You Are Not Too Much. You Are Just Tired of Abandoning Yourself.

A few nights ago I was sitting on my couch with a cup of tea and one of those ridiculously soft blankets I always reach for when I’m trying to decompress.

The house was quiet. My dog was asleep beside me. Everything was technically fine.

And yet I could feel this low hum of exhaustion underneath the surface.

Not crisis-level exhaustion. Not rock-bottom exhaustion.

Just that familiar feeling of realizing I had spent the entire week showing up for everyone else while barely checking in with myself.

I’d been productive. Responsible. Helpful. I answered messages. Handled obligations. Got things done.

But somewhere in the middle of taking care of life, I had drifted away from myself again.

Not dramatically. Just subtly.

And honestly, I think that’s what happens to a lot of people.

Not because they’re failing. Because they’re human.

I think a lot of people are living there right now.

That’s why these tarot affirmation videos have been hitting people so deeply lately. Because underneath the affirmations, underneath the cards themselves, there’s a truth most people don’t say out loud:

A lot of us learned that love had to be earned through exhaustion.

Through overgiving. Through shrinking. Through silence. Through being useful. Through pretending we were okay.

And eventually your nervous system starts waving a white flag.

That’s what these cards keep trying to tell us.

Not that we’re broken. Not that we’re failing. But that somewhere along the way, we disconnected from ourselves trying to stay connected to everyone else.

And healing often begins there.

With honesty.

The Empress and Emotional Starvation

One of the affirmations that people struggle with most from my recent TikTok series is this:

“I am still worthy even when I do nothing for other people.”

You can almost feel people tense up when they repeat it.

Because for so many of us, usefulness became identity.

Maybe you were the emotionally mature child. Maybe you were the caretaker. Maybe you became the “strong friend” because nobody ever asked how you were doing. Maybe you learned early that your needs made other people uncomfortable.

So you adapted.

You became low maintenance. Easy. Helpful. Hyperaware.

And now your body doesn’t know how to rest without guilt.

The Empress card doesn’t just represent softness. It represents nourishment. Real nourishment. The kind that asks:

When was the last time you gave yourself the same tenderness you hand out so freely to everybody else?

Not productivity. Not self-improvement disguised as healing. Not another podcast while multitasking.

Actual care.

The kind where you stop performing long enough to hear yourself.

A lot of people are emotionally malnourished and calling it burnout.

There’s a difference.

The Star Card and the Fear of Being Seen

I think mirror work makes people emotional because most of us have spent years looking at ourselves through criticism.

Not compassion.

You stand in front of the mirror and immediately start editing.

Your face. Your body. Your age. Your mistakes. Your grief. Your life.

You become a problem to solve instead of a person to love.

And honestly? That kind of self-rejection becomes so normal we barely notice it anymore.

One of the affirmations from The Star card says:

“I release the version of me that survived through self-hatred.”

That one catches in people’s throats.

Because survival strategies can keep us alive long after they stop being healthy.

Maybe self-criticism made you high-achieving. Maybe people pleasing kept the peace in your family. Maybe shrinking yourself protected you from rejection.

But eventually you hit a point where the very thing that protected you starts suffocating you.

And healing becomes less about becoming someone new and more about finally stopping the war with yourself.

Why Overgiving Feels So Familiar

The Queen of Cups has been showing up constantly lately.

And honestly, I’m not surprised.

People are exhausted.

Not because they care too much. But because they were taught they are responsible for everyone else’s emotions.

There’s a particular kind of loneliness that comes from always being the safe place for other people while having nowhere soft to land yourself.

I know that feeling.

I know what it’s like to become the reliable one.

The person people come to for advice. The calm one. The emotionally available one.

And most of the time, I genuinely love being that person.

But every once in a while, I notice I’ve started giving from an almost empty cup.

I’ll catch myself feeling strangely irritated over little things. More emotionally tired than usual. Less patient with myself.

And usually that’s my cue.

Not that I’m broken. Not that I need to disappear from everyone.

Just that I need to come back to myself for a minute.

Because eventually resentment creeps in. Quietly.

Not because you’re selfish. But because no human being can survive indefinitely while abandoning themselves.

One of the hardest affirmations from that video is:

“I release responsibility for other people’s healing.”

Whew.

That one hurts.

Because loving someone and saving someone are not the same thing.

And some of us were never taught the difference.

Self-Trust Is Built in Tiny Moments

The Strength card gets misunderstood all the time.

People think confidence means becoming louder or tougher or more fearless.

But most real confidence is quieter than that.

It’s keeping your own word.

It’s noticing when something feels wrong and not talking yourself out of it.

It’s saying no without writing a five-page apology in your head afterward.

It’s trusting your own discomfort.

A lot of people don’t actually have low self-esteem. They have chronic self-betrayal.

