Feeling like you are too much, and not enough at the same time

Sounds like one thing can make the other not either likely or possible, but, believe me, when we have this long-held childhood belief about our value being questionable unless you are either knee deep in controlling and suppressing and/or fixing to keep the connection despite unequal emotional investment, this often comes from what I call a corrupt “value wound”.

Those of us who relate on the anxious side of attachment can often stay far too long believing in a cure if somehow they get it right. Somewhere in your earliest connections, you will believe that love is something that you will have to earn. This is something to explore with a therapist, really, as it is so easy to overlook the behavioural clues on your own because, in a way, you are investigating through your own conditional bias.

There is also a socialised perspective here, innate in modern democratic society, which is essentially equal before the law, but a truly egalitarian society focuses on substantive equality, which aims to reduce inequalities on every level.

If this can be our prayed-for societal idyll, then it should also be reflected in the way we relate to one another intimately, whereby what emanates from the source of what we both practice by way of our value system should also belong to what we ourselves desire from others.

So, showing up in your relationships, and I mean all of them, not only romantic ones but friendships as well, you will find that this pattern exists. It won’t feel safe to show up authentically.

Our tendencies will lean towards:

• overthinking
• over giving
• leaning towards not thinking of yourself first
• being the only one trying to repair disagreements
• avoiding disagreements out of fear
• not trusting the connection is going to last 

The golden rule

The golden rule here: please remember that you deserve the same amount of care and consideration that you would and do offer someone else – not less. Self-criticism needs to be replaced by self-compassion, which comes so easily for you to offer, but not so easily for you to see and feel that you also deserve the very same.

A part of this, yes, is about the quality of the exchange, but more so, it is about a quiet conviction that you deserve to be treated in a healthy mutual exchange, and not an ambiguous one. Do be aware of patterns, the one where you will be feeling that you need to fix something when you haven’t done anything wrong, for the sake of a peace that, for you, is nothing like peace.

I heard it said once that the bar is placed so low that it is on the floor, and yet the person you are trying to stay connected with is still tripping over it! It is best to seriously consider debate or exit. So many of us stay far too long in that kind of emotional desert.

Sometimes it’s because you have invested so much in a relationship, maybe even years, that it might seem like if things don’t become more equal, mutual and viable you will have somehow lost on all fronts, both with what you have given for so long, and all the hope and belief that has taken up so much of your heart’s hope and dreams, that it might be a surrender that you cannot bear to contemplate.

However, and this is a big however, ask yourself this: if you never try to find something with someone who is more reciprocal, will you not regret that? This regretting is something you want to avoid at all costs. Why? Because it is a belief that comes from a lie. Does it feel good? Absolutely not. So here’s how to raise your bar to your own level of what you give and what makes your heart sing in return.

What stands in your way

What is preventing you and standing in your way here, lovely reader, is your nervous system playing havoc with your identity. All the analysing, ruminating and avoiding abandonment gives you a paler, lesser version of you that never lives in any kind of alignment with your own soul.

Where healing starts 

It starts by noticing your own feelings and allowing them, bringing them into the light. Holding space for them, noticing your feelings in your body. These are generally telling you that you have to fix or you will lose something or someone. These are old feelings that are trying to keep you connected to stay safe.

This belief is corrupt, but applying wisdom in lieu of repeating an old pattern may seem unnatural at first; it will change, though, if you begin to hold space for what feels true and right for you.

Sometimes, sitting with the fear of loss that makes you self-abandon needs your compassion so that you can hold onto yourself. I personally pray in this space, but for you, it may also be prayer, or it might be allowing a meditative state of reflection through nature or quiet awe of some kind.

You are not going to lose a relationship because you didn’t panic to fix it. Not one that was worth having. A healthy relationship with someone who cares about you isn’t tenuous. Or felt as tenuous.

I feel it is helpful to mention that this whole panoply of anxious responses can feel far worse with those who show up as avoidant, but with those of us who are anxiously attached, this can also be even with people who show up as on board and present simply because connection seems dangerous, although longed for. Fear does not equal a story that we might be inventing in; it is just an old abandonment wound that needs to be addressed and cared for. Don’t be a slave to supposition; you can make the choice not to from within the pause.

How to achieve emotional regulation

Breathing rather than going into reaction is hugely helpful. 

You can do this by:

• breathing in for 4 seconds
• holding for 3 seconds
• breathing out for 5 seconds

This can calm your central nervous system as well as disengage the fear response.

I have done this myself, and it works as the biology of it is this breathing technique biologically disengages the fight or flight trauma response by activating the parasympathetic nervous system. This is a reset for the brain that signals safety and activates the vagus nerve. This allows our rationale to kick in rather than being held deep in the fear centre. Grounding and being centred allow wisdom. It also allows us to hold onto our power and not give it away.

How can you advocate for needs if you don’t even know what your needs are, or what you are allowed and can legitimise? Having needs is not selfish; it is choosing now to meet them, sit with them and test them with compassion.

You are allowed:

• consistent communication
• follow through
• no disappearing for days with zero explanation
• verbal and non-verbal reassurance through showing up
• equal effort that is mutual
• emotional responsiveness
• interest
• tangible evidence that creates safety
• absence of invalidation
• mutual reparation post conflict
• someone wanting your clarity, not dismissing the need for it
• your vulnerability being met, not held 

If your nervous system is patterned and programmed through pattern to believe that your anxiety equals immediate response, then of course this old pattern needs care and the safety that comes from having a different experience that is safe in order for it to be changed. The change is yours to begin to make.

Little by little, you will go through a different experience, the new experience of possible change through the lowering of accumulated trauma experiences and more so those that are considered and felt as positive. You will be living less in your sympathetic brain and more in your parasympathetic brain. Calmer, with more self-belief and confident of outcomes that do not live in others’ control, but instead within your own control.

Here, feeling like you are too much and not enough, will have become a thing of the past because you have become more of your authentic self, and from that place, you will be equal or not in the empty exchanges of the past.