Breaking Free From the Shame of Being “Difficult.”

If you’re anything like me, then you probably learned from a fairly young age that you were “difficult.”

Of course, “difficult” is a pretty vague description, so while we certainly understood it to be shameful, we were often left with a lot of room for interpretation about what exactly we were doing that made us so difficult.

So today— in the name of rejecting the shame of this false label and reclaiming our wholeness— let’s start by looking at the literal definitions.

The dictionary gives us the following definitions for the word “difficult”:

1. Needing much effort or skill to accomplish, deal with, or understand.

2. Characterized by or causing hardships or problems.

3. A person who is not easy to please or satisfy.

Well, gosh, this is pretty illuminating, no?

For many of us, those first two definitions really fit with the way we learned to think of ourselves, because it seemed to require a lot of effort for other people to understand or deal with us, and that something about our innate personhood caused hardships or problems for the people around us.

Looking back, I think a lot of us can now make sense of this by recognizing the ways in which our parents simply weren’t familiar with the ways in which we differed from the “norm,” whether in terms of our gender expression, sexual orientation, sensory sensitivities, processing styles, mental health, or something else.

Information about those topics have become far more mainstream over time, but parents of a child who feels different from them in some fundamental way will naturally have to work extra hard to understand and deal with that child.  And while nowadays we more often see it as totally normal and valid (and the parent’s responsibility) to put in that extra labor, many of us felt it to be our problem growing up.

 Our failure. Our responsibility. Our fault.

Personally, I came to understand that something about my innate way of being in the world was often challenging, frustrating, or exhausting for the people around me. And since they were all “normal” (and since other kids didn’t seem to have this effect on people), it was obvious to me that I was the problem. 

This led to a sort of self-pathologizing; a feeling that there was something wrong with me, and internalized shame about how difficult I was to understand and deal with. 

I was too sensitive, and too dramatic. 

I had too much energy, too many opinions, and I needed too much attention. 

Put warmly, and by people who loved me, I was “ a lot.”

I took this concept of myself into adulthood, and it took a long time to let go of the belief that I was fundamentally too much for people— that due to some innate character flaw or pathology of mine, it would always take too much effort for other people to understand and deal with me. 

And since I understood this as a “me problem,” I assumed it would be unfair of me to ask or expect other people to ever do that labor. It felt inappropriate and unacceptable to ask other people to accommodate my too-muchness, and a big part of me believed that if I ever tried, the other person would just sigh in exhaustion and say “ugh, nevermind then… it’s not worth it.”

At one point, I believed loving me to be such a hardship and sacrifice for other people that I saw anyone willing to do so as doing me a favor; something I should be grateful for. 

Eventually this came to mean that I owed my time, my attention, my energy, and even my body, to anyone willing to take on such a challenging and thankless task. 

Whether I personally liked spending time with someone or not was irrelevant, because beggars can’t be choosers. If someone generously volunteered to be on the front lines of spending time with me, I felt obligated to entertain them (which put me in some seriously unsavory situations, as you can probably imagine), and I saw it as my responsibility to do whatever I could to keep them happy. 

As a person branded with the label of “difficult,” I learned that if I wanted to get attention, connection, and love (which I did, desperately), I needed to “tone it down” and do everything in my power to make it easier to love me.

This meant swallowing the truth of my boundaries, sensitivities, feelings, and needs, so as not to be a burden on, or inconvenience to, others. 

It meant pretending to be “normal,” so as to avoid making them do the mental and emotional labor of trying to understand the ways in which I was weird and different. 

It meant trying to smooth out the jagged peaks and valleys of my personality, so as not to overwhelm people with the vastness of either my darkness or my light. 

Put another way, I learned that in order to be less difficult, I needed to be less myself.

That third definition of “difficult” from the dictionary feels relevant here, too, because those of us who differ from conventional norms and expectations are often seen as “hard to please.” 

Looking back, I can see that I was hard to please, but only because a lot of the things that people thought should please me, simply didn’t. 

Most of the things that were “supposed to” please me centered around the cisheteronormative expectation of me as a girl or woman. That I should be pleased by dolls, pretty dresses and princesses. That I should be attracted to masculine men, fantasize about my wedding day, love flowers and chocolate, and dream of starting a family.

None of this appealed to me, which often made me seem hard to please, and added to my pathology as the “difficult one.”

I can’t tell you how many times people in my life would sigh in exasperation when I expressed my views on things like this, and ask why I felt such a need to be different and controversial.

“It’s ok to want these things,” a friend once told me, as if I was just rejecting them to get attention, or being difficult to prove a point.

And of course it's ok to want those things! But some of us don’t, and we didn’t deserve to be labeled as “difficult” for it.

Later in adulthood, when I gained more clarity about who I am (and what I actually want and need to thrive), I was shocked to discover that I’m actually not that hard to please, after all. 

I’m only difficult to buy gifts for if you ignore everything I tell you about myself and ask the sales clerk “what kind of gifts do girls like?” And I’m only difficult to satisfy in bed if you ignore me, and try to enact a script you came up with about “what women want” instead.

In other words, I’m only “hard to please” if you don’t bother to actually get to know me.

Does that make me “difficult?” 

Well, yes, for anyone looking for someone to play a preconceived role in their own life rather than trying to see me for who I actually am! But now that I no longer buy into the whole concept of being “difficult,” I know that those people don’t have a place in my life.

If you have ever struggled with the label of “too difficult,” or the internalized shame/stigma associated with it, please know that you are not alone, and that you are not the problem.

It’s not a pathology to be different, it’s not a character flaw to be vast or complicated, and it’s not a disorder to want people to put in the effort to see and understand you. 

So, here’s to throwing away the label of difficult and reclaiming ourselves as whole and valid. 

Here’s to throwing away the label of “too much,” and reclaiming ourselves as just the right amount… for the right people. 

We are not the problem, and no matter what we’ve been led to believe, we never were.

Big hug,

Jessi