Upper Limits: How Much Goodness Are You Willing to Let In?
When good things start happening, some people feel dread, guilt, or an urge to disrupt what is working. This essay explores Gay Hendricks’s Upper Limit Problem and offers compassionate ways to notice self-sabotage, understand its roots, and practice making room for more goodness.
When Goodness Feels Unfamiliar
Have you ever had a string of good or great things happen to you and suddenly caught yourself wondering when the other shoe was going to drop?
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Do you sometimes feel guilty for receiving good opportunities because the people around you don’t have the same thing going on for them?
Do you ever get completely freaked out when things start going well and, before you know it, find yourself self-sabotaging all those good things?
If any of this resonates with you, it may be that you wrestle with letting in more than a certain level of goodness and happiness into your life. You may have an Upper Limit Problem.
If you’re curious about what this is, how this might show up in your life and what to do if you do indeed have an Upper Limit Problem, keep reading…
Upper Limit Problems, according to my understanding of what Dr. Hendricks explains, assumes we have a sort of internal thermostat for how good we are willing to let ourselves feel.
When we surpass our set “thermostat level,” we unconsciously or consciously act out in order to help regulate our internal emotional state back to a place where it feels more comfortable, more familiar. That’s when Upper Limit Problems start to show up.
Upper Limits Problems , or in other words, how much joy and goodness we’re willing to let ourselves experience before we start to self-sabotage , like most of our patterns and behaviours, were likely formed by some cluster of formative early life experiences and messages which showed and told us (implicitly or explicitly) “You’re only allowed to feel *this* much goodness.”
When we surpass the level of goodness we unconsciously or consciously believe we’re allowed to have, it’s common for most of us to feel discomfort and perhaps even to act in self-sabotaging ways.
What are some examples of how Upper Limit Problems might show up in your own life? The leading questions to the blog post are great examples but here are some other ways upper limit issues can manifest:
An inability to tolerate happiness and peace and calm and instead scanning the horizon for danger, problems to solve, or things to worry about because being anxious is more familiar than being at ease;
Picking fights with your honey when everything’s going swimmingly because being in a state of conflict is more familiar;
“Forgetting” deadlines, important emails, or critical details in your work after leaping to a new level of growth because struggling at work is more familiar than succeeding;
Getting sick the day before a big talk that you’ve been dreaming to deliver because some part of you feels threatened or anxious about playing big.
These are just some of the limitless ways Upper Limit Problems might manifest , the possibilities are really endless. In order to help you get clearer on how you personally unconsciously self-sabotage or play out your own Upper Limit Problems, I’ve crafted a series of prompts for you to help deepen your awareness and understanding.
Psychotherapist Gay Hendricks, PhD uses the term Upper Limit Problem for the pattern of becoming uncomfortable when life exceeds one’s familiar capacity for success, love, joy, or ease, then acting in ways that restore the familiar level.
In plain terms: When peace, opportunity, or happiness feels unfamiliar, you may find yourself looking for danger or creating disruption. That doesn’t mean you don’t want good things; it can mean your system is learning to receive them.
Notice Your Upper Limit Pattern
Crack open your journal or a fresh Google doc and jot down your answers to the prompts below. Trust me, you’ll receive far more value from this exercise if you write your answers down versus just read through the questions.
What are the messages you received growing up about being happy or having good things happen to you?
Do you believe there’s only a certain amount of good things you’re allowed to have happen to you?
Do you ever feel guilty or uncomfortable when good things happen for you but not for others around you?
Would you say that it’s more familiar for you to feel discomfort than to feel peace and ease and joy?
What do you know about your own capacity for tolerating good things? Is there a certain point at which you feel saturated and like you’ve hit your limit?
What do you know about how you might sneakily act out in order to sabotage your own happiness? (hint: these sneaky ways might show up in the categories of fighting, freezing, or fleeing.)
Why do you imagine you act out in those ways in particular? Are those patterns familiar for you? Did you watch anyone in your family-of-origin also do this?
What are you afraid of if you go past your limit of happiness? What might happen or become true for you?
Self-sabotage describes actions or omissions that interfere with a person’s stated goals, often when a desired change also brings discomfort, uncertainty, or a threat to a familiar identity.
In plain terms: A fight, a forgotten deadline, or freezing before an important opportunity can be worth examining with compassion. The pattern may be trying to bring you back to what feels known.
Practice Expanding Your Capacity
If you read through this article and saw yourself in my words and are thinking to yourself, “Yep, I definitely have Upper Limit Problems, now what do I do?” I have some suggestions for you about how you (and I!) can begin to recalibrate our own Upper Limits.
