“Am I Too Much?”: The Hidden Fear Behind Overthinking and People-Pleasing
You’ve probably felt it before — that nagging worry that you’re somehow too much for the people around you… Too emotional. Too needy. Too intense. Too complicated.
So you dial it down. You hold your tongue. You sugarcoat your feelings. You apologize for your existence — sometimes without even realizing it.
If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone. This fear shows up in therapy all the time, and it runs deeper than insecurity. It’s a form of shame — one that tells you your very being might be a problem.
Where This Fear Starts
The fear of being too much is usually learned.
Maybe you grew up in a household where emotions weren’t welcome — where being sad, angry, or excited got you labeled as dramatic or difficult.
Maybe someone told you, directly or indirectly, that your needs were inconvenient.
Maybe you were the one holding it together for everyone else, so there was never room for your own mess.
And so you adapted.
You learned to shrink yourself, filter yourself, second-guess every sentence before it came out. You became hyper-aware of your impact — because somewhere along the way, it felt like the only way to stay safe or connected.
The Cost of Shrinking
The problem is, that shrinking doesn’t come without consequences.
- You overthink everything you say and do.
- You struggle to ask for what you need — or feel guilty when you do.
- You say yes when you mean no, just to avoid disappointing someone.
- You keep your real feelings buried until they bubble up in anxiety, resentment, or exhaustion.
And maybe worst of all, you start to believe that the filtered version of you is the only one who’s acceptable.
You Are Not Too Much
Let’s pause here and say the thing out loud:
You are not too much.
You were just made to feel that way by people who couldn’t handle the depth, intensity, or realness you bring.
That’s not your fault. And it’s not a permanent condition.
Therapy isn’t about fixing who you are — it’s about untangling the messages you’ve internalized so you can show up fully, without shame.
What Healing Can Look Like
If you’ve carried this fear for a long time, healing might feel foreign — or even dangerous. But it doesn’t have to be big and dramatic. It starts small.
- Naming the fear when it shows up: “This is that ‘too much’ voice again.”
- Noticing your patterns without judgment: “I just edited myself again to avoid rejection.”
- Testing the waters with safe people: “What happens if I show a little more of my real self here?”
- Rebuilding trust with yourself: “I can take up space. I don’t have to apologize for existing.”
Want Help Untangling This?
If you’ve spent years feeling like too much — or not enough — therapy can help you rewrite that story.
At Sandstone Therapy, we work with people who are tired of shrinking, tired of guessing what version of themselves is acceptable, and tired of being stuck in self-doubt. You don’t have to keep walking on eggshells. You’re allowed to take up space — just as you are.
Reach out here when you’re ready. We’ll meet you there.
Author: Bodie Coates, LMFT-S, LCADC-S, NCC
“Just Think Positive” Is Terrible Advice (Here’s What to Do Instead)
You’ve heard it a hundred times:
“Just stay positive.”
“Look on the bright side.”
“Good vibes only!”
On paper, it sounds supportive. Optimism is great, right? But when you’re actually struggling — with anxiety, depression, grief, burnout, or plain old stress — being told to “think positive” feels less like encouragement and more like being silenced.
Because what it really says is:
“Your feelings make me uncomfortable. Please tuck them away.”
When Positivity Turns Toxic
There’s nothing wrong with optimism. But when positivity is forced, superficial, or used to avoid discomfort, it becomes something else entirely: toxic positivity.
That’s when emotional pain is swept under the rug and replaced with clichés.
When genuine struggle is met with, “At least you…” instead of “That sounds hard.”
When you’re encouraged to skip the uncomfortable parts of being human — and smile anyway.
Toxic positivity doesn’t just ignore your emotions — it invalidates them. And when your inner world gets invalidated over and over, you start doing it to yourself. You start believing that your pain isn’t legitimate. That you should be fine. That you’re just being dramatic.
That’s where the real damage happens.
You Can’t Heal What You Don’t Acknowledge
Let’s say you break your ankle. Would you try to walk it off with a smile and say, “It’s all good — I’m just grateful for the other leg!”
