You’re just too sensitive/over emotional!

If this was ever thrown at you as an insult, you are not alone. What you don’t know is that it’s not an insult, it’s a power. It’s often thrown at you by those who struggle to be in touch with their emotions so they see yours as threatening.  

I was always known in my family as the sensitive one, or more often the over emotional one. This ‘insult’ was never meant to upset me but was a statement of fact for them.  

There goes Mari again getting all upset and over emotional.  

Now some part of that was true. I struggled to regulated my emotions because I had a traumatic background. It wasn’t something I had learned and I was living in a high state of vigilance.  

However, I got emotional when something made me feel my emotions. Things that mattered to me or affected my children. When there’s an injustice in the world.  

A long time ago a wonderful therapist heard me say as a goal (!!) that I wished I wasn’t so emotional. She replied, but then you’d be terrible at your job. I had never put these two things together. Yes I am emotional. I cry at the end of the film, ‘Planes, trains and automobiles’ every single time. I can’t listen to Abba’s ‘slipping through my fingers’ without welling up. I don’t watch films above a 15 without someone else having okayed them. I don’t read books that use the words ‘harrowing’ or ‘traumatic’ on them – unless they are for my work!  

What can I do with my ‘over emotional’ emotions….?  

Within a couple of minutes of your talking to me I can tell what it is that troubles you. A few more minutes and I have a rough idea of why you got stuck like that. A few more minutes and I can work out how to start helping you let go of it.  

How? Because I can feel your emotions with you. I don’t take them on. I’m not empathetic to the point I get sick if you do. That is being unboundaried. I feel them and I understand what is going on for you. It’s why I’m very good at my job. If I had tried to bottle up my emotions, stop being me, stop being ‘sensitive’ and ‘over emotional’. I couldn’t do the job I do. I also wouldn’t be able to feel my feelings and align my life with them.  

I like me. I like my emotions and yes, before I did my internal work, I could sometimes be the emotional tsunami that I talk about in my book. Now I’m not.  

So if you are told you are sensitive and over emotional, please come over here and join my club.  

I get you.