Someone said it to you. Maybe once. Maybe so many times it became a voice you carry around and call your own.
Too loud. Too emotional. Too excited. Too driven. Too sensitive. Too much.
And somewhere between the moment they said it and right now, you started editing yourself. Not all at once. Slowly. A little quieter here. A little smaller there. Until the version of you showing up in rooms isn’t quite the whole thing.
That’s not living. That’s existing with the volume turned down.
The Label They Gave You
When someone tells you that you’re too much without any further context, the comment doesn’t actually tell you anything useful. Too much compared to what standard? Defined by whom? Measured against which version of acceptable?
What it does do is hand the brain weasels a live wire. They don’t need much. One comment, and suddenly they’re running a full audit, am I too much here, am I too much there, should I even be allowed back in this space, and you’re no longer present in the room. You’re somewhere else entirely, worrying about what could be instead of paying attention to what is.
Sit with a specific moment. A time someone said it, implied it, or made you feel it without words. Don’t relitigate it. Just look at it.
Hold on to it. The reframe is coming.
The Moment Was Too Much. Not You.
Here’s the shift that changes everything.
There have been people in my life I thought were too much. Too loud. Too much energy. Too excited about something I couldn’t match. And when I’ve gone back and looked honestly at those moments, what I find is this: the person wasn’t too much. The moment was too much for me. Whatever was already unsettled in me, whatever I wasn’t ready to receive, that’s what I was actually responding to.
The problem wasn’t their joy. It was my capacity for it in that moment.
That reframe is generous to both people. It removes the judgment from the person and puts the discomfort where it actually lives, in the receiver, in the circumstances, in what was already happening underneath.
And it opens a door. Instead of deciding someone is too much, you get curious. What is it about their excitement that’s landing hard right now? What does their volume stir up? Because most of the time the answer has nothing to do with them.
Go back to the moment you were holding. Is it possible the feedback said more about the room than it said about you?
When the Feedback Is Worth Hearing
Now for the part most posts like this skip.
Sometimes it’s worth looking at.
I was in a meeting once. Slides up, work on the table, and I was firing off jokes, well received by most of the room. One person made a couple of passive aggressive comments about taking things seriously. And for the rest of that meeting, I went quiet.
In the silence, the spiral started. Have I gone too far? Did I ruin how people see me? Am I the person who only jokes? I didn’t have the tools then that I have now. So instead of reflecting clearly, I spent the rest of the meeting worrying about what could happen instead of being present for what was.
Looking back honestly: maybe in that space, the humor wasn’t what was needed. One person said something. That was enough for me to sit with it.
Not to collapse. Not to decide I was broken. Just to look at it.
In coaching, I’ve asked clients to try something when they receive feedback that lands hard. Instead of absorbing it or dismissing it, ask the person a question: help me understand what would be more useful here. Not to put them on the spot. To get curious. To apply context. To have the whole conversation instead of carrying half a sentence for years.
Sometimes the feedback is data. Knowing yourself well enough to receive it, without letting it rewrite who you are, is the actual work.
Happiness Is a Renewable Resource
Here’s what I want you to hold onto.
Happiness is a renewable resource. There is enough joy in the world that every person could be fully, completely happy at the same time, and there would still be more. And much of that joy renews based on the honest decisions we make for ourselves.
When you know who you are and how you show up, when you’re grounded in that, a comment about being too much is unlikely to land the way it was intended. You can hear it. You can look at it. You can decide what, if anything, it’s telling you. And then you can choose whether to carry it.
That’s not armor. That’s self-knowledge.
If you’re still carrying a “too much” message that has a vote in how you show up, in meetings, in relationships, in rooms where you should feel safe, let’s look at it together.
LaSchwann Killens is an ICF-trained life and executive coach and the founder of VALADD Coaching. He works with people who are ready to stop performing a smaller version of themselves.