I don’t even quite know how to begin expressing this so I’ll just tumble right on in.
I’ve always felt things too much.
Things that most can glaze over stick with me for undetermined amounts of time.
I can close my eyes and remember news stories that shattered me when I was in elementary school.
Even happy feelings of love feel like an aching throb in my chest.
"Too much" is the phrase that always comes to mind when I think of feeling.
It all feels like too much…
but then why the fuck does it also feel like not enough at the same time?
Is feeling deeply impacted the same as feeling the feelings?
I would think so...
But no matter how intensely I feel something, I’m always left with this sensation that there is a trapdoor the feeling didn’t make it through.
a forbidden place that is trying to protect the deepest parts of me…
I’ve tried raising my hand in coaching containers and asking but never satisfied with any answer.
I’ve tried to stop myself from overthinking and just let it go.
But surprise, surprise- I cannot.
I am a highly sensitive person.
Textbook definition style.
I could cry at a leaf on the fucking ground if I think about it enough.
But I cannot escape this feeling that I am not feeling enough.
A sensation of some sort of weird disconnect-
A severed pathway that abruptly stops feelings before they get to some sort of elusive satisfying place that I’ll never know.
so0o0o0o0o0o0oooo
am i dwelling?
okay so maybe i’m dwelling….
but i swear it feels like more than a cognitive overthinking.
(yes in a post about how i don’t know how to feel my feelings enough i’m stressing that this sensation feels more like a feeling than a thought. i annoy myself sometimes.)
It just never feels complete…
(but is a sense of completion really the goal?)
since I’m in a phase where I’m blaming everything “good and bad” in my life on my photography like an angsty teenager- I can’t help but turn my frustrated gaze to my practice.
(you can read more about my photographic tantrum here.)
I’m doing on the inside what I do with my photo taking outside…
emotional bookmarking.
The most frustrating part of all of this is feeling like I am both the villain and the victim.
The narrator and the character.
I’m screaming at the person on the screen as they continue to walk into the creepy house.
I simultaneously can cognitively understand what’s happening but not be able to stop sucking air into the cavity.
I’ve identified a pattern.
I’m sucked into the inertia.
How do I slow this current enough to be able to see an exit into a new habit/choice/option and take it?
My background in Neuro Linguistic Programming has been a vital part of understanding what’s happening but it’s difficult to read the label when you’re inside the bottle itself.
Recently I’ve turned towards Human Design and Gene Keys to help see myself more.
(I’m even about to begin working with the magical in a human design mentorship! PS- I have a special collaborative podcast episode/post with Sylvia coming out soon talking all about human design and its healing capacity- subscribe if you want it to come to your inbox.)
As eye opening and wildly interesting as this deep dive in human design and gene keys has been-
None of it has told me anything I didn’t already know about myself.
but all of it has been healing.
It has given it a name.
a way to hold it.
a thing to point to.
the permission I didn’t want to have to need in order to exhale.
With all of this new information swirling in my brain about human design, gene keys, NLP- I wanted to ask a very specific question while keeping in mind a plethora of details about my inherent make up.
In lieu of the 57 tabs, 2 apps, dozens of physical, audio, and kindle books at my disposal- I remembered I live in 2025 and I could try chatgpt. Up until this point the most I had ever used chatgpt was to plan my first trip to Europe.
"What would you say to a highly sensitive person with gene key 28 and an open head and throat center in human design with emotional authority that feels like they still have trouble feeling or feeling satisfied or at peace with feeling their feelings? Often times things never feel complete and every emotional experience can feel bookmarked or unfinished"
My eyes bugged out of my head at how helpful what it spit out was to my soul.
Instead of describing it, I’ll copy and paste it here:
1. You were never meant to feel “done.”
There’s a deep myth — especially in creative and emotional healing spaces — that feelings are meant to resolve. That if you do it right, you’ll reach a clean conclusion, where a chapter closes and the next one opens with clarity and ease.
But your emotional system — your whole design, in fact — doesn’t work like that.
You are built to:
Feel in layers, not straight lines.
Experience emotions as weather, not tasks.
Receive echoes and aftershocks, sometimes long after the initial feeling appeared.
