Too Emotional, Or Too Aware?

There are many of us who, from a very young age, carried something that others around us couldn’t quite define. A quiet awareness. A depth of feeling. A sensitivity to the world that often left us wide open — not just to the beauty of life, but to the harshness too. We noticed things. We felt everything deeply. We were in tune with emotions — ours, and everyone else's. But instead of being seen as intuitive or empathetic, we were often labeled something else entirely: too emotional.

Our tears made others uncomfortable. Our reactions, misread. Instead of being met with understanding, we were met with shame.
“Why are you crying?”
“You’re too sensitive.”
“Wipe those tears before I give you something to cry about.”

For many of us, these were the phrases that greeted our emotions. They taught us that our feelings were wrong — or worse, dangerous.

But I want to offer you a different perspective: what if you weren’t too emotional at all? What if you were simply too aware for the world around you?

See, emotional children often become targets in environments where emotional intelligence is lacking. When an adult is uncomfortable with their own feelings, they don’t know what to do with a child who feels everything. Rather than learn to meet you where you were, they used power — because power felt easier than compassion.

But that doesn’t mean you were the problem. Your emotional reactions were not over-exaggerated. They were justified responses to an environment that didn’t feel safe, that didn’t hold space for you. You cried because something wasn’t right, and that was your body’s way of trying to process it.

You weren’t crazy. You weren’t weak. You were intuitive. Aware. Perceptive in a way that made people uncomfortable — not because you were wrong, but because they didn’t know how to meet you in that depth.

As I've grown older, I’ve come to see that what many people called "too emotional" was actually a superpower. It was the part of me that noticed injustice, that yearned for connection, that wanted more than surface-level interactions. It was the voice inside me that knew something wasn’t right — and didn’t want to ignore it.

But here’s the thing: many of us who were once emotional children didn’t always grow up knowing how to handle the weight of our feelings. For years, some of us tried to silence that sensitivity — not because it wasn’t valuable, but because we had learned it wasn’t safe. We turned to distraction.
We turned to unhealthy coping — alcohol, substances, toxic relationships, perfectionism, overworking — anything to numb the ache of feeling too much in a world that told us to feel less.

We thought if we could just blend in, if we could just quiet that voice inside us, maybe we’d finally feel accepted. Maybe we’d stop being “too much” for the people around us.

But numbing your feelings doesn’t make them go away — it just buries them deeper. And sooner or later, something wakes you up. A breakdown. A burnout. A moment of quiet that’s louder than all the noise you’ve tried to fill it with. And suddenly, you realize: you miss yourself.
The version of you that felt deeply. That cared. That noticed beauty and pain in equal parts. The version of you that the world told to silence was actually your most powerful self.

And in allowing yourself to feel again, you come home to your truth. You realize the very thing you were trying to mute was your compass all along. That sensitivity? That deep inner knowing? It’s your guide — showing you what’s meant for you and what’s not. Teaching you how to navigate the world in alignment instead of survival.

As adults, we now have a choice. We can internalize the same criticisms we heard growing up, or we can rewrite the narrative.

We can become the adult who listens before reacting.
We can become the parent who explains why — not just punishes.
We can break the cycle of shame and choose to respond with intention instead of power.
We can show children — and ourselves — that they’re not wrong for feeling.

Because when a child cries, what they need most isn’t silence — it’s someone to help them understand why they feel the way they do. It’s someone to sit beside them and say, “You’re safe. You’re allowed to feel this. Let’s move through it together.”

The truth is: those of us who were labeled “too sensitive” weren’t fragile — we were honest. Honest about what we saw. Honest about what we felt. And now, we get to honor that honesty by being the kind of adult who validates what once was dismissed.

So if you’re still carrying the weight of being misunderstood — if you’ve ever been made to feel weak for feeling deeply — know this:

You were never too emotional. You were always just more aware.

And that awareness? That’s your gift. Don’t bury it. Don’t silence it. Let it guide you to become everything you once needed.

Photo by Serj Sakharovskiy on Unsplash