Navigating Relationships When You Think, Feel, Question, and Know MORE

(photo by ava sol, unsplash)

You think a lot. Some would say you overthink. You feel deeply. Some would say you over-feel. You love learning. Some would say you over-research and over-read. You have very high standards and expectations. Some would say you over-analyze. You are concerned about the future of the planet. Some would say you over-worry.

My friend Felice would say that she was in her “overs” when she felt she was overdoing anything. Which happened quite a lot. She was intense. Sensitive. Brilliant. Busy.

So. Is being in your overs a bad thing? Or is it just your normal? Your rainforest mind doing what it does.

Is everyone else in their unders?

Well. They are in their unders compared to you. But it is your nature to be living at a faster, deeper, wider pace. Your personhood naturally questions, analyses, creates, emotes, and imagines in atypical ways. Your drive to know, to understand, and to influence is vast. It is a difference in capacity. The rainforest has extraordinary capacity.

How, then, do you have relationships with humans who might be overcome by your overdrive. Or who might be overloaded by your over-the-top tendencies. Or who might feel overdosed on your overt intuitive insights. (Is that too many overs?)

What I see over and over is that rainforest minds don’t realize that everyone doesn’t have similar capacity. Even though you feel you don’t fit comfortably in many places, you think: Doesn’t everyone question the meaning of life every darn day and night? Um, no. You don’t realize that your difficulty with relationships is at least in part because of your more complex thinking, feeling, and knowing.

You may also have difficulty in relationships because you have trouble making chitchat. You feel awkward in social situations. What interests you is too complex for many of the other humans. You are excited to watch the BBC documentary Attenborough and the Giant Elephant while they are chattering about Sex and the City. (no offense to Sex and the City ) And, perhaps, you are tired of counseling everyone else but no one knows how to listen to you.

And yet, it’s even more complicated.

If you acknowledge that you do indeed have a larger capacity, then, not only do you confirm that you are an oddball, but then you have to prove it and live up to it. And that can sound terrifying. Better to stay small, hidden, and under the radar than disappoint yourself and everyone else with your potentially catastrophic failures.

And yet.

When you understand and accept who the heck you are as a person with a rainforest mind, you will be able to find other rainforest minds because you will know what to look for and you will be better able to connect with and appreciate all humans, no matter if they are overwhelmed by your overdrive, overdosed on your insights, or underthinking to your *over*thinking.

(A version of this post was first published in the blog Your Rainforest Mind.)