"TOO MUCH" IS CODE FOR "YOU'RE ASKING ME TO SHOW UP AND I DON'T WANT TO"

Let's talk about the words people use to make you feel like your existence is a problem.

"You're intimidating." "You're too intense." "You're too much." "You're being dramatic." "You need to chill." "You're too sensitive." "Can't you just be easy?" If you've heard any version of this, especially from people you wanted to connect with, people you were vulnerable with, people you thought were safe, here's what actually happened: You had needs. You expressed a desire, set a boundary, asked for reciprocity, stopped performing "chill girl" energy, named a dynamic that was hurting you, and someone needed you to feel bad about it.

Because if you feel bad about wanting things, if you internalize that your needs are burdensome, if you believe that your emotional honesty makes you difficult, you'll do the work of disappearing for them. You'll shrink. You'll self-police. You'll make yourself smaller, quieter, and more convenient. They won't have to reject you directly. You'll reject yourself on their behalf.

This is how the manipulation works. And it's fucking brilliant because once you believe the problem is you being "too much," you stop questioning why the people around you are doing so little.

HOW THEY TRAIN YOU TO SHRINK

It starts young. You're a kid with big feelings, loud joy, unfiltered excitement, and the adults around you can't handle it. So they teach you to tone it down. Be quieter. Don't take up so much space. Stop asking so many questions. Why are you crying again? You're fine. Stop being dramatic.

You learn that your emotional reality is inconvenient. That expressing needs makes you needy. That wanting attention, affection, or reassurance makes you high-maintenance. That the way to be loved is to need less, ask for less, be less of a problem.

So you start performing low-maintenance. You become the Cool Girl. The Chill Friend. The one who doesn't make things weird by having expectations. The one who can hang with whatever, go with the flow, not catch feelings. You pride yourself on being easy. On not asking for much. On being different from those "other girls" who are too emotional, too needy, too demanding.

And it works. People like you. People want you around because you're useful. Because you don't require anything. Because you've made yourself so small and so accommodating that being around you costs them nothing.

But here's what you don't realize you're doing: You're not actually low-maintenance. You're just not maintaining yourself. You're not chill, but you're abandoning your own needs in real time and calling it a personality trait.

WHAT "TOO MUCH" ACTUALLY MEANS

When someone calls you "too much," what they're really saying is: "You're asking me to meet you at a level of emotional honesty, presence, or effort that I'm not willing to give."

You're too much when you text first consistently, and they feel pressured to reciprocate. You're too intense when you want to talk about real things, and they want to keep it surface. You're too sensitive when you name a hurt, and they don't want to be accountable for it. You're being dramatic when you express a boundary, and it inconveniences their access to you.

Notice how "too much" is never about you actually being excessive. It's about you exceeding someone else's capacity for emotional labor, vulnerability, or basic effort. And instead of them saying, "I can't meet you here," they make it your problem. They reframe your very reasonable needs as character flaws.

This is the game: If they can convince you that wanting things openly is shameful, you'll stop wanting things. If they can convince you that your feelings are too big, you'll make them smaller. If they can convince you that you're hard to love, you'll be grateful for scraps.

THE PEOPLE WHO CALL YOU INTIMIDATING

Let's be specific about who's calling you intimidating, because context matters.

If someone who's done their own work, who shows up consistently, who has emotional range and can handle conflict if that person says you're intimidating, that's information. Maybe your energy is sharp right now. Perhaps you're in a defensive pattern. Maybe there's something worth examining.

But if someone is emotionally unavailable, who can't communicate directly, who hasn't interrogated their own patterns, who expects you to manage their feelings while dismissing yours, if that person calls you intimidating? That's not about you. That's about them being uncomfortable with someone who has standards.

Because here's the thing: You're not intimidating. You're just not shrinking. And people who are used to you being smaller, who benefit from you being quieter, who need you to accommodate them to avoid doing their own work, those people experience your full presence as a threat.

You're intimidating when you stop laughing at jokes that aren't funny. When you stop pretending you don't notice the inconsistency between their words and actions. When you stop making yourself smaller so they can feel bigger. When you ask for what you want directly instead of hoping they'll guess. When you stop auditioning for approval, you should never have had to earn.

WHAT THIS LOOKS LIKE IN YOUR ACTUAL LIFE

You stop texting first because you don't want to seem desperate. You perform unbothered when someone's behavior is actually hurting you. You wait for someone else to name the dynamic you've been feeling for months because you don't want to be "that person" who makes things awkward. You apologize for having expectations.

You date someone who barely texts back, and you convince yourself you're mature for not needing constant communication when, really, you don't want to be called needy for wanting baseline reciprocity. You stay in friendships where you're always the one initiating, always the one checking in, always the one holding space because you don't want to be dramatic by pointing out the imbalance.

You silence yourself in meetings because you've been told you're "a lot" and you don't want to confirm it. You downplay your accomplishments because confident women make people uncomfortable. You laugh off disrespect because calling it out would make you difficult.

You have sex you don't want because saying no feels like too much of a disruption. You stay in situations that drain you because leaving would require you to prioritize yourself, and you've been taught that's selfish. You override your gut because your gut keeps telling you things people don't want to hear.

And the whole time, you think you're being reasonable. Flexible. Understanding. Mature.

But what you're actually being is abandoned. By yourself. In real-time.

THE ASTROLOGY OF BEING "TOO MUCH"

If we're looking at this through an astrological lens, this is what happens when your fire gets pathologized. When your Aries directness gets called aggression. When your Leo need for visibility gets called attention-seeking, when your Sagittarius honesty gets called tactless.

This is what happens when your water gets weaponized against you. When your Cancer desire for emotional intimacy gets called clinginess. When your Scorpio intensity is called 'obsessive'. When your Pisces sensitivity gets called a weakness.