No. You’d go to the doctor. You’d take pressure off it. You’d rest and recover.
But emotional pain? We’re often told to minimize, suppress, or “reframe” it before it’s even been named. That’s not healing — it’s avoidance.
The truth is, you can hold pain and hope at the same time. You don’t have to rush to the silver lining. Sometimes the most powerful thing you can do is say, “This is hard” — and let that be enough for now.
So What Actually Helps?
Instead of defaulting to positive thinking, try this:
1. Validate your experience.
“This is hard. I don’t like it. And it makes sense that I feel this way.”
2. Get curious, not judgmental.
“What’s this feeling trying to tell me? What do I need right now?”
3. Anchor in your values.
“What matters to me, even in this moment? How do I want to show up?”
4. Offer yourself realism and compassion.
“I’m struggling — and I’m still trying. I don’t have to have it all together.”
This isn’t about wallowing. It’s about honoring your full emotional experience so you can move through it with integrity, instead of around it with denial.
Real Growth Isn’t Always Pretty
The irony is, when you stop trying to feel “better” all the time — when you actually make room for your real emotions — you create the conditions for genuine change.
Real resilience isn’t about staying positive.
It’s about staying present.
Especially when things are uncomfortable.
Want a Space Where You Don’t Have to Pretend?
If you’re tired of plastering on a smile and pretending everything’s fine, you’re not alone — and you don’t have to keep doing it.
At Sandstone Therapy, we create a space where your full experience is welcome. No toxic positivity. No pressure to perform. Just real people helping you navigate real emotions with clarity, honesty, and compassion.
If that sounds like a relief, reach out here. We’re here when you’re ready.
Burnout Isn’t Laziness: What Your Exhaustion Is Really Trying to Tell You
Let’s clear something up right away:
Being burned out is not the same thing as being lazy.
Laziness implies you don’t care. That you’re avoiding effort. That you’re sitting around when you could be doing more.
Burnout, on the other hand? It usually shows up after you’ve been doing too much for too long — caring, working, helping, overthinking — without enough support or recovery.
And when you hit that wall, your mind and body don’t whisper politely. They shut the whole system down.
The Myth of “Just Push Through”
We live in a culture that praises hustle and punishes rest. So when your motivation tanks or your brain starts buffering mid-sentence, the guilt creeps in.
“Why can’t I just get it together?”
“What’s wrong with me?”
“I don’t even have it that bad — I should be able to handle this.”
That inner critic loves to spin burnout into a character flaw. But here’s the truth:
Burnout isn’t a sign that you’re weak. It’s a sign that you’ve been strong for too long without a break.
What Burnout Actually Looks Like
It’s not always fire and fury. Most of the time, it’s more like a slow erosion:
- Tasks that used to be easy now feel heavy.
- You wake up tired, even after sleep.
- You feel numb, detached, or low-key resentful about everything.
- Your brain keeps saying “no” to things you used to enjoy.
Sound familiar?
Burnout isn’t about how much you’re doing. It’s about how much you’ve had to hold, and how little room you’ve had to put it down.
You Don’t Have to Earn Rest
One of the most damaging beliefs out there is that you have to earn your rest. That rest is some kind of reward you only get after you’ve hustled hard enough.
Nope.
Rest is a need, not a luxury. And you don’t have to prove your worth before you’re allowed to slow down.
This is true whether you’re a therapist, a parent, a student, a caregiver, or someone who just… exists. Burnout doesn’t care how “valid” your stress is. If you don’t rest, your body will eventually rest for you — through exhaustion, illness, or shutdown.
So What Do You Do?
Let’s start simple.
- Name it.
You’re not unmotivated. You’re burned out. Giving it a name helps reduce shame. - Stop gaslighting yourself.
If your body and brain are waving red flags, believe them. - Rest without guilt.
That might mean actual sleep. Or time off. Or saying no without explaining. - Talk to someone.
