If you’ve ever been told you’re “too much,” this post is for you. Discover how your deep emotions aren’t a weakness to fix, but a gift that can deepen your connection with God and others.
If you’ve ever been told, or just deeply felt, that you’re too much… you’re in good company here.
Too emotional. Too sensitive. Too reactive. Too needy.
You’ve likely learned to tone yourself down, to hide what hurts, to smile when you’d rather cry, and to apologize for the size of your feelings, even when no one asked you to.
I’ve been there. I am there.
I’ve always felt things deeply – joy, grief, anxiety, awe – and for years, I believed my emotions were something to fix or suppress. In Christian circles, I heard a lot of “don’t be led by your feelings,” and I took that to heart. Maybe too much. I tried to pray my feelings away, discipline them into silence, and bury anything that didn’t feel “spiritually mature.”
I thought if I were more spiritually mature, I’d feel differently.
Less sad. Less angry. Less overwhelmed.
But what if the feelings themselves weren’t the problem? What if your emotions aren’t a problem to manage…but a gift to steward?
What if the tears, the tug in your chest, the ache when someone’s hurting, the overwhelming joy over something small—what if those are invitations?
Invitations to connection.
To communion.
To deeper presence with the God who designed you to feel, and to love, deeply.
This post is for the woman who feels deeply and seeks Jesus intentionally.
It’s for the one who wants to walk by the Spirit, but isn’t always sure what to do with the intensity of her heart.
It’s for the one who’s learning to stop apologizing for her tenderness, and to start listening for God in the swirl of her emotions.
You are not too much.
You are paying attention.
And that just might be one of your superpowers.
What Scripture Really Says About the Heart
If we’re going to talk about emotions, we have to talk about the heart because in Scripture, that’s where emotions live. But it’s more than just feelings.
In the Bible, the word heart is rich and layered.
In Hebrew, the word is lev or levav, and in Greek, it’s kardia. It refers to your whole inner being: your thoughts, your desires, your will, your conscience, and yes, your emotions. My pastor talks about it as the engine that drives your wants, wills, and desires. It’s the center of your motivations and decisions.
That’s why Proverbs 4:23 says,
“Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.”
Your heart isn’t something to ignore.
It’s something to steward.
In fact, the whole story of redemption involves a heart transformation. In Ezekiel 36:26, God promises,
“I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.”
When we receive the Holy Spirit, we’re not just adjusting our behaviors. We’re being changed from the inside out.
That engine of our thoughts, desires, and feelings? It gets reoriented to point to Christ.
Not erased. Redeemed.
Jesus calls us to love God with all our heart. Our full self, not just our intellect or obedience or discipline.
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” (Matthew 22:37)
So no, your emotions are not outside your spiritual life.
They’re right at the center of it.
And yes, Scripture warns us about the heart when it’s unanchored from truth.
“The heart is deceitful above all things…” (Jeremiah 17:9)
But the answer isn’t to shut it down. It’s to point it back to God, again and again.
That’s what walking by the Spirit looks like.
Not rejecting our feelings.
Not worshiping them either.
But letting them become signposts that lead us back to Jesus.
Why We’ve Been Taught to Mistrust Our Feelings
Somewhere along the way, many of us were taught, explicitly or not, that emotions are untrustworthy. Fickle.
That spiritual maturity looks like calm, steady, unshakable peace 100% of the time. That tears are weakness. That anger is sin. That feeling the weight of suffering, without claiming God’s goodness in the same breath, means we’re lacking faith.
Maybe you’ve been encouraged, directly or subtly:
- to “get over it.”
- that “You shouldn’t feel that way.”
- or “You can’t trust your feelings.”
I know those words are often spoken with good intentions. Sometimes they come from people trying to help, trying to protect you, or trying to keep you grounded in truth.
But they can still be harmful. Because what they communicate is: your emotions are a problem to fix, instead of a language to listen to.
We can be grounded in truth and emotionally honest and authentic at the same time. Rooted in theology and still real about what’s going on in our hearts. Firm in faith and still tender in spirit.
I’ve personally swung to both extremes.
When I turned to emotional eating and drowned my sorrows in boxes of Nutty Bars so often that it led me to morbid obesity. When I numbed out by mindlessly scrolling through Instagram stories to escape the discomfort of feeling my big emotions. When my insomnia stretched from months into years, and the lack of sleep intensified every emotion, leaving me raw, reactive, and exhausted.
And then there were seasons when I tried to shut it all down.
I buried my emotions with “shoulds” and leaned into discipline over relationship. I told myself a “good Christian” would feel differently (or, at least, feel less). I minimized and silenced my feelings, assuming they were signs of a childish faith.
But both responses, stuffing and spiraling, left me disconnected.
From myself.
From others.
And from God.
Because here’s the truth:
Minimizing your emotions doesn’t make them go away.
It just pushes them underground. And they’ll eventually come out sideways (and often louder than before) – through burnout, bitterness, anxiety, resentment, or disconnection.
I don’t want to be led by my feelings.
But I also don’t want to ignore them.
I want to be attuned to them, so I can bring them into the light, and let God meet me there.
Your emotions are not evidence of spiritual immaturity. They’re evidence that you’re alive. Paying attention. Loving deeply.
And when surrendered to God, they can become one of the most beautiful ways He speaks and leads.
Surrendered to God, they can become one of the most beautiful ways He speaks and leads.
What If Emotions Are Invitations, Not Inconveniences?
Some emotions arrive unannounced, like a sudden wave of sadness that catches you off guard, or a swell of joy so big it takes your breath away. Others settle in slowly, like a quiet ache that lingers in your chest for days. Sometimes they make sense. Other times, they don’t.
But what if the point isn’t always to understand them…
What if the point is just to pay attention?
