Why even when you’re doing it all, it never feels like enough

For a long time, I lived by the mindset that there was always something more I could do.

"This means I can always grow, so it takes the pressure off being perfect now!”

But slowly, growth turned into a kind of addiction.

Another certification. More self-care. More cold plunges. More massages. More mindset books. More exercise.
More, more, more.

Until eventually, it stopped feeling empowering and started feeling fucking endless.

“Ohhh, but that’s the point,” I told myself. “We always get to grow!”

So the cycle continued.

Until recently, when I reached a point where I had enough.

A mentor once told me:

“The method with your clients—is and always will be—creating safety inside yourself. When that exists, it mirrors outward. There are a lot of ways you can create that container, but the method is helping people feel safe. Always. And that starts with you.”

That planted a seed.

“Okay, I need to learn even more about creating safety.”

So what did I do? I looked more deeply into trauma-informed communication, group-therapy education, better regulation techniques.

More learning, more improving.

But something about the “more” aspect stopped growing when this seed planted.

Because two ideas began to oppose each other.

If I am to feel safe, then the threat of not being enough right now can’t exist.

Otherwise, safety only arrives tomorrow, after I’ve gained another certificate, another improvement, another achievement.

Not today.

I started noticing this same pattern in my clients.

They asked for more options, more techniques, more professionals to add to their team, more things to fix their bodies because something still felt off.

And I started to see that everywhere I looked, no one felt like they were enough.

There was always something to prove. To attain. To grow. To capture.

It was endless.
And deeply thirsty.

So I began changing how I held space in my Women’s Circle, coaching sessions, and emotional release work.

Instead of asking what needed fixing, I started saying:

“There is nothing that needs to be changed about you right now. We’re just here to experience the universe of you. What is it like to be you today?”

At first, people didn’t quiteeee know what to do with that.

Then something began to shift.
I heard words pouring out of their hearts that were so… Simple.

“No one asked me if I was doing okay. I just needed someone to ask me how I’m doing.”
“This really hurt my feelings and I want to talk about it.”
“I just need a quiet place to rest at the end of the day.”
“I miss when things were simpler.”

I miss when things were simpler.

Yeah. Me too.

When did humans become such complicated cases?

Food. Water. Shelter. Safe touch. A place to exist and express honestly.

Yet clients would arrive to my space carrying stories like:

“They raised my rent again.”
”Sorry I didn’t shave, I know I’m gross.”
”I’ll eat later, I’m too busy.”
”I forget to drink water.”
”I can’t actually say that—they’ll hate me for it.”

What I see isn’t broken people.

I see people whose basic needs aren’t being met, while believing they must somehow do more on top of that.

I’m not here to assign blame for how society became this way.

But I am here to say:

Enough.

I am enough.
You are enough.
You are already doing beyond enough.

And when clients slow down enough to say, “I just need to be seen for a moment,” I see beautiful shifts take place.

The nausea disappears. Their throats and voices open up. Inflammation calms down. Muscles and minds both relax.

Not because they were “fixed”—but because their nervous system finally received evidence of safety.

Safety in being present with themselves.
Safety in being human.
Safety in being enough right fucking now.

And their nervous system moves out of being stuck in sympathetic responses.

And when that is repeated, time and time again, a new pattern can emerge.

This naturally creates a lifestyle of presence, mindfulness, and groundedness.

Ironically, many of the health practices we feel pressured to perform become easier, or just less necessary, because the mind and body are no longer fighting to prove anything.

We are really, not that complicated.

We just made listening difficult. Which led to listening to ourselves impossible.

If being messy, emotional, or uncomfortable meant we had to be fixed in order to belong, we learned to monitor ourselves instead of hear ourselves.

No wonder perfection became the damn goal.

My mentor’s words still reverberate in my head:

“When safety is created, it will be mirrored.”

Somewhere along the way, we cracked the shit out of that mirror.

But we can repair it.

When spaces exist where people are seen, held, and accepted as ordinary humans, permission emerges.

And with permission comes freedom.
And with freedom comes more permission.
A new cycle begins.

I’ve watched it happen again and again.

Symptoms ease, capacity for life increases, energy and vitality return. Not because healing is complicated, everyone.

But because, at its core, it never was.

So maybe the work isn’t adding more. Maybe it’s remembering what was always enough.

So…

Let’s stop complicating it together, shall we?