Whether it’s a therapist, a friend, or your cat, don’t carry this alone. - Reconnect to something that gives back.
Not just obligations. Something that fills your tank, even a little.
You Don’t Need to Hit Rock Bottom
One of the most tragic things about burnout is how many people wait until they’ve completely crashed before they give themselves permission to change anything.
You don’t have to wait for a breakdown to start building in some space for yourself.
Even small acts of self-respect — setting a boundary, skipping a nonessential task, canceling a meeting that didn’t need to happen anyway — can help slow the spiral.
Ready to Feel Human Again?
You don’t have to figure this out on your own. At Sandstone Therapy, we help people untangle the guilt, expectations, and overload that keep them stuck. If you’re ready to stop white-knuckling your way through life, reach out today. It doesn’t have to be this hard.
Author: Bodie Coates, LMFT-S, LCADC-S, NCC
What If Anxiety Isn’t the Problem? (And Why Fighting It Makes It Worse)
Let’s get something straight: anxiety sucks. It hijacks your focus, wrecks your sleep, and makes even simple decisions feel like life-or-death calls. But here’s the weird thing—anxiety itself isn’t really the problem. The fight you’re having with it? That’s where most of the suffering comes from.
The Trap of Trying to “Fix” Anxiety
Most people treat anxiety like it’s a broken part that needs to be yanked out and replaced. You feel the discomfort rising, and your brain goes, “This is bad. Make it stop.” So you avoid the conversation. Or you overthink the email. Or you distract yourself with your phone, your fridge, or your work.
But that reaction—the urge to control or eliminate anxiety—is part of the problem. Not because you’re weak. But because you’re human. And your brain was wired to run from discomfort a long time before email or public speaking were invented.
The problem is, the more you run from anxiety, the more powerful it gets.
ACT: A Different Way to Relate to Anxiety
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) takes a radically different stance: it says, “Hey… what if you stop fighting anxiety, and start making space for it instead?”
That sounds counterintuitive, I know. But ACT isn’t about giving up. It’s about shifting your relationship with difficult emotions. Rather than trying to shut anxiety down, ACT invites you to acknowledge it, breathe into it, and refocus on what actually matters in your life.
Because here’s the truth: you can feel anxious and still do the thing.
You can have a racing heart and still speak up. You can feel uncertainty and still make a decision. You can carry fear with you and still move forward.
Why Control Doesn’t Work
Think of it like this: trying to control anxiety is like holding a beach ball underwater. It takes effort. You can do it for a while, but it keeps trying to pop up. Eventually, it bursts to the surface—and now you’re not only anxious, you’re frustrated, ashamed, and exhausted.
ACT teaches that the more we try to control our internal experience, the more we reinforce the belief that anxiety is dangerous. That we have to be calm, confident, and in control before we can live fully.
But what if you could start living right now, even with anxiety along for the ride?
Values Over Comfort
One of the most powerful parts of ACT is that it puts values—not comfort—at the center of your choices.
Instead of asking, “What will make me feel less anxious?”
You start asking, “What kind of person do I want to be in this moment?”
Maybe it’s a person who shows up, even with sweaty palms.
Maybe it’s a parent who’s present, even when their mind is racing.
Maybe it’s someone who finally makes that appointment they’ve been putting off for months.
That’s what ACT helps people do. Not eliminate anxiety, but untangle from it enough to start living a more meaningful life.
You’re Not Broken — You’re Just Wired for Survival
If you’re stuck in an endless loop of anxious thoughts, it doesn’t mean you’re broken. It means your brain is doing exactly what it evolved to do: protect you. But that survival wiring wasn’t built for modern life. And it definitely wasn’t built for happiness.
The good news? You don’t have to rewire your brain overnight.
You just have to learn how to notice the thoughts, feel the feelings, and choose your direction anyway.
And if that sounds like something you’d like help with, well — that’s literally what we do.
Ready to Learn a Different Way to Work With Anxiety?
At Sandstone Therapy, we help people build a new relationship with anxiety — one rooted in awareness, acceptance, and action. If you’re ready to stop fighting and start living, reach out here.
