"Too Much..." - JR Everhart

In an effort to continually address my self-focused tendencies, I’ve had to look in the mirror and face some very hard truths about myself.  I am A LOT… really too much for most people.  I’m a huge personality / commanding presence, and many times, I say too much or over share my struggles and failures.  Sadly, this can sometimes leave the wrong impression on people about who I truly am.  Weakness is defined by our culture as not being strong enough to be self-sufficient.  Strength is often times measured by our ability to keep our warts hidden.  As such, in my opinion, this is why the world is so very messed up.  We’ve isolated ourselves inside of toxic self-sufficiency, to the point of becoming over reliant on our many insecure attachments, therefore we have very little confidence in our ability to be loved on a real and genuine level.  To be more specific, the bigger your personality, the more people very well may see you as weak or empty.  When in reality, we’re simply desperate to be heard, and therefore connect with people that might be able to empathize with our shortcomings / pain.  Most cannot, making for a struggle to know who / where those people are. 

This gives birth to textbook self-absorbedness.  Subconsciously, we turn inward when we’re not heard and essentially become people who take for themselves to feel alive.  Let me describe it this way:  The kid who has a warm loving connection with his parents has no problem sharing his toys on the playground of life.  He gives and shares without thought.  But the kid with insecure attachment due to an emotionally unavailable parent (or otherwise) has real problems sharing his toys, and as such, will sometimes bully the other kids on the playground before stealing their toys for himself.  We, as adults, do the same thing with our "playthings" (our emotions). 

I’ve spent the last ten years trying to unravel this type of behavior and lament the loss of relationships I’ve destroyed over such emotional fallout.  I regret it with everything within me, and if I’m not careful, will allow this regret to fuel self-hatred, believing I will never have a healthy relationship with anyone (particularly a romantic one).  There’s no worse punishment to one who's self-focused than being cut off and ignored (which only feeds the insecure attachment paradigm that created all this mess in the first place).  It’s a psychotic circle, I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy! 

But there is hope! Once I started learning the principles of being an actor instead of a re-actor to the world around me, I slowly started to unravel my self-absorbed tendencies.  It’s taught me to wait before talking or reacting to things.  To ask myself if this situation is worth the effort of investing my emotions into.  So far, I've discovered that most of the time it is not.  I’ve learned that not every hill is worth dying on.  

All that said, I still feel like I’m too much most of the time.  Some of this will probably never go away due to be being my own worst critic.  But at least I have measurable progress and that gives me hope to keep marching forward, not listening to the lies of failure the enemy enjoys whispering to me every day.  The light of the gospel shines bright in the darkness of his accusations.  Accusations that are a distortion, only to be pulverized via the blood of my risen savior, Jesus.  Thankfully, I serve a too much God.  So, he has no problem welcoming me into his house at my prepared place there at his table.  Glory!