Summary:
Some people live their lives swinging between pain and guilt, trying to love someone who brings chaos, instability, and harm. In this post, I explore how nature shows us it’s okay to step back when you’re empty, and why protecting your nervous system is a sacred act of self-care.

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I have had a few clients recently that have been struggling with a member of their family that has behaved very badly — violence, abuse, criminal behaviour, drugs, and alcohol.

The persons were always adults, and the family members over the years stuck by them, blamed themselves, but ultimately suffered.

If you as a family member did the best that you could for someone — you did not abuse them physically or mentally, and you continued to support them into mid-adulthood — then you are not to blame.

Mother Nature needs a balance of light and dark, good and bad, hot and cold, and so on. We have stinging nettles and sunflowers. We cannot have one without the other. Light would not exist without dark. Nature does not make mistakes.

Statistically, about 1 in 10 people exhibit dark personality traits: psychopathy, narcissism, sociopathy, or difficult behaviors that fall within what we commonly consider “bad.”

Often, those with darker personality traits are deeply tortured themselves, caught in patterns they can’t escape. And those who love them are left feeling helpless — watching, absorbing, trying to help, and slowly breaking in the process.

We cannot allow ourselves to suffer or break because of nature. Nature holds no blame. Nature just is.

It’s okay to distance yourself. To protect yourself. You would not walk bare-legged into a field of stinging nettles.

We all have our inner intuition — our gut feeling. When you are done, exhausted from experiencing, feeling, sharing the whirlwind of a 1 in 10 person, this is Mother Nature’s “check engine” light flashing. It is saying that you do not have any reserves left.

And if you continue, mental exhaustion takes its toll on the body. Mind and body are one — not disconnected.

We should all be there for others when we can — that is the wonderfulness of being human. We are fantastic at support. But when the well is dry, it is okay to step back.

You can only give what you have to give. If you are empty, you need to recharge. This benefits both you and the other person.

Our inner energy reflects outward. To help someone unstable, you need to transmute their energy with yours — but you cannot do that when your nerves are frayed.

It is also understandable to say: I am done.

We all have limits to what we can accept.