Recovering From a Lifetime of Overfunctioning: An Unconventional Way of Healing
Introduction
Several years ago, my parents' health imploded suddenly, and with it, the ground beneath my feet. Overnight, I became a full-time navigator of a medical system already stretched thin: a maze of ER visits, rehab units, specialists, surgeries, new diagnoses, and the emotional whiplash of watching two people I love slip in and out of stability.
At the same time, I was working two jobs, tending to my marriage and friendships, trying to keep myself intact. Like many caring, multi-passionate people, I held myself to impossible standards: be competent, be available, be composed, be strong. I didn't know it then, but I had come to believe my worth depended on how much I could carry and how stoically I carried it.
The Quiet Pressures We Internalize
Looking back, the exhaustion wasn't only from caregiving or work. It came from the expectations I had absorbed over decades and the pressure to be the reliable one, the one who could hold it all together without cracking.
People like us take pride in:
saying yes because we're capable
pushing through because others are counting on us
ignoring our limits because someone else needs something now
holding our own discomfort in silence because it feels selfish and shameful to do otherwise
These pressures don't erupt overnight. They are almost geologic, settling into accretions that are easily overlooked until they alter the flow of your life.
I had spent so many years orienting around others' needs that listening to my own felt foreign. Even when my body began sending unmistakable signals: disrupted sleep, regular illnesses, a few serious health scares, mysterious aches, a nervous system stuck in constant alert. Still, I pushed through. I thought this was simply midlife. Or maybe resilience.
The Subtle Shift
Then something began to change.
Just as burnout didn't arrive overnight, neither did healing. It wasn't a retreat or a weekend away or a moment where everything clicked. It began the same way burnout had begun: in small, cumulative steps.
Small decisions. Tiny permissions. Simple acts of self-respect that started to accumulate and intertwine.
Good Enough taught me to lower the volume on the guilt that accompanied every moment of care I offered myself. Instead of striving for rest I began to let rest find its place in the day. Not as a reward, but as something essential woven into the fabric of how life moves.
Over time, the shifts compounded. My sleep deepened, no longer fractured by that 3 a.m. vigilance. Aches that had become background noise began to recede. My body felt less brittle, more responsive. And that constant internal pressure, the one that insisted I manage everything always, finally softened.
An Unexpected Outcome
When I stopped hollowing myself out, I showed up differently everywhere. Practicing Good Enough made me a better caregiver, partner, friend, co-founder, and human.
As a small business owner, I’m more tuned in to what it is I want to accomplish. No externally formed ideas about what entrepreneurship is supposed to look like. No floating along, reacting to the next problem that demanded my attention. No more making decisions from depletion rather than direction.
Good Enough didn’t make me less caring or less diligent. It made me more capable of caring well. With discernment, rather than reflex.
How Rest and Care Actually Took Root
In the beginning, rest felt uncomfortable, almost disorienting. When you've spent years over-functioning, stillness can feel like failure. Hello, judgment, my old friend. But I learned something important:
You can’t rest by forcing rest. You rest when you stop signaling capacity you don’t have.
What surprised me most was how these small shifts began to layer. Now I pay a lot more attention to what my body is telling me:
I pause before reflexively saying yes.
I listen to the early signs of depletion rather than overriding them.
I give myself permission to decline things I would have once accepted simply because I could do them (these days I say no more freely).
With time and awareness, rest and care became increasingly instinctive, not aspirational. They stopped being something I had to schedule or strive for and became ambient, steady, almost tidal.
When I tuned into my needs earlier and more consistently, my perspective changed, and my capacity changed with it.
Rewriting What "Good Enough" Means
We live in a culture that worships capacity. We are rewarded for pushing past our limits and praised for disappearing into responsibility. Exhaustion is treated like evidence of devotion and success.
But when I finally stepped back, when I allowed myself to consider that I deserved care too, things slowly started to shift. Not just emotionally, but in how my body responded to daily life.
Good Enough isn't complacency. It's rebellion — a refusal to keep paying the same hidden costs.
It challenges the idea that value is something we earn through exhaustion. By interrupting the reflex to measure our worth by output or endurance, Good Enough restores the body’s capacity to settle and respond rather than remain on constant alert.
For caring people overwhelmed by the demands of their lives, this shift is essential. Without it, our gifts become burdens. With it, our gifts become sustainable.
A Small Reflection
Here is a simple place to begin, especially if the idea of Good Enough feels foreign or uncomfortable.
Look at your life and identify one thing you're doing out of guilt.
Not desire.
Not necessity.
Just guilt.
Then ask yourself:
What would it feel like to not do this today?
What reaction am I afraid of?
What part of me believes I must do this to be good, responsible, worthy, or reliable?
If tension rises, notice it.
Sit with it.
Let the awareness be enough.
Good Enough is not a retreat from responsibility. It’s a reorientation. Like learning to live without bracing against your own life.
And over time, a new horizon opens.
Michelle A M Miller
