For most of my life, the word enough had no meaning at all. I know it had a meaning in an academic sense. For me it was an abstraction—an idea. I had no actual idea of what the word enough felt like.

To understand the word enough you have to be observant: you have to be aware of your sensations—you have to really feel the space that needs filling. You have to feel every contour of that space: that space in your body, that space in your emotions, that space in your heart. Feel all of those delicate and tender edges to know when the rim of that particular reservoir has been filled. At least in theory that’s what you have to do, because for most of my adult life I wasn’t going anywhere near those tender edges. It was too terrifying. It was too painful. Like most trauma survivors I was in long-distance relationship with myself—and especially my emotions and body.

It is actually hard to even describe how far away that capacity of observance and the connection to that inner landscape of feeling and emotion is if you are a trauma survivor. Surviving trauma means cutting off any possible communication with those spaces of emotions and needs and hungers. It means cutting connections between your brains and any feelings or sensations in your body. It means exiling those parts and banishing them from your consciousness.

But you need to function somehow in the give and take of life. Relationships require you to make requests and say ‘Yes’ and “No.” Your body needs to be fed every day. So in order to function with all of those needs and wants and hungers that would require you to be aware of feelings and sensations, you replace them instead with shoulds and rules. What enough should look like or feel like. How much I should want. Or should need. How much I should eat. These rules and shoulds are not connected to your body. They are not connected to your emotions. They are not connected to the here and now. They are connected to your history. They are connected to your head—to your fears—to your trauma—and mostly to how you managed to survive it.

So you learn to orient to the world through an outside-in approach paying attention to the shoulds and the rules. You never build the muscles or fluency or awareness of enough.  

And while this is hard, the truth is—being numb, and starving for love and care is almost easier than the experience of healing—when hunger, need or want is woken up. When you begin to invite in the wanting, needing and hunger, they come back with a blinding intensity –an intensity that feels bottomless, endless. They come back with an intensity that can border on panic, impatience and rage.

And so for a very long time you can find yourself swinging between two poles—staying numb and not needing—so you don’t have to feel and see the empty reservoir; and feeling out of control and overwhelmed by an intensity of wanting and longing and hunger that feels insatiable. And both of these poles make you believe you are incapable of enough. You come to believe that you are either unfeeling and cold or you are a bottomless pit. That you will never understand that elusive, contented, satisfied state of enough.

Which brings me to my current experiment. I realized a few weeks ago that I had conflated resting and eating by always eating and watching something on TV. Lunch and dinner were my break from work, so I looked forward to what I would watch. But I realized this habit that was meant to be relaxing was keeping me from being able to pay attention to my eating—to notice what enough was. To notice what I actually needed. So I embarked on an experiment to split food and rest—I would eat at a table, with no distractions, much like Geneen Roth always recommended. I would journal about the eating experiment and then I would do something restful afterwards.

It turns out learning enough is a lot like bird watching. Except at first you are the bird, and not the watcher. You feel observed, scrutinized. A bit fearful and anxious. You perch nervously on your chair. You aren’t used to anyone, including yourself, watching you eat. You feel vulnerable and seen. It’s unnerving.

And you start with the should and rules, but because you are bird watching—and there are no other things to pay attention to but your own sensations of fullness or hunger—you try to feel what enough feels like. And the biggest surprise of all is that you can. And the craziest thing, after decades of fearing your wants and needs and hungers is to find out how small they are. Find out how quickly they are met.

Enough is so much smaller than you think it will be. When you have spent a long time in your life enduring abuse—you come to believe that enough is something that is shouted. That it is something that is obvious or loud. But it’s not. Enough is a small voice. Enough is quiet. Enough is a whisper.

© 2023 Gretchen L. Schmelzer, PhD