What if your emotions are not just internal noise to ignore, but invitations to pause, listen, and respond?
What if they are a kind of holy nudge?
I’ve come to believe that some feelings are just that – holy nudgings and holy aches.
- The tug in your chest to text a friend… and she responds with, “I was just thinking about you.”
- The way a worship song you’ve heard a hundred times suddenly brings tears to your eyes this time around.
- The mornings when a sunset, the same one you see every day, stops you in your tracks with its beauty.
Those moments might seem small. But they are holy.
They’re often the very moments when I sense God’s presence most clearly – through beauty, compassion, or a deep awareness of someone else’s pain. These aren’t signs of emotional instability. They’re signs of attunement. Of being awake to what’s happening in you and around you.
And just as often, the ache in your spirit when you witness injustice…
or the grief you feel over someone else’s pain…
or the deep, quiet longing for something more…
That’s not “being too sensitive.”
That’s what a God-oriented heart feels like in a broken world.
Romans 12:15 says, “Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.”
That isn’t a call to emotional detachment. It’s a call to Christlike empathy.
God doesn’t call us to flatten our emotions.
He calls us to be present in them.
To tune in. To respond.
I can’t count the number of times I’ve followed a feeling – just a sense, a weight, a spark – and reached out to someone, only to find they were walking through something right then. Not a coincidence. A prompting. An invitation.
We miss so much when we dismiss our emotions as distractions.
But when we listen with the Spirit’s help, they often become the very space where God speaks.
Deepening Your Prayer Life With The Fullness Of Your Emotions
Emotions don’t just show us what we’re feeling. They often reveal what we’re longing for – what we love, what we fear, what we hope will change.
That’s why they make such powerful entry points into prayer.
Not polished, pre-written prayers, but the raw, guttural, from the center-of-your-very-being kind.
The whispered, cracked-voice, tear-streaked, real-time prayers.
The ones that sound more like the Psalms than the Sunday school answers.
David prayed like that. He didn’t hide his anguish behind theology.
He didn’t minimize his heartbreak or edit out the weeping.
He just brought it all to God, right in the middle of it.
Psalm 6 is one I’ve returned to more times than I can count.
“My soul is in deep anguish.
How long, Lord, how long?
I am worn out from my groaning.
All night long I flood my bed with weeping and drench my couch with tears.” (Psalm 6:3,6 NIV)
I prayed that Psalm in the middle of my emotionally abusive marriage, hiding behind the clothes in my closet just to read my Bible in peace.
I prayed it again during the darkest seasons of my insomnia, when I truly didn’t know how I was going to survive another day on so little sleep.
It gave me words for the pain I didn’t know how to name.
David’s honesty didn’t disqualify him.
It was part of his worship.
Emotional honesty is not the opposite of spiritual maturity.
It is spiritual maturity when it leads us to the feet of Jesus.
It’s what turns a racing heart into a prayer, a trembling fear into surrender, and a wave of sadness into an invitation for comfort.
1 Peter 5:7 says, “Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.”
Not because you figured it out first. Not because you cleaned it up before bringing it. But because He cares.
This is what changed everything for me:
I stopped trying to pray my feelings away,
and I started praying from them.
Not instead of truth, but right alongside it.
Letting the emotion lead me to the arms of the One who already sees it all.
What Changes When You Stop Fighting Your Feelings
For most of my life, I thought my emotions needed to be managed, minimized, or completely mastered before I could be a “good Christian”.
But here’s what I’ve learned: When I stopped fighting my feelings… my faith came alive.
When I let myself feel what was real without rushing to fix it, spiritualize it, or shove it under the rug, I started experiencing God in deeper, more personal ways.
I began to notice Him even more in ordinary moments. In sunrises. In my kids’ giggles. In moments of silence when I’d normally reach for distraction.
I found myself praying more often. Not because I was following a checklist, but because my emotions were constantly nudging me toward connection.
That lump in my throat? It became a prompt to pause and pray.
That ache in my heart? A cue to reach out.
That twinge of joy or grief or longing? A little whisper: God is here too.
It’s not always easy. Sometimes I still try to shut it all down.
But the more I’ve practiced tuning in, the more I’ve found my emotions drawing me closer to God, not pulling me away.
This shift has changed everything from the way I respond to my kids, to the way I connect with friends, to the way I make decisions.
It’s part of what led me to step into more leadership roles at church, not because it came naturally to me, but because I felt a deep nudge I couldn’t ignore.
It’s what led our family to move to Texas.
For years, I prayed to live near my family in Colorado, and when we finally did, I thought that desire had been fulfilled. But then, unexpectedly, I felt this undeniable tug. A quiet, persistent stirring in my spirit to move closer to my husband’s family instead.
It didn’t make sense logically. But it felt like God.
Not a whim. Not a fear. A Spirit-led desire that felt outside of me, and deeply aligned with Him.
When we tune in, learning to listen rather than to suppress, we begin to hear His voice more clearly.
And we begin to trust His presence in places we never expected to find it.
A Blessing + Gentle Next Step
You don’t need to tone yourself down to be more faithful.
You don’t need to apologize for your tenderness, your ache, or the way your heart sees things others might miss.
You were made to feel – not as a flaw, but as a gift.
And when your emotions are surrendered to God, brought honestly into His presence and shaped by His truth, they don’t weaken your walk with Him. They deepen it.
So if you’ve ever wondered whether your emotions make you less spiritual…I hope you know now. They might be one of the very things God wants to use most to draw you closer.
May you begin to see your emotions not as a threat to your faith, but as a thread that connects you more deeply to God.
May your weeping be heard, your joy be full, your compassion be awakened,
and may you never again mistake “too much” for anything less than a sacred strength.
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