The Goldilocks Syndrome

Women are told all the time that they are too much; too emotional, too sensitive, too shrill, too quiet, too loud just too much. In fact, just last week my husband and I were arguing and he happened to tell me that I was being "too sensitive". Boy, did he regret that pretty quickly.
At the same time as all this too much-ness is going on, inside we are feeling not enough; not pretty enough, not smart enough, not thin enough, not rich enough, not good enough, just not enough.
Sound familiar? Yup, Goldilocks ( I guess the clue was in the title, right?)with her "Too hot. Too cold. Just right"
The trouble is we seem to be stuck in the too-much-not-good-enough loop without ever, quite reaching the "just right" part.
The truth is we are always going to be too much for some people and there isn't anything we can do to fix that because the problem doesn't lie with us.
It's their problem and we should let them keep it instead of twisting and turning ourselves inside out trying to squish our gorgeous, sparkly, too much -ness into some beige, bland, boring box marked "acceptable". Here's the thing; even if you fit into the box marked acceptable for person A you might still be too much for person B because everyone has their own opinion of what exactly constitute "acceptable".
It's the "not good enough" that we really need to get to work on fixing. Our sense of self worth should not lie with fitting into someone else's worldview. Our self worth is, always and only, about how we feel about ourselves and it's an issue that many of us have to deal with.
When we get too focused on being "acceptable" or "fitting in" we are giving those people around us too much power over how we value and perceive ourselves. We have to turn inward and figure out what we value about ourselves, what makes us unique, what makes us worthy and not measure it against anyone else, only who we were yesterday or last week or last year. As Theodore Roosevelt said "Comparison is the thief of joy" and that joy it's stealing? It's yours and along with it your sense of self worth.
We all focus so much energy on fitting in and being acceptable and we spend very little time on asking ourselves if these are really the kind of people we want to be hanging out with. Their opinion of us seems to matter so much more than our opinion of them, or even of ourselves and isn't that kind of crazy?
The craziest part is that we don't even notice . We are so focused on being accepted that we forget that how we feel matters too and that brings us right back tot he "too much-ness" because all of our feelings are just a bit "too much" and numbing them out, holding them in, pushing them down, gets exhausting after a while. Instead of feeling them and letting them out we have another coffee to give us a lift or grab a glass of wine to put those feelings to sleep and before we know it we are reaching for those things more and more often instead of feeling our feelings.
Being authentic is a bit of a catch phrase these days and the truth is some of us have forgotten who we even are because we have been trying for so long to fit into somebody else's idea of who we should be. Being authentic then just becomes another label to live up to and what we'd really like to do is just sob quietly in the corner for awhile until we actually remember who we are and let all those suppressed emotions wash through us.
Let's just get one thing straight, unlike the fairytale there is no "just right" way to be. Some of us will always be too much for some people and that's okay. Those of us that feel not quite good enough can get to work on that and the rest of us just need to chill the fuck out and let people show up in the world in whatever sparkly, shiny way they need to. The world's a big place . I'm pretty sure we'll all cope.