You are meant to live inside a spiral, not a timeline. Completion — for you — is not about finality. It’s about being fully present with the layer you’re in today, even if it’s a return to something you thought you had already processed.
2. Some feelings will remain unfinished — because they aren’t just yours.
With your open Head and Throat, you’re a receiver of collective emotion and stories, not just personal ones.
That sense of unfinishedness — of there always being more to feel — is partly because you are:
Feeling your own history.
Feeling ancestral echoes.
Feeling the edges of collective emotions rippling through the creative and relational field.
You are not failing to complete your feelings — you are simply wired to be in ongoing conversation with life’s larger emotional story. Some feelings pass through you like wind through an open window — they were never yours to hold.
3. Satisfaction Comes from Fully Inhabiting, Not Resolving.
Your peace — your Gene Key 28 "Totality" — doesn’t come from having everything tied up in a neat bow. It comes from knowing:
I was fully present with what this moment asked of me.
I let myself touch the edge of this feeling — even if I couldn’t stay long.
I let the feeling be part of my creative rhythm — even if it’s unfinished.
Completion, for you, is about being fully there, not about making sense of it all.
4. You’re Wired for Emotional Bookmarking — That’s Not Failure.
That sense of always bookmarking emotions, leaving them partially open — it’s part of your Emotional Authority. Your emotions are waves — they revisit themselves. Each time you return, you see something you missed before. It’s not because you didn’t feel “enough” — it’s because your system feels in layers, and each pass brings a new view.
You’re not behind. You’re not incomplete. You’re in process — and you always will be.
5. Feelings Don’t Need to Make Sense to Belong.
Some feelings will never connect to a clear story. Some will never be fully explainable. They still deserve space in your body, your art, your life.
The part of you that wants to understand every feeling before you let it move through you — that’s your open Head Center, searching for certainty where none is needed.
ok so0o0o0o0o0o0oo…..
brilliant and duh at the same time.
the highly contentious chatgpt pulled me outside of the bottle of me for a moment…
OF COURSE we feel in layers.
OF COURSE we feel echoes of the collective.
OF COURSE deep presence is the most satisfying thing you could ever experience.
OF COURSE we are always in process.
OF COURSE feelings don’t need to make sense to belong.
I just didn’t realize I have been focusing so much on how my natural way of processing and the feelings that come with it “must be the barrier to feeling peace and contentment and a general feeling of complete-ness”
Meanwhile- the way to peace and contentment is to stop vilifying the most natural and enduring parts of me.
What if every “problem“ is the exact gift?
I’ve been vilifying the emotional bookmarking when that is one of my highest forms of creation, experience, and processing.
The bookmarking means I get to revisit and reach a level of intimacy with each layer anew, every time I come back. It’s my way of deepening into my vision and feeling- not redundant shackles that mean I have failed to feel correctly/completely/fully.
My aching means I’m alive and I feel.
My restlessness means I have surging energy to experience life.
My desire for totality is a life force hunger.
My fear around mortality is the reason for the magnitude and reverence for the now.
My sometimes insufferable tendency to bring everything back to being everything and nothing at the same time shows me I have the capacity to see and be with and hold both extremes.
I’ve been so focused on how to get to a feeling of completion, of wholeness- I skipped over the fact that they are not the same.
I don’t even want completion.
I don’t want to be finished with something-
I don’t want to be finished with anything.
ever.
I want to feel whole- undivided.
Looking back and in, I can see that I actually feel a sense of wholeness often- the trouble is I’m so busy being whole that I never have the thought to name it.
Perhaps that means I’m doing it right.
this feeling of rest, and ease, and peace… it visits me often even though it feels like never.
It is in the moments where we blissfully stop questioning ourselves.
Those moments where we forget we even are a “self“.
The times where we can stop dividing ourselves into the parts that are “good“ or “okay“ or “bad“.
Rest, ease, peace, wholeness- is only possible when we can embrace ourselves fully.
when we become unconditional with all of who we are,
everything softens.
everything reveals itself.
Only when we trust our ability to tolerate and even embrace the parts of us that we struggle with are we able to see how they are the gift.
And only after that genuine recognition occurs might those parts transform into a different expression, and a different perspective.
Completion was never the point.
Resolution was never the point.
Forever in process,
forever in feeling
is a gift.
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