Are You Doing More Than You Should?

when enough is too much

Say this sentence out loud to yourself:

I am allowed to do what is required without doing more than is required.

If that sounds like a novel concept to you, then you probably struggle with over-caring.

Do you feel guilty whenever you rest?
Anxious when others are distressed?
Responsible for outcomes you can’t control?
And/or unloving if you clock out?

Over-caring trains the nervous system to scan for what’s not yet wrong, but might go wrong if you don’t intervene. Which means you end up living like a predictor of the future and a savior of the people you love, always guarding against danger, discomfort, and failure. And that is just plain exhausting.

When you over-care, you subconsciously disagree that:

Love ≠ anticipation
Care ≠ preempting needs
Goodness ≠ emotional availability
Responsibility ≠ preventing distress

For those of us who are conscientious, empathic, future-oriented, or just morally responsible, responsibility inflation is real. We don’t just stop at “enough.” We stop only when everyone is safe, calm, and satisfied. Which is impossible.

The Social Patterning of Over-Caring

The need to over-care can hit women and men both, but it tends to manifest itself in different ways.

When men struggle with overcaring, it often shows up as overwork, hyper-responsibility, control, or burnout.

Women experience it differently. We experience it as emotional overload, literal physical pain, even chronic pain, guilt, and exhaustion. Same internal rule, different working out of it. That’s why this sentence can feel like a huge weight being lifted off the overcarer or a total lie:

I am allowed to do what is required without doing more than is required.

How do you feel about those words?

The Body’s Response to Over-Caring

When your brain feels responsible for more than is actually required of you, your nervous system is always on guard, your body bracing for action, with pain playing the role of regulator. And in that state, it’s no wonder you experience things that no doctor can explain. You’re carrying something that was never meant to be carried by you.

What “Enough” Actually Means

Contrary to the assumptions of an overwhelmed mind, limiting my effort to what is required is neither an expression of laziness nor a lack of interest. It’s just giving yourself permission to stop being their God. It’s not lowering standards; it’s narrowing your responsibilities back to your actual responsibilities.

That narrowing can feel wrong at first. Especially if you’ve lived a long time believing that love means anticipation, that care means preempting needs, and that goodness means constant emotional availability. Which gets even worse if your sense of worth has depended on staying one step ahead of everything that could go wrong for so long that it seems like a moral good.

So, maybe the question isn’t whether this sentence is true, but where we learned that “enough” was never enough in the first place.

If you’re still unsure whether you over-care, listen to your body. It might have been speaking all along through unexplained pain, chronic discomfort, or that low-grade hum of just feeling off. Sometimes the body understands “enough” before we do.

What is your body asking you to stop carrying?

To go deeper into this with me, check out my book A Woman Overwhelmed, available here.

Further explorations of the overwhelming anxiety of responsibility and care:

Weightless, a 31-day devotional
Fruitful, a book and discussion guide on the fruit of the Spirit