When Enough Is Enough: Finding Your Way Back to Yourself

Stephen Blackmore

19 hours ago

8 min read

Sometimes frustration is the beginning of something good.

A kettlebell representing small, intentional actions that build motivation, energy, and a sense of personal agency.

I woke up this morning frustrated. Nothing terrible had happened, and I wasn't angry at anyone. I was fed up with some patterns I'd slid into, and with the quiet realization that a few things in my life weren't the way I wanted them to be.

Like most people, I have a lot going on. Work, family, and the ordinary upkeep of a life mean something always needs attention, and by evening I'm usually ready to switch off. A little television, something to snack on, some mindless scrolling. None of that is wrong. I don't think every waking moment has to be productive, and sometimes a distraction is exactly what a tired person needs.

But lately I've noticed that some evenings those familiar comforts leave me as depleted as I started, and occasionally worse. I've become quite good at switching off. Restoring myself is a different skill, and I've been neglecting it.

This morning something in me said, Enough. It was a quiet determination to do one thing differently. So I did 40 kettlebell swings, put away some laundry, and took the dog for a walk. Ordinary stuff. But beginning the day with a few small victories left me more energized and more like myself than I would have guessed laundry could manage.

It also got me thinking about a question I come back to often with clients: what do we do when we know something needs to change, but we aren't sure what we need?

Frustration is information

We're often encouraged to manage our frustration, calm our anger, and find ways to feel better, and learning to respond constructively to hard emotions really does matter. But I think we can be too quick to treat uncomfortable feelings as problems to be solved. Frustration may be telling us that something isn't working. Anger can point to a boundary that's been crossed or a need that's gone unmet. Sometimes it's the part of us that has had enough of feeling stuck.

Emotions don't only tell us how we're experiencing the world. They also carry energy that can move us to respond to it. This morning my frustration wasn't asking me to blame anybody or overhaul my life. It was reminding me that I have needs too, and that I'd been ignoring some of them. So instead of asking how to stop feeling frustrated, I asked what I might do with it. That turned out to be a much better question.

I've explored this in an earlier reflection, What Is This Feeling Trying to Tell Me?, where we consider how emotions can offer clues about what's happening beneath the surface.

When you can't tell what you need

Of course, noticing that something is off doesn't tell us what to do about it. When we're buried in responsibilities and competing demands, even naming a need gets difficult. We might know we're exhausted without knowing whether we need sleep, solitude, company, movement, or a break from making decisions. We might feel irritable and have no idea why.

In psychotherapy, we talk about interoception, the ability to notice and interpret signals from inside the body, such as hunger, fatigue, tension, and the physical sensations that accompany emotion. For some people, including those with alexithymia or other differences in how they process these signals, this is especially hard. But you don't need either of those to lose touch with your needs. Sometimes life is simply too loud, and the quiet signals from within get drowned out. If you can't tell what you need, you may not be failing to pay attention. You may be carrying too much.

The faucet and the bucket

One of my favourite ways to explain this comes from psychologist Dr. Megan Anna Neff, who uses a faucet-and-bucket image in her work on burnout. Picture your capacity as a bucket, with a faucet running above it. The water is everything you're carrying: work, family needs, money worries, sensory input, emotional demands. Some days the flow is gentle. Other days the tap is wide open, and eventually the bucket overflows.

Our instinct is usually to build a bigger bucket by becoming more resilient and better at handling it all. That can help. But Neff's framing invites a second question: what if we turned down the faucet?

Maybe there's something we could delegate, an expectation we could reconsider, a boundary we need to set, or a task that doesn't have to happen today. Rather than constantly asking how we can become better at managing more, we might ask whether there's something we could carry less of.

Of course, not everyone has that freedom, and some responsibilities simply can't be set down. In those cases we can still look for ways to support our capacity through rest, movement, connection, good food, creativity, prayer or other spiritual practice, and some real enjoyment. These things don't necessarily make the demands disappear, but they may give us more resources to meet them.

And I think it's important to recognize that this isn't necessarily an either/or proposition. Sometimes we need to turn down the faucet. Sometimes we need to increase our capacity. Quite often, we need to do a bit of both.

What I like most about this image is that it takes overwhelm out of the category of personal failure. Very often the bucket is fine. The faucet has been running too hard for too long.

Numbing and nourishing

None of this is meant to give us another reason to criticize how we get through hard days. A favourite show, a snack, and a bit of scrolling are sometimes exactly right, and we don't need to turn every leisure moment into self-improvement.

