For many years, I thought I was just “too emotional.” I hadn’t learned to allow and to express my feelings. They felt too big because they were stuck inside, and because of what I had been taught was normal.
My feelings often felt too intense, too easily triggered. Everyone else seemed to have it together while I was a mess inside. It never occurred to me that other people might be having the same feelings—they just weren’t showing them. I was comparing my insides to other people’s outsides.
It also didn’t occur to me that burying my emotions might make me sick.