Breaking Free from Overfunctioning—Discover the Hidden Costs of Always Being 'The Responsible One’
Episode Notes
Are you always the one taking care of and fixing problems for everyone else?
Today, I'm taking a deep dive into the heart of overfunctioning—exploring why so many of us feel compelled to take on excessive responsibilities, often at the cost of our own well-being. I delve into parentification, which I believe often lies at the root of overfunctioning. I also share how understanding these dynamics through Mel Robbins' "Let Them Theory" can offer powerful insights for change.
Whether you're tired of always being 'the responsible one' or you're seeking to understand your deep-seated need to please others, this discussion will clarify the roots of these behaviors and guide you toward a path of healing and freedom.
Here’s what we cover:
*What is overfunctioning, and how does it impact your life?
*How childhood parentification fuels overfunctioning in adulthood
*5 clear signs you were parentified as a child
*3 practical steps to start healing
*How Mel Robbins’ Let Them Theory transforms boundary setting
Resources:
- The Best of You: Break Free from Painful Patterns, Mend Your Past, and Discover Your True Self in God by Dr. Alison Cook
- The Let Them Theory: A Life-Changing Tool That Millions of People Can't Stop Talking About by Mel Robbins
If you liked this, you’ll love:
- Episode 5: What is Codependency and Why Does it Matter?
Thanks to our sponsors:
- Go to www.organifi.com/bestofyou today and use code BESTOFYOU for 20% off your order today.
- This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/BESTOFYOU and get on your way to being your best self.
- Go to Quince.com/bestofyou for 365-day returns, plus free shipping on your order!
- Go to puritywoods.com/BESTOFYOU or enter code BESTOFYOU at checkout for an additional 10% off your first order.
Music by Andy Luiten/Sound editing by Kelly Kramarik
© 2024 Alison Cook. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Please do not copy or share the contents of this webpage without permission from the author. While Dr. Cook is a counselor, the content of this podcast and any of the products provided by Dr. Cook are not specific counseling advice nor are they a substitute for individual counseling. The content and products provided on this podcast are for informational purposes only.
Transcript:
Alison Cook: Hey everyone, and welcome back to this week's episode of The Best of You Podcast. I am so glad to be here with you this week. It's just me this week, and I have a topic that I've been working on a lot in my own life. I've been having a lot of conversations about this with other people, and I wanted to bring it to the podcast.
The topic is over-functioning. It's incredibly relevant for so many of us, especially here in these few weeks after the holidays. A lot of us have been doing this for the last few weeks, if not the last few months. Overfunctioning is when you take on more than your actual share of responsibilities.
We often are doing this to manage our own anxiety or fears or insecurities, and I've had so many conversations about this with other people, with friends, with clients, with family members, in addition to so many conversations with myself about these patterns. I've been working really hard on a lot of these patterns, especially this past year as I've gone through some transitional seasons, so it's very fresh for me personally.
I want to talk about today why it's so prevalent for us to find ourselves in this cycle of over-functioning. I also want to explore three very practical ways to begin to heal as we head into the new year and seek to become the best version of ourselves.
Here's the thing about over-functioning. It's not that we work too hard or we get caught up in the moment. It's a way that parts of us have learned to survive. It's when we're managing other people's emotions or behaviors, or we're managing their problems instead of primarily doing the work of managing ourselves, of attuning to our own emotions, our own behaviors, our own problems, which is our primary responsibility in this life before God and before other people.
A part of us has learned to focus all that attention outward onto other people. It's often linked to codependency, when we are so focused on managing other people's problems that we miss out on the more important work that God is inviting us to do inside our own selves.
This pattern of over-functioning manifests in several different ways. It can show up as compulsive people-pleasing, where we try to please others at the expense of staying true to ourselves. It can show up as compulsive peacekeeping, where we're constantly trying to manage other people's conflicts that have nothing to do with us, instead of regulating our own anxiety.
In the face of conflict, it can show up as compulsive perfectionism, where we're working so hard to earn the approval of others through our own performance, instead of attuning to our own needs, our own values, and our own worth.
For example, you might find yourself managing your own anxiety by constantly rushing in to solve your friend's problems before they've even asked for help. In many cases, you might catch yourself frantically cleaning up your kid's rooms or cleaning up their homework, taking on tasks that they are fully capable of handling themselves because it's easier and quicker and more instantly gratifying than working through your own fears or your own stress.
Maybe you're someone who, when your mom and your dad start to bicker with each other, or maybe your spouse and one of your children starts to argue, maybe you're someone who jumps in and constantly tries to interpret their words or reframe what they're saying. “What he really means is this…”
You expend all this effort trying to smooth things over, to prevent their conflict from escalating, instead of stepping back and letting them address and resolve their own differences.