Author: Bodie Coates, LMFT-S, LCADC-S, NCC
Quarterly Clinician Connections Events
To all our fellow Northern Nevada clinicians, colleagues, and community members! Sandstone Therapy is hosting another get-together on June 29th at 1pm for anyone interested in networking. These quarterly meetings are called “Clinician Connections” and we’re hoping that this summer event will be our biggest one yet! Catered food and drinks will be available and we hope this will be a good networking opportunity for you, as well as give everyone a chance to see what’s new in Carson City.
We hope you all can make it!
~Sandstone Therapy Team
May is Mental Health Awareness month!
Hi everyone! May is here and that means it is Mental Health Awareness month! President Biden proclaimed May 2024 as such and you can view the proclamation here:
Let’s all come together and continue to expand mental health awareness and advocacy with the intention of de-stigmatizing mental health issues and encouraging people to seek help when they need it.
For more information, please visit NAMI’s website discussing what this means for the mental health community: https://www.nami.org/get-involved/awareness-events/mental-health-awareness-month/
A space to call our own!
We have officially moved on to bigger and better things! After moving many couches, desks, chairs, and decor… we are now firmly located at 911 Mountain St. Carson City, NV 89703! This new space is going to be our home for the next 5 years, and we couldn’t be happier to have a space that we can make into the therapeutic health hub we’ve been hoping for. Sincerely big thank you to Sandstone’s own Dr. Doran and her husband for all their amazing hard work. We hope to see you there!
Try this link to get a Maps view of our location = Sandstone Therapy @ 911 Mountain St.
New Location Incoming!
Sandstone Therapy Carson will soon be moving!
More details to come…
Professional Open House
As you may have seen, we recently announced our newest office in Minden… Now we are ready to invite our fellow therapists and other professionals to come visit our new site! This open house is for professionals in Healthcare and related industries to come and see what’s up in Minden. The event will include food and drinks, (catered by Sandstone’s own Dr. Andrea Doran as well as one of our office-mates Wendy Talavera) and we will also have all of the group’s therapists on-site to discuss their work, conceptualize cases, create referral sources, and offer general discussion about the nature of mental health in our community.
Please join the unofficially titled “Lucerne Counseling Group” on March 9th, 2022 at the Lucerne Professional building located at 1650 Lucerne St. Suite 205, Minden, NV 89423. If you get lost, it’s the little two-story Snow White cottage looking building a bit behind The Full Belly Deli.
We hope to see you there!
New Location / expansion to Minden.
In an attempt to reach local rural communities in need, Sandstone Therapy has opened an office in Minden! We will be located in an office suite at 1650 Lucerne St. in suite 205. This move was made after many of our therapist colleagues complained about the lack of resources available in the Minden/Gardnerville area. We knew we needed to make ourselves more available, and Minden seemed like an excellent place to expand to. Having these offices available will not only give us the ability to access more clients in need, but it will also give us a chance to offer space for students and interns to come and learn effective therapy techniques as well.
This is Bodie writing now. Personally, I am happy to come back to the community I grew up in and offer help. I went to school at CVMS and DHS before I graduated early to start college. I knew Minden and Gardnerville well, it really was a fun place to grow up, and I hope Sandstone Therapy will be a welcome addition to the community.
Sandstone’s New Logo
Sandstone Therapy now has a logo!
Thanks to Dr. Doran for setting us up with Elizabeth Platt of Bearfoot Digital Art. She did an amazing job taking what we were envisioning as our Logo and creating something special for us.
When we came up with the name Sandstone Therapy, honoring Nevada’s State mineral, we immediately started thinking about the sandstone arches in the Valley of Fire State Park outside of Overton, Nevada. This is one of the most beautiful areas in the world with geological formations created by the Aztec Sandstone that runs throughout Arizona, California, and Nevada. The image of an arch is what we wanted for our logo. We imagined people crossing the arches to reach previously inaccessible areas they had never seen before. We thought of the layers of earth and sediment creating hypnotic patterns in the sandstone and how these layers were built by generations of growth and movement. We also thought of about sandstone being strong enough to survive millennia while still being fragile and vulnerable to outside changes.
