied, personally fulfilled. And so we can’t give that away. We can’t give that to other people and have them be the judge of whether or not we are enough or use their measuring stick on what they think is enough. We’ve got to develop our own story of like, what do I think is enough?

So we really do need to start there. We need to start determining what is enough for me. We need to rewrite the metrics. What does enough look like? What does good enough look like? And can we make good enough, like really good enough? Like that’s exciting, that’s amazing. I celebrate that I’m good enough. Instead of looking at it from the standpoint of, well, I guess it’s good enough, as if good enough is not enough. You get to decide if good enough is enough.

When it comes to your shortcomings and the places where you think you’re failing, you can set the bar where you want to set it. And that ability to validate yourself comes from you setting those parameters. And when you do, confidence grows there. Personal satisfaction grows there, personal fulfillment grows there. And the cool thing about that is you will start bringing people into your life that love these things about you, that share your values, that share your views. So you will build your community at the same time. So this isn’t just a lonely mission. It also allows other people to come into your orbit and to come into your world.

Lastly, I need you to know that intensity needs tending, not taming. You don’t need to be less, you just need tools to support your nervous system. So if you’re the kind of person who experiences sensory overload all the time, we don’t need to change that for you from the standpoint of, “Oh, we have to figure out how to make you not so sensitive.” We do need to learn how to regulate your nervous system. And every person is different. The approach is very much a person-by-person approach. There are some general rules that I like to pull in that I’ve talked about on this podcast a lot.

Number one, go outside, be with nature. Number two, move your body. Number three, tap into your senses. Those three things, there’s a multitude of ways that you can tap into those three things. Now, if you’re struggling with coming up with ideas, you should just book a discovery call with me. Just go to amandahess.ca/bookacall and book a call. I will help you with this on that call because it doesn’t need to be complicated, but it does need to work for you. There are some testing things that need to be completed. We need to test what works and what doesn’t.

What we do is we regulate as much as we can because that’s required for all humans, not just for you, but also it allows you to tend to your emotional intensity and not try to tame it. We’re not trying to get rid of it. I always look at it from the standpoint of if we try to numb out emotion, if we just numb it out, which we do with lots of different things, right? We can use drugs to numb. We can use legal and illegal drugs to numb. We can use prescription drugs to numb. We can use TV, we can use phones, we can use lots of different things to numb. When we numb, we feel less pain, but we also feel less pleasure.

And my belief is that we don’t want to do that because your gift is your emotional intensity. So let’s not get rid of that so that you now don’t also get to feel intense joy, intense love. I want you to feel those things because those are what will bring in balance for you in this topic. This is what will create emotional balance. Emotional balance isn’t about bringing down the bad emotions because unfortunately, at the same time you’ll also bring down the positive emotions and we don’t want to do that. So instead, we tend to the negative emotions and then we create more positive emotions, but the intensity remains where it is. And that is a good thing.

You can develop strength. You can develop capacity for feeling emotion. We don’t need to reduce emotion. So when I’m really looking at this and I’m thinking about your emotional intensity, I’m really thinking about how do we support your nervous system? How do we support your emotions? And then how do we create more self-trust? The trust in I know how to take care of me. The trust in it’s normal and okay for me to feel the way I feel. The trust in it’s okay for me to have the interests that I have and to want to talk about the things that I want to talk about. And it’s okay for me to be myself and do that at work, and do that with my family, and do that with my friends. And I can enjoy being me, which to me is the most important thing.

When you are an emotionally intense person, I think that is so needed in the world. We don’t have enough of it. But we need to be able to experience that and feel safe with it. And so this is the process that I’m talking about. Creating that environment where we feel safe inside of our intensity, inside of our emotions, inside of our brain is a process. It is a practice. It’s something that we have to work on every day. So it’s really just so important to remember that emotional intensity is not a weakness, that intellectual intensity is not a weakness. It’s just a clue.

Feeling like too much and not enough is your signal to reclaim your identity. So what if today you decide to stop shrinking and instead you start choosing you.

If this landed, I would like for you to come try the Love Yourself No Matter What membership for a free week. You don’t need to put in a card. You’ll get coaching, support, and tools that actually work for women like you that will help you with things like this. You just need to go to joinamanda.ca to find out more. Okay, my friends, that’s what I’ve got for you. I will see you here next week.

Thanks so much for listening. You can look forward to a new episode of this podcast every week. And hey, if you like this podcast, do me a favor and leave a review. When you do, it helps this podcast grow, and it allows me to help more women just like you. And if you just know that you need help putting this all together, why don’t you book a free consult with me? We can talk about you and what’s happening in your life and put a real plan in place to manage the stress and anxiety for good. Just head on over to amandahess.ca/bookacall to set that up.