We all find ourselves doing these things in some ways, but when it becomes compulsive, when we're doing it mindlessly, almost outside of our conscious awareness, when we're so reflexively jumping in to keep the peace, to please, or to perfect instead of hanging on to ourselves and attuning to our own selves, our own internal responses, it becomes a problem.
We are managing other people instead of doing the work of attending to and managing and leading ourselves through our own uncomfortable emotions.
One way to see if this is a problem is to wonder if this is something I'm doing compulsively. Or is every once in a while, where I'm impatient and I jump in to try to fix a problem that wasn't really mine to fix? Ask yourself this: for the most part, am I acting from a place of calm and regulation, or am I engaging in this behavior to avoid, to escape or to deny or to bypass my own uncomfortable feelings?
Am I jumping in to please this other person out of a conscious desire to be kind and compassionate in this moment? Or am I behaving reflexively? What comes out of my mouth is what I know they want to hear, and I wouldn't even know how to show up with this person from a self-regulated space, where I might say the kind thing that they want to hear from me in the moment, but I'm also free to say, gosh, I'm not sure I see it the same way you do.
Am I jumping in to pick up after my child or clean up their mess, whether it's a relational mess or whether it's a literal mess, am I doing that out of a conscious desire to help them because they're in a bad spot? Or am I jumping in because I can't stand the discomfort that I feel seeing their room or seeing their relationships or seeing their homework in this state?
Am I jumping into the middle of this conflict that these two other people have with each other because I've really thought about it and prayed about it, and I'm deeply aware that I have some tools that might help them and they seem open to that, so I'm willing to step in as an objective third party to empower them to make a change? Or am I jumping in reflexively in this moment because I cannot stand how I feel when other people are in conflict?
How you answer those questions is crucial to understanding whether you're genuinely helping someone out of an overflow of your own heart, or if you're unknowingly perpetuating a cycle of codependency. This is a journey that I've been on personally for years.
And while I have healed in many ways, I'm telling you, different life seasons resurrect old wounds in new ways. I turned 52 years old, and I'm, for the most part, now in an empty nest. There are different factors and variables in my life right now that create new opportunities for deeper healing.
As I've reflected on my own journey this past year, as I've really been working through a lot of these dynamics in my own soul, I have noticed how often messages like the following rise up in my soul.
“I only know how to feel love.”
That rings true for me a lot of the time, when I'm aware I'm reaching to meet a need to feel loved and to feel comforted or to feel encouraged–to feel consoled in my own life through providing those very same things to someone else.
It's as if a part of me projects my own emotional needs onto others, and then I work to care for those imagined needs in others, instead of first pausing to ask myself, wait a minute, does that other person that needs my caregiving right now, or is it a part of myself? Increasingly, I am aware that the part of me that is constantly showing me all this concern that it has for others is actually a cue that there's a part of me in need of my care.
As I've unpacked this in my own life and helped others to unpack it in theirs, there's a concept that is often at the root of this kind of compulsive over-functioning, where we constantly work to manage other people instead of doing the work of managing and caring for the parts of ourselves. The word is parentification.
This is when you've been conditioned since childhood to take care of other people. I talk about this in my book, The Best of You: Break Free from Painful Patterns, Mend Your Past, and Discover Your True Self in God. The whole book really is about healing from this specific pattern of pain, of over-functioning on behalf of others to the neglect of your own self.
One of the stories that didn't make it into the final cut of the book was about a client, Emily. I've changed her name to protect her identity, but she grew up in a home where her mother often turned to her as a confidant. As early as the age of eight, she would remember sitting at the kitchen table, where she would listen to her mom vent about her friends or her work, or even about Emily's father.
Emily would listen and really try to help her mom, and here's the memory that Emily would constantly go back to as we unpacked this: her mom would end these conversations by saying, you are such a good listener, Emily, I don't know what I’d do without you.
Think about the impact of those words on a young child's soul. You are such a good listener. I don't know what I'd do without you. Emily took that in at a young age and she began to become a master at reading other people's emotions. She began to detect, before her mom would even say anything to her, when she needed help cleaning up.
When her mom needed space, Emily would tiptoe away and stay out of her hair. When her mom needed the right words of comfort, Emily became a master at reading those cues externally and then getting that hit of dopamine. That hit felt so good when her mom would say, you're so amazing, Emily, I don't know what I would do without you.
