Your Capacity Has a Limit
At the edge of what feels uncomfortable to stay with.
You’re here to serve others—to hold space for them in their journeys. You know this and feel this, and you've trained for this, yet there’s an uncomfortable truth you have to acknowledge…
There is a limit to how deeply you can hold others—and that limit is set by how deeply you’ve met yourself.
Not your knowledge.
Not your skillset.
But by your capacity to stay with what’s uncomfortable in you.
Can you be present with someone as they feel their rage, without trying to shift them into a ‘better’ state?
Can you sit with someone as they drown in their grief, without trying to fix them?
Can you listen to someone as they express how they’ve felt victimized, without judging them?
Can you be a silent witness to someone’s uncontrollable tears, without offering them tissues to wipe their face?
Can you hold someone in silence as they process a deep wound without rushing them through it?
When you struggle to stay present with others, it’s often because you learned not to stay with yourself.
Your capacity to be with others is shaped by all the ways in which you’ve abandoned yourself.
I remember, very shortly after experiencing a shocking, traumatic event, one of my friends came over to visit and offer support. We sat at our dining room table with tea, and I was oscillating between tears of grief and moments of dissociative shock. In the midst of this, I heard her say: “But what’s the lesson here? There’s always a gift and a lesson.”
Honestly, I wanted to punch her in the face. She was softly smiling as she said this—an expression that she probably used often in her coaching practice, as if to say “c’mon… let’s focus on something lighter.”
My body immediately contracted…
My spine straightened…
My shoulders were raised…
And my legs were frozen.
I no longer felt safe with her. For the remainder of her visit, I was quiet. I let her do the talking as I silently nodded, fawning as a protective mechanism to provide a sense of safety for myself.
Shortly after that, and after a few other interactions that left me fawning in her presence, I stepped away from our friendship.
When I was navigating this trauma, I never expected my friends to understand what I was going through, but I desired their presence. Not to fix me, but to witness me so that I didn’t feel alone.
It’s only now, after a few years, that I can look back and recognize that her inability to be present with me was limited by her inability to be present with herself.
Let’s be honest…
Witnessing someone else in their grief can activate so much within you—things that feel uncomfortable to hold. But once you’ve met the depths of your own grief, something shifts, and you develop more capacity to be present with others.
Meeting the depths of my grief and the edges of my humility shifted how I meet others. I find myself embodying more compassion and curiosity, along with a deeper sense of care for my clients and those around me. Meeting my trauma equipped me with the ability to meet others with theirs.
Since then, I’ve realized that capacity isn’t something we can intellectually learn—it’s something that we build through our willingness to stay in the waves of discomfort.
You cannot guide someone to a place where you cannot stay.
This is why you rush when things get too emotional…
Intellectualize instead of staying present…
Attempt to problem-solve when things feel too much…
Rather than being present in the moment, you redirect to avoid the intensity that is overwhelming your system.
This isn’t a lack of training or skill. This is a nervous system limit. The limitations of your nervous system will be reflected in the spaces you hold… and people will feel that, whether they can name it or not.
When emotions get intense, you tend to interrupt with words that aren’t needed.
You offer insight and advice too soon, without letting their words land, because doing so would overwhelm your system.
There’s an urge to rush people through their process—to keep things moving and avoid triggering the pain within you.
And rather than holding space for an experience, you end up subtly controlling it.
Although your intentions are good, your behavior can be harmful.
#PotentTruth:
People don’t experience your intention.
They experience your capacity.
Holding space for others will challenge how you hold yourself. This work will ask you to dive deeper into your discomfort and learn to sit with it without trying to fix it. To build capacity, you’ll need to face your emotions without overriding them, acknowledge your trauma without bypassing it, and not abandon yourself when things intensify. Your capacity to hold others requires you to hold yourself first.
Holding yourself looks like meeting yourself with softness. What you’re experiencing doesn’t need to be fixed—it needs to be felt. This is about being present with intensity, not performing your way through it.
Somatically, this feels like meeting the quiet rumbling within your body… the dull ache that runs in the background… the emotional edges that often feel like too much to explore.
Can you be present with these rumblings, aches, and edges? And can you do so without abandoning yourself, rushing through it, or trying to fix it?
What emotions do you tend to avoid feeling?
And what emotions do you find most challenging to be with in others?
What states feel the hardest for you to stay in?
And what states do you avoid in others?
What shifts you from being present to taking subtle control?
This isn’t about being good enough, nor is it about not being too much. This is about having the awareness to notice the limitations in your capacity, and the humility to address them. This is a practice of being present, holding yourself, and facing the parts of yourself that have previously felt too overwhelming to be with. As you do this, your capacity will both deepen and soften, and the spaces you hold will reflect this.
How you hold yourself becomes the depth to which you can hold others.
I recorded a guided somatic practice to help you build capacity.
LISTEN HERE.
With Gratitude,
