How discernment, personal boundaries, and learning to honour your capacity can help you stop overextending yourself and enjoy your life and relationships again.
I’m drained. It's the end of the day, and I am going on a walk to take a moment for myself after a busy day of client delivery, calls, content, asks, showing up. I barely have anything left to give.
Then a friend, someone I love, calls.
What I should feel: excited, eager to chat, like the loving friend I want to be - someone who shows up for the people I care about
What I’m embarrassed to admit I feel instead: the thought of another conversation feels like too much
Dread hits me.
The thing is, I want to talk to them, to share all that’s going on, hear all about what’s up with them, connect, laugh, but I don’t have it in me. I have nothing left to give.
And yet I answer anyway.
I try to stay present, engaged, ask the right questions, be excited at the right moments, and be supportive when they share something meaningful or close to them. And my friend might not even know that I am, in fact, struggling on this call because I’ve been able to do this for so long, but I feel it.
I feel disengaged, not connected to a friend I love. It feels forced when it should feel easy, fun.
I hung up over an hour later, after doing walking laps around my neighbourhood before getting back to my place, because the call went longer than I expected.
I felt even more depleted than I did before. And now, instead of just feeling drained, I am beating myself up for picking up the phone in the first place. I didn’t give myself the space I knew I needed. I needed space to come down from my day, space to get back into my body.
I feel a familiar sense of resentment building. Why do I always have to be the available one, the strong one, the one holding it all together, the one who gives even when she has nothing left?
And then I am berating myself that I can’t just hop on a call with a friend and have a chat without it feeling like a big deal. Okay, great, now I feel like a bad friend for feeling all of this.
I start replaying the whole conversation in my head: did I ask enough? Did I say anything off or weird? Did I share too much?
What should feel like a simple moment, a conversation with a friend, has now created a whole world of exhausting inner dialogue.
The cost of always being available
This moment and moments like this were a part of my daily life a handful of years ago. Phone calls, plans with friends, time with family, and even work I cared about started to feel draining. I felt like I was already giving so much that I had very little left when another opportunity to connect came along.
And the cost was much greater than feeling more drained or disconnected. My life had started to revolve around what I could give, or more accurately, what I felt obligated to give, until I had nothing physically left to give at all.
When every interaction becomes another thing to get through, you can start dreading and resenting the very relationships and things you genuinely love and want to enjoy. Time with loved ones becomes another commitment on the calendar instead of something you look forward to.
The work you are so passionate about can start to feel the same way. Something that once brought you excitement becomes another thing asking something of you, another responsibility to show up for and give your energy to.
You’re there physically because you are the person who shows up but mentally you’ve lost some of the enjoyment, presence, and connection you wanted to be there for in the first place.
I didn’t want to feel this way about the people in my life. It wasn't fair to them or me. I wanted to actually look forward to quality time with them, enjoy our conversations, and be present, but so many interactions had become opportunities to give, support, hold space, and show up for someone else, leaving very little, if anything, for myself.
I realized I could keep overgiving until I was physically depleted but I was struggling to stop myself before reaching that point. I would reach a point of physical shutdown before I felt able and allowed to withdraw. This created a cycle of showing up and being there for everyone, then completely withdrawing and isolating myself to recharge before doing it all over again.
Eventually, my body said enough. I couldn’t keep going through these cycles. I didn’t yet know how to recognize and honour my capacity before my body forced me to.
When you’re already at capacity, a phone call can feel like one more thing being asked of you. Even when the other person is simply reaching out because they love you and want to connect, if you’ve become accustomed to holding space, asking questions, being supportive, being thoughtful, and making sure the other person feels seen, the interaction can start to feel like another opportunity to give more than you have.
And when that happens repeatedly, something shifts:
Connection starts to feel like an obligation: being available starts to feel like a responsibility. And people you love can begin to feel like people who need something from you.
You can start resenting the very people you want to feel close to. You might not understand why you’re feeling that way, and you might even feel guilty for it, because from the outside, they’re just calling a friend or asking to spend time together. And then you can end up questioning the relationship or the job or anything you’re involved with when, in some cases, what needs attention is the way you’re participating in it.
I wasn’t upset with my friend; I wasn’t even necessarily upset about the conversation itself. I was struggling with not feeling like I had a choice in how I showed up.
I couldn’t trust myself to make a decision that honoured my own needs without having to pay for it emotionally afterward.
Why I kept saying yes
I thought that being a good friend, family member, and partner always meant being available and, in hindsight, being self-sacrificing.
