When They Tell You Your Personality Is Wrong (Again)

And what to do when you’ve spent your whole damn life trying to shrink into the shape of someone else’s comfort.

There are certain sentences that tattoo themselves on your nervous system long before you even know what a nervous system is.

For some people, it’s You’re so smart. For others, you’re so pretty.

And then there are some of us—hi, hello—who grow up with the gentle-as-a-sledgehammer refrain of:

“Why are you like that?” or “You need to be more…” or “You’re just too…”

Too quiet. Too sensitive. Too intense. Too honest. Too thoughtful, too emotional, too introverted, too observant.

Basically: Your personality? Yeah… it’s wrong.

And here’s the thing nobody tells you: When you hear this enough times, you start believing the problem is your wiring. You start treating your inner world like a messy bedroom you need to apologize for.

You spend decades trying to soften your edges, round out your corners, disguise your depth, quiet your knowing. You shrink. You perform. You bend. You try so hard to be palatable you forget you were never meant to be edible in the first place.

The Emotional Olympics of Being “Too Much”

If you’ve ever been told your personality is a problem, you’ve likely become an accidental gold-medalist in Emotional Contortionism.

You’ve learned to:

• Laugh softer so you don’t take up air

• Talk less so you don’t take up space

• Smile more so you seem “nice enough.”

• Breakdown privately so you don’t burden anyone

• Think faster so you don’t inconvenience anyone

And at the end of all that Olympic-level effort, someone still inevitably says: “Wow. You’re… intense.”

I love that for us.

The Lie Beneath the Criticism

One day—usually sometime between your late 20s and early 40s—something quietly snaps. Not the brittle, dangerous kind of snap. More like the gentle click of a puzzle piece sliding into place.

You realize:

It was never that your personality was wrong. It’s that your personality was inconvenient... To them.

Your depth required people to go deeper. Your sensitivity required people to slow down. Your empathy required people to be accountable. Your truth required people to be honest with themselves.

And that? That’s uncomfortable for the folks who rely on hiding in the shallow end.

So what do we do now?

Here’s the part Glennon Doyle would call the brutiful: beautiful + brutal. And Emily McDowell would draw a bright, messy, adorable card about it.

1. Stop apologizing for the shape of your soul.

Your personality is not a malfunction. It’s a home you live inside. Stop rearranging the furniture every time someone else walks in.

2. Notice who benefits when you shrink.

There are people who prefer you small because it keeps them big. There are people who love your intensity because it means they can finally exhale. Sort accordingly.

3. Remember that your personality is not a costume — it’s a compass.

If you’re highly sensitive, it’s because you’re built to notice things. If you’re introverted, it’s because your inner world is a cathedral. If you’re emotional, it’s because your heart is a GPS system for what’s true. You are not broken. You are brilliantly built.

4. Practice radical permission.

Let yourself be the full, weird, extraordinary flavor of who you are. The world already has enough vanilla.

5. Build a life where your personality is an asset, not an “issue.”

This is the part nobody tells you:

When you stop treating your personality like a liability, you naturally start building a life, a career, a home, relationships, where it becomes your greatest strength.

People who are too much for some are exactly enough for others.

A Final Word to the “Too Sensitive” Ones

If no one has ever told you this, let me be the first:

Your sensitivity is not a flaw. It’s a superpower. Your honesty is a lighthouse. Your intuition is a guardian. Your depth is a gift. Your personality is not wrong. It’s rare. And people fear what they do not understand.

So the next time someone suggests you should be “more this” or “less that,” just smile gently and think:

“Maybe I’m not too much. Maybe you’re just not enough for me.”

And then walk away—softly, bravely, unapologetically—in the direction of your own becoming.