A young part of Emily picked up the idea that she could get a hit of love or affection through taking care of somebody else. The problem is that as an adult, Emily began to notice that she often felt invisible in her relationships.
She was really good at showing up for other people in her life. She showed up for her friends. She showed up for her kids. She showed up for her spouse. She showed up for her colleagues, but she had this chronic lingering loneliness inside, like nobody sees me. Nobody knows me.
I have all these friends, I have all these people in my life who turn to me, but why do I feel so alone? As we began to unpack Emily's past, this term, parentification, became a really helpful naming that began to set her on a path toward healing.
Parentification is a role reversal in which a child steps into a caregiving role for their parent. And in this case, I'm speaking primarily about emotional support, when a child is expected to meet the emotional needs of their parent. It might look like being a confidant, a pseudo-therapist, or a mediator between a parent and another parent or between a parent and siblings.
Now listen, this isn't about the occasional moment when a child helps a parent out. Those can be healthy and character-building and really beautiful. When a child shows us a moment of empathy or compassion, we want to honor that in our child.
But this is a really different thing. This is a chronic pattern, where the child's role in the family is distorted, where they are conditioned to become essentially the primary caregiver, the parent in the family. In this sense, the parent really abdicates their role as the primary caregiver when it comes to emotional care in particular.
It can happen in other ways, but we're going to talk about the emotional piece of it in today's episode, where the parent is supposed to be providing the guidance, the wisdom, the support. But instead of doing that, they're instead receiving the care and guidance and support from their child.
This role reversal really disrupts your development when you're a child–it affects your emotional and psychological health. Here's the thing that is so important to understand; there is a power differential in a family. At its core, parentification distorts the natural power differential within a family. Adults hold the greater power emotionally, mentally, physically, spiritually. Children, on the other hand, are vulnerable.
A child's job is to rely on their caregivers to help them learn, to regulate their own emotions, to process complicated situations, and to set healthy boundaries with their own peers and even with their own family members. There are tasks children are simply not equipped to handle on their own.
The parent needs to be the primary caregiver in a family, so that a child knows what it feels like to receive care, to receive guidance, to receive support. This idea aligns beautifully with the biblical metaphor Jesus gives us for God as father or Abba, which translates to a deeply intimate and nurturing primary caregiver.
As humans, we look to God as bigger than us, as knowing more than us, as the one who provides, protects, and guides us. It's a beautiful relationship where we get to lean into God as that all knowing, all giving, all supporting being when we're feeling vulnerable or scared or broken down.
In a family system, while parents will never do this perfectly, we are entrusted as parents to reflect this type of nurturing Abba-like presence to our children. While we do this imperfectly, we still carry the responsibility that we have to shape our children's lives, and not the other way around.
So if a parent subverts that natural power differential and begins to lean on the child in a way that exploits the child's vulnerability, that family dynamic really shifts. Instead of being taught how to understand and regulate your emotions, you were leaned on as an emotional co-regulator for a parent or for a family member.
Instead of helping you process your own struggles, your own fears, your own insecurities, your own sensitivities, whether at school with friends or in your own family, you were groomed to serve as your parents' personal sounding board.
Instead of modeling healthy boundaries to protect emotional well being and physical space, you were constantly boundary-fouled. Your parent constantly overstepped the boundaries and placed inappropriate burdens on you.
So if you go back to Emily's story, let's say she's listening really attentively to her mom, and her mom says to her in that moment, Emily, you have such a kind heart. I love your empathy. I want you to know that these are my problems and I have other adults to work through these problems with. These are not your responsibility.
In fact, I want to be sure you're not feeling scared or anxious because somehow you've picked up on the fact that I'm feeling scared or anxious. I want you to know I'm okay. I'm getting the help I need. It's my job to be here for you. How are you doing in this moment?
When a child is over-functioning or stepping into the role of a parent or stepping into a role where they're taking on more responsibility than is theirs to take on, it's a parent's job to point that out. “This actually isn't your responsibility to step in here. So tell me a little bit about what that's about. What's going on inside of you?”
That's what a parent needs to do. As you can imagine, if that didn't happen for you, as an adult you're going to show some symptoms of that. Not only were you stepping into over-functioning through caring for your own parent, but you were being validated for it. You're being told, oh, I love this about you. I couldn't live without you. You take that with you into adulthood.
Here are five indicators that you may have been parentified as you struggle not to over-function in your adult relationships.
Number one, you struggle to identify your own needs. A part of you finds it easier to focus on others than to connect with your own feelings, desires, or needs. And this part often measures your self-worth based on your ability to satisfy the needs of others.
