Always Either Doing Too Much or Not Enough

You do something and it’s too much. You do less of it and now you’re not doing enough. You can’t find the middle ground because the middle ground doesn’t exist, or it exists for you but it doesn’t exist for the people around you who all want something different.

One person thinks you are overwhelming them. Another person thinks you have abandoned them. You can’t be present enough for one without being too present for the other. So you choose which person to disappoint and disappoint them.

You are being judged by people who want contradictory things. Your responsibility is to be a person but the people want you to be different people depending on who’s looking at you. You can’t split yourself into different versions even though that’s what’s being asked.

The feedback is constant. You are too much, not enough, in between, or you are wrong. The feedback changes depending on who’s talking and when they are talking so you never know if what you’re doing is right because right is contextual and constantly shifting.

You adjust and try to meet everyone’s needs and you end up meeting nobody’s needs. The adjustment takes so much energy that you have nothing left for actually being present or being effective at anything. The performance of trying to be right uses up the capacity to actually do anything well.

Some days you just stop trying. You be yourself and let people be upset about it. But stopping trying comes with its own guilt because you know someone is disappointed that you are not trying harder, so you go back to trying and the cycle continues.

The impossibility of this situation is the real problem. You can’t be too much and not enough simultaneously but that’s exactly what’s being demanded. You can’t be the version everyone wants because the versions are incompatible. You can’t satisfy everyone because everyone wants something different.

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