First of all, I think that you’re doing the biggest and most important part of the transformational work already: you’re bringing curiosity and awareness as to whether or not you have Upper Limit Problems and how they might show up in your life. Good for you!
Once we begin to bring our awareness to our issues, we begin the process of change because when we’re conscious about something we actually get to have a choice as to whether or not we continue acting in that way.
I’m not saying that changing the way we act is going to be easy, but over time and with continued awareness and repeated new behaviors, I really think it is possible to change and expand how much goodness and happiness we’re willing to let in, essentially recalibrating our own Upper Limits.
Here are some behaviors you can practice that may support recalibrating your own Upper Limits:
Talk to your friends, partner, your therapist about how much goodness and happiness you feel comfortably letting yourself have. Talk about what you do when you hit your “max.” Get curious with them about why this is and how you can work on it.
And by container, I mean your body, the container of your soul and psyche and heart and mind. One suggestion I received from a mentor long ago was to practice literally stretching and expanding my container through yoga, dance, or movement that felt good when I was trying to expand my capacity to tolerate new and bigger feelings. Try it out and see if intentionally stretching out your tissues helps you make more room for your issues.
I’m a big fan of compassionate self-talk to help transform limiting beliefs and I think that when dealing with Upper Limit Problems, it can be particularly helpful to repeat a few mantras to ourselves in the form of compassionate self-talk reminders. I encourage you to create your own phrases but here are a few example mantras to get you started: “I get to receive this , it’s okay for me to feel this happy and to have good things.” “I am worthy of joy, goodness, love, and luck. It’s okay to feel this way.”
If you find yourself acting out in self-sabotaging ways to limit your own happiness and the amount of goodness you feel comfortable tolerating, persist and keep going. Keep publishing those articles, keep being in relationship, show up for that talk, say yes to that second date, keep up your healthy self-care practices. Keep going in the direction of goodness and know that you may meet resistance. That’s okay and, in fact, it’s normal and natural. We all have Upper Limit issues. The goal is not to get rid of Upper Limits but to continue expanding our capacity to tolerate more and more goodness in our lives. So persist in your plans and keep putting one foot in front of the other, and don’t forget to breathe into it all.
Q: What is an Upper Limit Problem?
A: It is Gay Hendricks’s term for the discomfort that can arise when we exceed our familiar level of happiness, success, love, or ease, sometimes followed by self-sabotaging behavior.
Q: Why do I feel anxious when things are going well?
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A: Anxiety may feel more familiar than calm. The essay suggests that early messages and experiences can shape how much goodness feels safe to receive.
Q: What does self-sabotage look like here?
A: It can look like scanning for problems, picking fights, forgetting important details after growth, or pulling back from a meaningful opportunity.
Q: Can I change this pattern?
A: Yes. Awareness creates choice, and repeated new behaviors can gradually expand your capacity to tolerate goodness and ease.
Q: What should I do when I notice myself hitting an upper limit?
A: Talk with a trusted person, use compassionate self-talk, move your body in a way that helps you feel more spacious, and persist with the life-giving action you were taking.
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Annie Wright, LMFT
Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist · Relational Trauma Specialist · W.W. Norton Author
“Helping driven women finally feel as good as their résumé looks.”
Annie Wright is a licensed psychotherapist with 15,000+ clinical hours since 2013 and an EMDRIA Certified Therapist. She’s the founder and former CEO of Evergreen Counseling, a multimillion-dollar trauma-informed therapy center she successfully exited. She’s currently writing her first book, The Everything Years: Navigating the Pressure and Promise of Your Thirties, with W.W. Norton (2027). Her expert commentary has appeared in Psychology Today, Forbes, Business Insider, NBC News, and The Information.
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Annie Wright, LMFT
LMFT · Relational Trauma Specialist · W.W. Norton Author
Helping driven women finally feel as good as their résumé looks.
Annie Wright is an EMDR-certified licensed psychotherapist and relational trauma specialist with over 15,000 clinical hours, and she's been in practice since 2013. Trained in EMDR, psychodynamic, and somatic modalities, she is licensed in 14 U.S. jurisdictions and registered to provide telehealth in Florida (California, Colorado (telehealth only), Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Florida, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and Washington). Annie works with driven and ambitious women from relational trauma backgrounds, and everything she writes about is field-tested across thousands of clinical sessions. She is the founder and former CEO of Evergreen Counseling, a multimillion-dollar trauma-informed therapy center she built, scaled, and successfully exited, and is currently writing her first book, The Everything Years: Navigating the Pressure and Promise of Your Thirties, with W.W. Norton (2027). A regular contributor to Psychology Today, her expert commentary has appeared in USA Today, Forbes, Business Insider, Inc., NBC, and The Information.
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