Do you ever feel like you can’t do enough?
Do you feel a deep sense of anguish, fret, and worry, and a feeling of not being enough?
There’s a quiet kind of suffering that often goes unnoticed, found in those who are endlessly loving, always giving, and tirelessly caring for others.
While the world praises selflessness, few speak about what happens when love and care become overextended, draining the giver until little or nothing remains for self.
Being deeply empathetic and nurturing is a gift, but when it turns into self-abandonment, the body and mind pay a steep price.
—> Over-caring can manifest as chronic fatigue, autoimmune conditions, digestive issues, anxiety, depression, and even cancer.
These symptoms are often the body’s way of crying out:
“You’ve forgotten me. I am draining too much energy. I can’t do it anymore.”
People who fall into this pattern frequently carry deep-rooted beliefs—perhaps learned in childhood—that their worth is tied to how well they meet others’ needs or desperately want attention from an unavailable family.
—>Giving too much outwardly creates pain inwardly.
Silencing your pain to maintain peace, ignoring your needs to avoid conflict, and giving beyond your resources and limits to feel loved, needed, or recognized influence health, ruins the warmest of hearts.
On the outside, you appear strong, nurturing, and even saintly.
We love doers and often envy them, don’t we? They are loved and liked by all, except by themselves.
However, for them, internally, there is a gnawing, unrelenting sense of emptiness, anxiety, resentment, anger, and exhaustion.
Chronic stress affects every cell and system of the body. This imbalance creates a state of internal dis-ease, where the nervous system ramps up and is constantly on alert and on the go, trying to manage everything and everyone, and the internal pain.
The more the body stresses and maladapts, the greater the risk of illness.
Eventually, the body begins to whisper—through tension, inflammation, insomnia, or subtle aches. If ignored, those whispers can become shouts: panic attacks, illness, burnout, or sudden breakdowns.
These conditions are messages.
The individual does not make the connection between bodily ills and constant over-caring. The body is demanding what the heart has long been denied: compassion, care, love, and acknowledgment.
How many times have you been called selfish because you said no, or I am not available? How often do people assume that you will do something, almost without asking you? “Are you sure you can’t?”
—> Setting boundaries is viewed as rejection, uncaring, or rude.
Keep in mind that others who constantly demand and expect from you are acting out their own needs, projecting their own wounds.
If you find yourself becoming emotionally porous—absorbing others’ pain while neglecting their own, it may be time to go inside to heal the core wound.
Healing begins with small acts of self-care and self-respect. This means saying no without guilt, asking for help, or simply taking a break without feeling obligated to justify it.
It means turning the same love and attention inward that’s so freely given to others. YOU can stop the bleed.
Boundaries aren’t barriers; they’re lifelines. Self-care isn’t selfish; it’s self-preservation.
Ultimately, the goal isn’t to stop caring. It’s to care in a way that includes yourself. When you fill your own well, you offer others water from abundance, not depletion.
Genuine compassion extends in all directions—including inward.
Being loving doesn’t require self-sacrifice to the point of illness. It requires balance, presence, and the courage to believe:
You matter, too.
With love from the ❤️,
Sanna
412.334.6805
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sannacarapellotti.com
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