People who can't handle your fire will call you angry. People who can't handle your water will call you too emotional. People who can't handle your earth will call you rigid. People who can't handle your air will call you cold. But you're not any of those things. You're just full-spectrum. And people who live in the shallow end experience depth as drowning.

The Lilith placement in your chart is where you've been told you're too much. That's where your power got labeled as problematic. That's where you learned to hide, to soften, to apologize for existing at full volume. And every time you shrink that part of yourself to make someone else comfortable, you're reinforcing the idea that your wholeness is conditional.

WHERE THE REAL DAMAGE HAPPENS

The real damage isn't that someone called you too much. The real damage is that you believed them. You internalized it. You've shrunk so thoroughly that you don't even notice anymore. It's automatic now. Someone pulls back slightly, and you immediately assume you did something wrong. Someone seems distant, and you start performing more chill, more easily, more conveniently.

You stop expressing needs before you even know you have them. You talk yourself out of wanting things before anyone has to disappoint you. You pre-reject yourself to avoid the vulnerability of being rejected by someone else.

And the fucking tragedy is that you think this makes you self-aware. You think you're being considerate. You think you're protecting yourself.

But what you're actually doing is confirming their narrative. You're doing their work for them. They don't have to tell you you're too much anymore because you've already told yourself. They don't have to manage you because you're working yourself into non-existence.

THE PATTERN YOU KEEP REPEATING

You meet someone. There's chemistry, connection, possibility. You're yourself—open, honest, emotionally available. Things are good. Then you want something like More consistency, Clearer communication, Emotional reciprocity, even Basic fucking respect. And suddenly the energy shifts. They pull back. They get weird. They start talking about how they "need space" or "aren't ready for anything serious," or "don't want to put labels on it."

And instead of recognizing this as them showing you who they are, you make it about you being too much. You gave too much too soon. You caught feelings too fast. You wanted too much too early. You scared them away by being yourself.

So next time, you're more careful. You hold back. You play it cool. You don't text first as much. You don't bring up feelings. You don't ask for what you want. You become the version of yourself you think someone can handle.

And it still doesn't work. Because people who need you small don't want you whole. They want you to be useful. They want your attention without your expectations. Your body without your emotions. Your energy without your needs. And when you finally break, when you finally express that you want more, that this isn't working, that you're tired of performing, they act like you've changed. Like you used to be so chill, and now you're making things complicated. But you didn't change. You just stopped pretending you didn't need anything.

WHAT NO ONE TELLS YOU ABOUT DESIRE

Your desire isn't a character flaw. Your need for connection, affection, reciprocity, and depth, these aren't weaknesses. They're not evidence that you're too much. They're evidence that you're human. The problem isn't that you want things. The problem is that you've been surrounded by people who are threatened by wanting. People who've made a lifestyle out of unavailability and call it independence. People who mistake emotional distance for maturity. People who confuse breadcrumbs with effort.

And when you show up with actual needs, actual feelings, actual expectations—you disrupt their whole system. Because your presence reveals what they're refusing to do for themselves. Your emotional honesty highlights their emotional avoidance. Your capacity for depth exposes their commitment to shallow. So they call you too much. Because calling you too much is easier than admitting they're not enough, it's easier than doing the work of meeting you. It's easier to be honest: they don't want what you want; they want access to what you provide.

THE SHIFT THAT CHANGES EVERYTHING

Here's what shifts when you stop believing you're too much:

You stop auditioning. You stop performing low-maintenance, hoping someone will choose you. You stop making yourself digestible for people who aren't hungry for your whole truth anyway.

You start recognizing that when someone calls you intimidating, intense, or too much—that's data. That's them telling you exactly how much they can handle. And you get to decide if that's enough for you.

You start understanding that the right people don't experience your depth as drowning. They experience it as coming home. The right people don't need you muted. They need you exactly this loud, exactly this honest, exactly this much.

You stop shrinking to fit into spaces that were never built for you. You stop twisting yourself into shapes that make other people comfortable. You stop apologizing for having a personality, having needs, having standards.

And yeah, this means some people won't like you. Some people will still call you too much, too intense, too intimidating. Let them. Let them self-select out. Let them find someone willing to play small. Someone who's perfected the art of not needing anything. Someone who's turned self-abandonment into a dating strategy.

Because that's not you anymore.

PERMISSION YOU DIDN'T KNOW YOU NEEDED

You're allowed to want things openly. You're allowed to ask for reciprocity. You're allowed to expect people to show up with the same energy you bring.

You're allowed to be too much for people who are committed to doing too little. You're allowed to intimidate people who are intimidated by basic emotional availability. You're allowed to be intense for people whose idea of depth is sending memes instead of having honest conversations. You're allowed to stop managing other people's comfort at the expense of your own wholeness.

And you're allowed to trust that the people who are supposed to meet you will meet you. Not the performed version. Not the shrunk version. Not the version that's learned to need less, want less, be less of an inconvenience.

The full version. The too-much version. The version that knows her worth isn't contingent on being easy to deal with. That version doesn't scare the right people. She scares people who were never going to choose her in the first place.

If this hit you in the gut, it's because you're done performing "easy" for people who experience your wholeness as a threat.

I break down the manipulation patterns hiding in your relationships on:

• TikTok: @vibrationsbytash

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And if you're ready to stop believing you're "too much" and start trusting that the right people can actually handle you? I do readings that expose the patterns keeping you small—the places where you've been taught to apologize for existing at full volume.

No "just love yourself harder" bullshit. Just astrology as a tool for recognizing where you've been gaslit into shrinking, and permission to take up the space you were always supposed to occupy.

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Because the version of you that gets free isn't the one who perfected being low-maintenance, it's the one who stopped abandoning herself to make other people comfortable.