You’re Not Too Much: Reclaiming Emotional Space in Therapy
“Our wounds are often the openings into the best and most beautiful part of us”
“I’m sorry if I’m being too much.”
Too emotional. Too needy. Too intense. Too quiet. Too sad. Too honest. Too confused.
These words, speak volumes about past experiences, about learned limits, about early disconnection, about a world or a family or a culture that made feeling deeply a burden to others.
And so, many of us learned to shrink — to apologise for our emotions, to edit our truth, to carry our pain in silence.
In therapy, we begin to do something radical: we reclaim the emotional space we were told we didn’t deserve.
Clients who carry this belief rarely developed it in isolation. Somewhere along the line, their emotions were met with withdrawal, overwhelm, ridicule, or minimisation.
A parent who shut down in the face of their child’s tears.
A teacher who labelled anger as disruptive instead of protective.
A partner who called vulnerability drama.
A culture that equates stoicism with strength.
The message, explicit or otherwise, was clear:
“Tone it down.”
“Don’t take up space.”
“Manage yourself so I don’t have to manage my discomfort.”
As a trauma-informed therapist, I understand that what often gets pathologised as “too much” is simply unmetabolised experience finally breaking through — grief, fear, anger, longing — emotions that were never given safe passage.
Therapy becomes the place where you are invited — perhaps for the first time — to feel without editing, to express without apology.
You get to unlearn the rule that your feelings are dangerous, manipulative, or too heavy to carry. Instead, you are met with curiosity, patience, and containment.
This is not indulgence. This is repair.
In the therapeutic relationship:
Emotional expression is honoured, not managed.
You are not measured by your composure but by your honesty.
Your story is not too messy to be heard.
Your pace is not too slow to be respected.
Through this, we begin to restore your relationship with your emotional self — not by fixing you, but by making room for you.
Over time, clients begin to notice what they were never allowed to need:
“I didn’t realise how much I’d been filtering myself.”
“It feels strange not being interrupted or fixed.”
“I always thought I was too sensitive — maybe I was just silenced.”
In many ways, therapy becomes not just a place of healing but of rediscovery — of the parts that were hidden or shamed into silence.
In the nervous system, suppression of emotion doesn’t erase the feeling; it lodges it deeper. We may disconnect, but the body keeps the score. Anxiety, fatigue, burnout, reactivity — these are not overreactions. They are signals.
Reclaiming emotional space in therapy is about making contact with those signals — giving them language, shape, meaning. When we allow space for the fullness of our emotional life, we move from overwhelm to ownership.
You were never too much.
You were simply asking for more space than others were able — or willing — to give.
And your sensitivity, your depth, your emotional truth?
They are not flaws. They are gifts of awareness and aliveness, mislabelled by those who couldn’t hold them.
If you’ve ever felt like your emotions are inconvenient or unlovable — please know this: therapy is not about containment. It’s about expansion. It’s about making enough room for you to exist in your fullness, without apology.
You are not too intense.
You are not too sensitive.
You are not too complicated.
You are not too much.
You are enough — and perhaps, more than enough — just as you are.
Monica C | Integrative Counsellor, MBACP
Therapy with Monica I hello@therapywithmonica.com
This post is for information purposes only and is not a substitute for mental health care. If you’re in distress, contact your GP or the Samaritans at 116 123.