We discussed this with our designer and what came back was perfect for us. The logo shows an arch over the name “Sandstone” in a font that reminds of long-lost shamanistic cultures. The arch links the gap between the beginning of the word and the end, much like the way therapists will link client’s beginnings to where they end up in therapy. The arch suggests a path, a way of reaching the other side, guided by Sandstone below. The colors are those found in the Valley of Fire, eliciting fire, sunlight, and the earth’s most ancient parts; colors that bring joy, excitement, and inspire change and action. The arch is reflected in the hot desert sand, creating a mirage that almost looks like it is formed in water. In the reflection, we see the word “Therapy” in waving cursive, reminding us that sometimes what we see is not always truth and why we need support from others who are trained in helping guide us. The shape this creates, a mirrored half-circle, further emphasizes the sense of motion and completion by reminding that if you follow a path with an expert guide, you can find your way regardless of where you start.
As you can see, we are extremely proud of this logo and have already posted it on just about everything, including the front door. So, if you happen to see this image around town, take a snapshot of it and let us know our name is getting out there! Drum roll please…
New Location!
We are excited to announce that with each of our therapists having been vaccinated, we have opened a physical office location! It has been about a year since we started Sandstone Therapy. In fact, it was at the beginning of March… in 2020… Yes, the timing couldn’t have been better. But after all this time focused on telehealth services, we were finally able to open an office location. We are currently partnered with Diverse Business Connections and are located at 800 E. College Parkway, Suite A here in good ol’ Carson City, Nevada. If you’re looking for us, head over to the Del Taco restaurant in North Carson City, and look West toward the mountains, that’s us!
Keep your eyes open for future blog posts as we will now be starting to do more public outreach and social media activity thanks to having a location to work from. See you there!
Why Sandstone Therapy?
About a year ago, well before the Pandemic had begun, Bodie Coates was approached almost simultaneously by Dr. Andrea Doran and Melinda Artz with the thought of someday starting a small private practice. Bodie had also been thinking of this, and he brought the 3 together to begin discussions.
In the beginning, we simply called this idea “the practice.” We knew we wanted to have something that reminded us of local, Nevada heritage. It was difficult to come up with something that didn’t sound robotic or unoriginal, but one day we sat down and started looking at the various things that make up our great state.
We thought about calling ourselves “Bighorn Therapy” in honor of our state animal, the Bighorn Sheep. We thought about variations of Silver and Opal, Nevada’s state metal and precious gemstone. We even considered various local plants like the Sagebrush and Indian Ricegrass… but it wasn’t until Bodie was reading off the symbols of the State of Nevada that we all suddenly agreed on the name. The moment the State rock was heard, each of us stopped and realized we should be Sandstone Therapy. We then conjured images of the beautiful sandstone arches and towers of the Valley of Fire, and began researching what sandstone meant to us locals.
Sandstone was chosen as Nevada’s State rock in 1987 as a result of the efforts of the children of Gene Ward Elementary School in Las Vegas. The beautiful formations created by millions of years of weathering reminded us of the way our clients weather so many storms and yet stand strong. The arches created by time reminded us of the way we therapists create a connection between us and our clients, forever striving to build rapport and encourage growth. The innumerable colorful layers sandstone creates reminded us of the way we often work with our clients to uncover their own layers of self, guiding them deep down into an understanding of their unconscious minds. We had not known how much sandstone would so perfectly represent our goals and purpose for opening our practice. This is how Sandstone Therapy was born and became a business on March 9th, 2020.
So next time you are walking around the Nevada State Capital and admiring all the local types of trees and plants, take a moment to notice that the Capital building is built out of Sandstone bricks, and let it inspire you to continue to believe in your strength, explore yourself, and connect with those you love.
Sandstone Therapy 