Feeling like too much and not enough…at the same time?!?!?

“I feel like I am too much, and not enough, at the same time!”

A beautiful woman said these words in a ceremony this summer as she prayed for self acceptance. When she talked about feeling like too much and not enough at the same time, the eyes around the circle radiated understanding and compassion. So many heads nodded in agreement, reminding each of us that we are not alone in this feeling. Many people, especially women, feel the same.

It doesn’t seem logical, to simultaneously feel like too much and not enough.

But when you unpack it in its cultural context, it makes perfect sense.

In a culture that teaches you to measure your worth based on your accomplishments it is really easy to feel like you are not enough.

In a culture that emphasizes individuality over collaboration, you can easily feel like you are not enough, because on your own, no one is enough. We all need the relationships that sustain us. You literally would not be here if not for your parents’ connection to one another, if not for the earth whose generosity gives us food to eat, if not for the air you breathe…. You get the point.

Alone, none of us is enough. We are all connected to one another, to the web of life. We need this web of relationships to survive.

It also makes sense that we think we are too much. How often have you received the message, either explicitly or implied, that you are too sensitive, too emotional, too fat, too thin…? The list is endless.

In a culture that has taught us to silence voices that do not align with the norm, it is so easy to feel like a little bit of authenticity is too much.

Underneath that lives an even deeper cultural message that can be particularly insidious for women. Your body is not enough, and too much. Your rhythms need to be managed, your bleeding hidden, your changing energy controlled, your aging resisted.

We are taught to become more consistent, more contained, more controlled—to ignore the cycles that give us life.

For practitioners, this is particularly problematic. Healing work often asks us to trust our intuition, listen to the body, and accompany people through uncertainty.

And yet, we are doing this work in a culture that has taught us to distrust the very instincts we are being asked to heed. We are often helping people heal from the wounds that culture inflicts.

The human body is inherently cyclical. We are all here thanks to the health of our mothers’ menstrual cycle. We all come from the innate understanding that life moves in cycles.

These cycles are a map for transformation. Healing is not a linear process of continually becoming better, but rather a movement through different states of expansion and contraction, rest and action so that profound understandings can be integrated into our day to day existence. Integration happens in cycles.

You are neither too much nor not enough. You embody cyclicality that has many expressions, and each is accurate in its time.

with honor and respect to the cycles and the relationships that sustain us.