Caught between
I'm looking for a new therapist, and one of the things I want to unpack is some unresolved/unprocessed trauma (?) around feeling like I’m "too much."
At one of the agencies where I spent a large chunk of my mid-career, my Executive Creative Director hated "noise." Any issue or conflict was just superfluous chatter to him, and he didn't want anything to do with it. So if I shared a challenge that I was running into with a colleague, or asked for help navigating a tough situation, his response was basically, “I don’t have time for noise, go figure it out yourself.” The way I interpreted it was, “your problems are too much.”
I ultimately left that agency when it became clear that my speaking up about something as serious as misogynistic actions was also “too much,” because that same ECD decided it was easier to tow the company line and protect his own position, rather than supporting me and another female colleague who were on the receiving end of the sexism.
In an annual review at another agency, I was told that other people thought I was too aggressive. That I came on too strong and opinionated. This was maybe one of the biggest gut punches yet, because just a year earlier, that same “aggressiveness” was applauded as “ambition” when it helped the agency win new work. It wasn’t too much in that context, but when when I shared my thoughts and ideas around our own internal challenges, the shine apparently became tarnish.
At times, feeling like I’m too much, while simultaneously also feeling like I’m never enough, is the place where I constantly live.
"OK, Amy,” I think to myself. “You heard the feedback. You need to take it to heart and lay low for a while, because being who you are is uncomfortable for everyone else. Now, what else can I do to prove that who I am is valuable and worthy?"
This middle ground between these two poles isn't actually ground at all, though. It’s paralysis. Suspension.
It’s a constant internal dance of trying to be measured with everything I do or say, so that I don't tip the scales too far one way or the other. Except I always tip the scales, anyway.
I am a full-force kind of person when there's something I am passionate about or believe in. And I struggle with having to hide that. But because I am also a people-pleaser, I do. You tell me I come on too strong, and I will retreat into compliance. I’ll fit in so much that you won’t even know that I’m there. I won’t risk getting that feedback again. But this place of retreat is where I also start feeling like I have to show my value in some other way, or else I don’t know who I am, or why I’m there.
I have always felt like an outsider, in some respects. I was never popular, or pretty, or part of the cool kid crowd in school. I didn’t go on a single date in high school (not that my mom would have let me, anyway). I didn’t get asked to senior prom. I started finding myself in college, but when I entered the workplace, I retreated back into my shell. I never went out with my colleagues for happy hour. I had incredible social anxiety. I was all business, no play, because I didn’t know how to show-up. I didn’t know what version of myself would be accepted, because at one point or another, I felt like I was told all versions of me were wrong.
When I hit my 30s, I started shedding some of this. My professional success gave me a bit more personal confidence. But as my confidence grew, so did the feedback that I was, once again, too much.
Now, at 40, I’m stuck somewhere between my cheetah voice and my mouse hole.
I don’t want to be the mouse, but no one seems to accept the cheetah. So what’s left?
Where do I go from here?