I wanted to be there for every call, every situation, every ask. To be the cheerleader, the support system, to be the one who planned, figured things out, was thoughtful and considerate, saw all the sides and held everything together with a smile on my face, asking for very little in return.
Over time, my relationships became all-consuming, without other people involved even knowing. I had become the person who anticipated what was needed, held back how I truly felt, and kept showing up, even when it was taking more out of me than anyone realized. I thought that was what you were supposed to do to maintain harmony in your relationships.
I never wanted to disappoint anyone. I knew what it felt like not to have someone there for me when I needed them, and I never wanted anyone else to experience that. So if I was technically available and someone called or asked something of me, why wouldn’t I just pick up? Why couldn’t I just be there?
I didn’t realize, at the time, how often I was making decisions based on what I could manage rather than what I actually had capacity for. Every request became an obligation, and every available moment was an opportunity to give more.
Until I couldn’t anymore.
For so long, the cycle had been the same. I’d keep going, giving, showing up to the best of my ability until I was so depleted that I had to withdraw. I’d take the time I needed to recover, then return to my life and start giving again, often feeling bad for having pulled away in the first place.
Over time, those cycles became shorter and shorter until eventually, my body wouldn’t let me continue. I completely shut down. My body said, “Enough’s enough.” And the hard part was I was too embarrassed to admit what was going on with those around me, so I hid it as much as I could.
It was only as I began to recognise this pattern that I realized I didn’t know how to engage with my life and relationships without overextending myself. I didn’t yet know how to recognize and honour my capacity before I reached the point where my body forced me to stop.
I reached a point where I couldn’t keep pushing through, showing up, and giving the way I had been. I had to step back and isolate myself to recover because I couldn’t trust myself to stop overgiving before I reached that point. My body was no longer willing to let me continue the way I had been.
My relationships, my work, even the way I took care of myself had started to feel like things to manage, things to get through. I began to resent things I loved, and that was a hard pill to swallow. That wasn’t who I was, and it was breaking my heart. I had built this beautiful life with people I love in it, so why am I frustrated when someone wants to spend time with me? Why am I annoyed when work opportunities show up with ease?
It took reaching that point for me to start questioning the invisible rules driving my behaviour. Why did I feel I had to answer? why I did I feel responsible for how I showed up? and why did choosing to do something differently come with so much guilt and self-criticism?
I began to recognize that I had been operating according to expectations I hadn’t questioned. I thought being a good friend, daughter, partner, and leader meant being available and putting my own needs aside. That being supportive meant giving, even when I had nothing left. But I realized that the goal wasn’t to become less available to the people I loved. It was to stop having to abandon myself in order to be available to them.
Sometimes, these moments can reveal when there is true misalignment in your relationships or work (and that’s a completely different article for a different day). But sometimes, they invite us to look at the relationship between the internal rules or expectations we’re following, the choices we’re making, and what we actually need.
For me, the mental load alone was costing me more than I could afford.
The powerful practice of discernment
Discernment gives you a pause between the request and your response. It gives you a moment to check in with yourself and separate the invisible rules and expectations you’ve been following from how you actually feel, what you need, and what you have capacity for. It then gives you the opportunity to make a decision rather than feeling like the decision has already been made for you by some rubric you’re expected to follow.
Let’s return to that moment when I’m on a walk, my capacity is at its limit for the day, and the phone rings.
This time, I pause to notice my capacity, discern how I am responding by distinguishing desire from obligation, and make a conscious choice. I call this practice The Considered Choice.
Capacity: How much do I actually have energy wise to give to this?
Discernment: What am I responding to: a genuine desire to connect, or an expectation that I should always be available?
Choice: Given what I recognize, how do I want to respond?
Maybe I answer the phone anyways, maybe I call them back tomorrow, maybe I send a quick message saying I love them, but I don’t have the capacity to talk tonight, and I’ll reach out when I do.
The decision itself isn’t the point.
I might realize I have enough capacity to take the call but that I’d be primarily answering because I feel guilty for ignoring it. I might still choose to answer because I genuinely want to connect, or I might have the capacity but simply not want to talk right now.
That is all useful information.
The win isn’t whether I say no or not; it’s that I make a choice rather than automatically following an expectation.
If you find yourself in a similar situation, you might ask yourself:
Do I actually have capacity for this right now?
Do I want to say yes, or do I feel that I should?