Still, I find the distinction between numbing and nourishing useful. Numbing gives temporary relief from what we're feeling, and sometimes that relief is genuinely needed. Nourishing leaves us with something extra, whether that's energy, connection, enjoyment, or the sense of having looked after ourselves. The same activity can do either. A movie with someone we love might leave us warm and rested, while three more episodes because we can't face going to bed might leave us feeling very different.

So the useful question is whether something gave us what we needed. If you're not sure, notice how you feel afterward. Do I feel a little more like myself, or am I still looking for something? That kind of noticing takes curiosity rather than shame, and it's often where change starts.

One small victory

You may have heard the advice to start the day by making your bed. It has little to do with tidy bedrooms. It's about beginning with one small, concrete thing done. I like the idea, though I'd hesitate to make it another rule.

For me this morning it was kettlebells and laundry. For someone else it might be opening the curtains, drinking a glass of water, stepping outside, or finally sending that message. For someone who has been pushing past their limits, the small victory might be deciding that something can wait.

There's something important here that I don't want us to miss. The point isn't really to be more productive. It's about reclaiming a little agency.

When we're overwhelmed, life can start to feel like something that's happening to us. We spend our days responding to demands, meeting expectations, and attending to everyone else's needs. Eventually, we can lose sight of the fact that we have needs and preferences of our own.

A small, deliberate act can help us reconnect with that sense of choice. We may not be able to control everything happening around us, but perhaps there is one thing within our reach that we can do for ourselves.

It won't fix everything, and it doesn't replace dealing with the larger circumstances behind our exhaustion. But it can create a little movement where we've felt stuck. And sometimes that movement is enough to help us see what might come next.

Water flowing from a faucet into a bucket, illustrating how daily stress and demands can overwhelm our emotional capacity. — Sometimes the answer isn't a bigger bucket. It's turning down the faucet.

Try This: Turn Down the Faucet, Care for the Bucket

If you're feeling overwhelmed or disconnected from yourself, here's something you might try. You don't need to work everything out, and for now I'd encourage you not to try.

Begin by settling a little. If it feels comfortable, press your feet gently into the floor and notice the support under you. Let your shoulders drop if they're willing, and take a few easy breaths with the exhale slightly longer than the inhale. If sitting still isn't helping, stand up, stretch, walk around the room, or sway for a moment. There's no single right way to settle your nervous system.

Then picture the faucet and the bucket, and ask yourself:

1. What could I turn down today?

Is there one demand, expectation, or source of stimulation I could reduce, postpone, delegate, or let go of? Even a small reduction can make a difference.

2. What might help restore my capacity?

Maybe movement, quiet, music, time outside, prayer, a conversation, or something creative. If you're unsure, pick something small and see what happens.

3. What's one thing I can do right now?

One manageable action. Sometimes that action is resting, asking for help, or deciding that something can wait.

If your bucket is already overflowing, you don't have to prove you can carry more.

Finding our way back

I don't imagine my kettlebell swings have solved anything. The responsibilities are still waiting, and I still have questions I can't answer. Tomorrow morning may look quite different.

But something did shift today. I let myself be frustrated without brushing it aside, I saw that some familiar habits weren't giving me what I needed, and I started with a few small things within my reach.

I wonder if that's how a lot of meaningful change begins. We notice something about ourselves that we might otherwise have ignored. We become curious about what it might be telling us. And rather than waiting until we have everything figured out, we try something small and see where it leads.

The interesting thing is that sometimes we don't know what we need until we begin caring for ourselves. A little movement might reveal just how tired we've been. A quiet moment might help us recognize an emotion we've been carrying. Making some space for ourselves might remind us of something we enjoy but haven't made time for in a while.

We don't always have to feel better before we start making things better. Sometimes it's that first small act of care that helps us find our way back. So if you're overwhelmed today, perhaps you could begin by asking yourself what you might turn down, what might restore you, and what one small thing you could do for yourself.

You don't have to figure everything out. And perhaps, for today, that's enough.

And if the feeling of overwhelm has become a regular part of your life, you don't have to navigate it alone. Sometimes talking things through with a trusted friend, family member, or therapist can help us recognize what we've been carrying and begin exploring what might need to change.

Coming Soon: Tuning In

Recognizing what we're feeling, understanding what our bodies are telling us, and naming what we need is the focus of my forthcoming workbook, Tuning In: A Practical Guide to Understanding Your Body, Emotions, and Needs.

It brings together exercises, reflection tools, and plain-language explanations of interoception, emotional awareness, and regulation. One of its central ideas is that understanding ourselves isn't about getting everything right, but developing a more curious and compassionate relationship with our experiences. Tuning In is currently being prepared for advance readers, with more information to come.

Stephen Blackmore, MTS, MPS, RP (Qualifying)

TLS Counselling — Tools for Today, Growth for Tomorrow