A Love Letter To Healers Who Give Too Much

Dearest Doctors, Nurses, Midwives, Therapists, Chiropractors, Naturopaths, Energy Healers, Acupuncturists, Caregivers, and Coaches,

I know how much you care. I know you are an empath who feels the suffering in others and devotes your life to alleviating it. I know you feel the pain of others as an ache in your own heart, and as a light worker, you long to bring love, comfort, and peace into the hurting hearts and bodies of those you serve. I know you feel called to do this the way priests are called to the priesthood, as a spiritual calling and a Divine mission. I know you are grateful for the impact you have on those in need. I know it fulfills a deep longing to feel like you’re the hands of the Divine, serving love as only you can. I know you need to be needed, and it gives your life purpose. I am so grateful for your service. Thank you for how much you give.

I also know you give too much. I know that your attunement to the needs of others drives you to tend to their needs, even when you’re neglecting your own. I know you’re not getting your needs met the way you deserve. Your need for rest, free time, and emotional connection with those who care about meeting your needs isn’t fully fulfilled. Your need for singing, dancing, spiritual practice, time in nature, safe, healthy touch, and meaningful intimacy with those who don’t always need you goes largely unmet. This leaves you longing to be cared for, to have someone who has your back, to be nurtured by others as you much as you nurture.

I know because I’ve been there that it’s so much easier for you to give than to receive, that receiving feels more uncomfortable than giving. I know that if you find yourself showered with love, attention, gifts, service, healthy touch, and pleasurable offerings, you have a strange kind of panic attack that leaves you feeling like “This is too much!” Then you feel confused. If the Universe is trying to shower you with unlimited blessings, why would you block it? And yet . . . you feel uncomfortable with receiving too much. I understand this, because I have felt this too. Giving feels so much easier than receiving, until you give too much and something in you breaks free. Then you know . . . you just KNOW . . . that something has to change. I know this about you, and I love the part of you that gives too much.

Dear healers, only humans struggle with receiving when we are in need. Everything in nature knows that when you breathe out, you must also breathe in. If you only exhale, you die. If you only give, you burn out. Animals know that when you contract your muscles in order to chase the prey and hunt for food, you must then relax and bask in the sun like lions in a cuddle puddle resting until the next meal.

Your giving is such a gift to the world, but it’s time for you to receive, my love. You deserve to be showered with care, to drink in unlimited blessings from a benevolent Universe, to let others take care of you for a while. You deserve a tribe of people who love giving to you as much as you love giving to others. You deserve to be touched, to feel safe, to know that you don’t have to give in order to belong, that you have a right to just BE. Your Being is enough. YOU are enough, just because you’re a spark of the Divine. You don’t have to do anything to earn the right to belong. You belong to the world, even if you were suddenly unable to give anything but your love.

If you’re one of those healers who give too much and you’re yearning to interrupt this pattern, it starts with having compassion for yourself. If you’re like me and so many other healers I’ve worked with, you probably give too much because your needs weren’t fully met in childhood and you learned to give too much in order to feel a sense of belonging and safety. Perhaps you learned to give too much because it protected you from physical or emotional abuse. Perhaps it kept you from being neglected or abandoned. Perhaps your very survival depended upon it. Perhaps you learned to earn your place in the world by being a giver, and you never learned what healthy children learn—that giving and receiving in equal measure is the ticket to a happy, healthy, fulfilling life. You did a good job, learning to give too much. You made it until now—and now that you know better, you can choose to balance out your giving and your receiving. Things are different now. You no longer have to earn the right to BE. You belong, just because you are.

Don’t wait until illness or injury teach you how to be needy without being codependent. Don’t wait until addiction or depression or cancer force you to take a break from offering your gifts to the world so you can learn the art of sacred reciprocity. Take this as your wake up call. If you were waiting for a sign, this is it.

Does this resonate with you? Can you relate to this? Do you know other healers who give too much? If you’re like so many other doctors, health care providers, and therapists, you may know it’s time to find more balance, but you’re not quite sure how to do this on your own. At the Whole Health Medicine Institute, we not only offer deep transformational Heal The Healer work, we also offer a soul tribe of others who are ready to do the same work, all while exploring consciousness in medicine, finding and fulfilling our true calling, coming together to heal the health care system, and learning tools to help patients facilitate the body’s natural self-healing process.

Are you ready to interrupt this pattern of giving too much? Might this be the year for you to attend the Whole Health Medicine Institute? Learn more here.