If I say yes, what am I saying no to? Or if I say yes, with how much capacity do I have to allocate to it?
Is there another way I could show up that would feel better for both of us or anyone involved?
In the past, it never felt like a decision I was making. It felt like a decision that was predetermined by some contract I had unknowingly signed, dictating how I was supposed to operate and show up in my life.
Learning to practice discernment allowed me to regain my power of choice.
And that didn’t mean I always made a different decision. Sometimes I still picked up the phone when I was already at capacity. The difference was that I began treating those moments as information rather than ammunition for my inner critic. I could notice how I felt during and after the call. I could ask myself whether I would make the same choice next time, or whether I wanted to do something differently.
That was the beginning of learning to trust myself to make decisions that honoured my needs, even when those decisions didn’t align with the expectations I had been living by.
What becomes possible when the pattern changes?
What would it be like to enjoy your relationships again? To look forward to calls, weekend plans, and date nights rather than experiencing them as more demands on your energy?
What would it look like to have room for yourself without guilt? To say no without fear it will ruin the relationship. To make room for yourself, you can read, relax, do something fun, take off an evening without spending hours negotiating with your inner critic or feeling like you now have to be productive instead.
Would it look like to trust yourself to make choices based on what you actually need and want, rather than automatically following expectations about who you think you should be?
Today, I finished an impromptu call with my friend in the middle of the workday. I hung up the phone feeling more connected to her; I got energy from the call rather than it draining me, and I got to have some laughs and connect in the middle of the day. In the past, an unexpected call in the middle of a workday might have stressed me out and left me exhausted. Not because there was anything wrong with the call but because I hadn’t stopped to consider whether I had the capacity for it. I was already stretched thin, and another request for my time could feel like more than I had to give.
Now, I get to look forward to plans on the weekend with my friends and their kids, or date night with my husband. These are all moments that felt lost for a really long time. I am more present when I’m with the people I love and I even feel more myself. I’m no longer performing or forcing myself to show up when I don’t have the energy. And when I communicate with them that I don’t have it in me that day, I now have the freedom to rest without the mental negotiation. I can say no without spending several hours second-guessing my decision, feeling guilty, or convincing myself I need to do something productive to justify it. I can rest or do something that gives me energy without feeling like I am a bad friend, partner, or loved one or worrying what others might think. And because I’ve communicated my capacity and needs, my loved ones know that when I say yes, I mean it. They get to experience a version of me who is present, engaged, and genuinely wants to be there. And in doing so, I’ve also created space for them to do the same, knowing I won’t judge them or be upset with them for honouring their own needs.
It has strengthened my relationships and created more space energetically and mentally than I ever thought possible through this simple shift.
I’ve come to realize that I don’t have to keep giving from a place of depletion to be a good friend, partner, loved one, a capable leader, or a woman who cares about others. I can make choices that honour my capacity, so that when I do show up, I have more room to actually enjoy being there. And the people I love get to experience more of me, too. Not just the version of me who can keep showing up, but the version who is sincerely present, connected, and truly being myself.
You can care deeply about the people in your life without being available to them at every moment. Learning to honour your capacity allows you to show up with more presence, enjoy your relationships, and trust yourself to make choices that work for you, too.
Discernment doesn’t guarantee you’ll always make a choice that feels good. It gives you the awareness to make a choice, learn from it, and respond differently when you want to.
My invitation to you
If any of this resonated with you, perhaps you recognized yourself in these situations or have noticed a shift in your relationship with your capacity lately.
I invite you to explore where this pattern might be showing up in your own life. Where you might be operating according to expectations, obligations, or borrowed rubrics without stopping to consider what you actually need, want, or have the capacity for.
These complimentary Private Vitality Conversations offer an opportunity to look at one area of your daily life where the way you are currently approaching your capacity, energy, and well-being may no longer be serving you.
Whether it's in your morning or evening routine, your lunch break, your approach to movement or exercise, your transition from work to home, how you protect your time and energy for yourself, or something else, we’ll focus on one area of your vitality that may be creating friction in your life right now.
This complimentary, one-to-one conversation is a space to reflect on what’s supporting you, where obligation or expectation may be getting in the way, and how you might approach that area differently in this season of life.
You’ll leave with your own My Vitality Baseline—a personal reminder of what you want to honour and how you want to move forward.
We’ll also explore whether Private Vitality Recalibration might be a meaningful next step, should you wish to learn more. There’s no obligation to continue.
Complimentary conversations are available in November and early December.