Every time you silence your intuition to keep someone comfortable, your body notices. Every time you overexplain your boundaries, your body notices. Every time you abandon yourself for approval, your body notices.

And eventually you stop trusting yourself.

Not because your intuition disappeared. But because you stopped listening to it.

Healing self-trust often starts painfully small.

Ordering the food you actually want. Resting when you’re tired. Leaving conversations that drain you.

Admitting when something hurts.

Tiny moments.

But tiny moments become identity.

Love Should Not Feel Like Survival

I wish more people understood this:

Anxiety is not chemistry.

That ache in your chest when someone disappears for three days? That obsession? That panic when they pull away?

That’s not necessarily love.

Sometimes it’s an old wound recognizing familiar instability.

The Lovers card has been exposing relationship patterns hard lately. Especially for people who grew up around emotional inconsistency.

If affection was unpredictable growing up, calm love can actually feel uncomfortable at first.

Because your nervous system was trained to associate longing with connection.

So you chase emotionally unavailable people. You overanalyze texts. You mistake confusion for passion.

And meanwhile secure love feels almost suspicious.

Boring. Too easy.

But real love should not constantly make you feel unsafe.

One affirmation from that video says:

“I no longer have to earn love by suffering for it.”

Read that again.

Slowly.

Because some people have spent their entire lives proving their worth through endurance.

The Healing Hidden Inside Loneliness

The Hermit card might be one of the most misunderstood cards in tarot.

People see solitude and assume punishment.

But sometimes isolation is actually a return.

A return to yourself.

There are seasons where your life gets very quiet. Friendships shift. Relationships end. You stop fitting in places you used to belong.

And it can feel terrifying.

But not every empty space is abandonment. Sometimes it’s transition.

I think about this a lot during quiet evenings.

The kind where I finally stop multitasking long enough to actually hear my own thoughts.

Sometimes I light a candle, make tea, sit with my cards for a few minutes, and realize how much calmer I feel when I stop trying to constantly stay “on.”

And honestly? I still have moments where slowing down feels uncomfortable.

Because silence has a way of revealing the relationship you actually have with yourself.

But eventually solitude stopped feeling like rejection. It started feeling sacred.

One of the affirmations from The Hermit says:

“I am becoming someone I feel safe with.”

That’s the work.

Not becoming perfect. Not becoming endlessly positive.

Becoming safe for yourself.

You Were Never Meant to Shrink

The Sun card closes this entire conversation beautifully.

Because after all the grief and healing and self-confrontation, eventually something softer begins to happen.

You start taking up space again.

You laugh louder. You stop apologizing so much. You wear the thing. You say the honest thing. You stop dimming your personality for people who only feel comfortable around your silence.

And yes, that can feel vulnerable. Especially if authenticity once cost you love.

But pretending to be smaller than you are costs you even more.

One of the affirmations people react to most strongly is:

“I no longer make myself smaller to be loved.”

Because deep down, most people already know exactly where they’ve been abandoning themselves.

The healing is not in shaming yourself for it.

The healing is in noticing. Then choosing differently. Again and again.

Not perfectly. Just honestly.

Three Ways to Start Reconnecting With Yourself

1. Pay attention to what exhausts you emotionally.

Not physically. Emotionally.

Which conversations leave you depleted? Where do you feel pressure to perform? Who do you become around certain people?

Your body already knows where the disconnect is.

2. Stop calling self-abandonment “kindness.”

You can be compassionate without disappearing.

You can love people without fixing them. You can support people without sacrificing yourself. You can say no and still be a good person.

3. Create moments where you actually hear yourself.

Not social media. Not noise. Not distractions.

Yourself.

Go for a walk without your phone. Journal honestly. Sit in silence for five minutes. Ask yourself what you need before asking everyone else.

At first it may feel uncomfortable. That’s okay.

You’re rebuilding a relationship

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Final Thoughts

If these affirmations have been emotional for you lately, it’s probably because some part of you is finally ready to stop surviving and start reconnecting.

Not with a better version of yourself.

With your actual self.

The one underneath the performance. Underneath the people pleasing. Underneath the hyper-independence. Underneath the fear.

And that process isn’t always graceful. Sometimes it looks like setting your phone down earlier. Sometimes it looks like saying no without overexplaining. Sometimes it looks like taking a quiet evening for yourself instead of forcing connection. Sometimes it looks like finally letting yourself rest before burnout forces you to.

Real healing is often quieter than people expect.

But it changes everything.

If this blog stirred something up in you, there may be a reason.

Sometimes we can feel a pattern shifting before we fully understand what’s happening.

If you want deeper guidance around the emotional patterns, relationship dynamics, or healing season you’re currently moving through, I’m opening a few spaces for one-on-one tarot readings this week.

Sometimes having someone gently reflect your truth back to you can help you reconnect with yourself in a way that feels clear, grounded, and deeply validating.

Book your reading here