Number two, you feel responsible for other people's emotions. A part of you is hyper-attuned to the emotions of those around you. You feel responsible for their well-being, and this part of you feels guilty as if it's your fault when others are upset, angry, disappointed, or down, even when it has nothing to do with you.
Number three, you avoid conflict. A part of you tends to avoid conflict, and that part of you cannot stand the thought of someone else feeling uncomfortable as a result of your actions, even if they should feel uncomfortable because they're actually doing something that is wrong and you need to speak up and say, hey, I'm not comfortable with this.
That's going to evoke discomfort in them, and this part of you cannot stand that. It feels like anathema to you, and instead you sacrifice your own needs in the relationship so that they always feel good about themselves and never have to feel the pain of conflict. Conflict is healthy in relationships–we need to be able to enter into conflict to navigate through pain points in our relationships.
Number four, you experience hypervigilance, where you're always on duty. You're always on watch. I experienced this as an antenna part of me that's always out ahead of me, gauging what's happening in other people, gauging other people's facial expressions, gauging other people's subtext, gauging other people's moods.
It's constantly scanning for what others need, for what others are worrying about, for what others' expectations are in the moment, and feeding that information to me so that I can meet it, often before they even ask.
And I'll be honest with you. This vigilant part of me is often driven by number one, either a fear of abandonment, that if I don't anticipate and meet that need, I won't have a relationship with that person anymore, that I'll be cut off from that person. It's the only way that part of me knows how to experience connection.
Or number two, that part of me genuinely and sincerely believes that the other person can't manage without my help. And that's been a big one to unpack in my own life. What if there are other ways to experience healthy two-way connection? What if that other person not only can, but needs to learn to manage?
The fifth indicator that you have developed this pattern of over-functioning is that you have a lot of difficulty trusting others. A part of you, having been relied upon so heavily as a child, struggles to trust that someone else could actually show up for you when you need support or when you need a listening ear.
As a result, this part of you makes it hard for you to form balanced relationships where your needs are acknowledged as often and as frequently as you're acknowledging the needs of the other person.
If you've noticed any of these five indicators in your life, please know this is not your fault. This is a pattern that develops usually early in childhood and often as a result of parentification. It often begins with parents who were struggling in their own ways. So there's no blame here, but we do need to name it.
I have been over-functioning since I was eight years old. It's not going to change on a dime. There's a pattern here that I need to heal. And here is the good news–healing is possible. It's the work we're invited into. It’s the path that God invites each and every one of us on.
Naming is the marker at the beginning of the path. Oh, this is where I am. I'm an over-functioner. I tend to over-function. I have codependent patterns. I have no clue how to honor my own needs. This is the truth that sets us free, and we set down on the path of healing. We're getting there. God becomes the most wonderful sort of companion as we work to establish new ways.
The first of three steps to healing I want to share with you today is naming the pattern. Not only in general, but to begin to name it in the moment. Oh my goodness. I'm pleasing this person right now. I can't stop in this moment, but I'm aware I'm doing it. My reflex right now is to say whatever they want me to hear.
Just that awareness in and of itself is a huge step toward change. You might name it after the fact–oh my gosh, my spouse and my eldest son were in a conflict and I could not stop myself from intervening, from getting in the middle of it and it happened.
Noticing is what allows you to begin to blaze new neural pathways in your brain. It's going to take a few of those, where you notice it while it's happening or after it's happening, until you finally get to the point of realizing it before it happens and making a different choice.
When we can notice and name what's happening without shame, we get some distance from it and we begin to ask ourselves, what would it look like in that moment if I did make a different choice? What would it look like if, when I felt that anxiety inside of me, when two people in front of me are starting to fight, what if I got up and excused myself and left the room?
Could I really do that? It really starts with that internal what if-ing? What if I could make a different choice?
And this leads us to number two, where you reconnect to the part of yourself that has learned this strategy to survive. Oh my gosh. Right now, a part of me is scanning this Christmas dinner table and noticing which person is about ready to get angry or which person is about ready to feel hurt.
Instead of focusing on the other person or on other people, shift your attention to the part of you that's doing the scanning. I wonder what that's about. What is that part of me that is so invested in taking the temperature of everyone in the room? What does that part of me need from me right now?
What fears does this part of me have, if it weren't to do this job? What if I were to stop scanning everybody else and notice what I'm feeling in this moment?
Inevitably, when I start doing this work, when I slowly notice that part of me that's so tempted to read everybody else and I begin to attune to my own inner feelings, inevitably, I notice anxiety. I feel anxious right now. I don't like conflict. I want everyone to feel happy. And I begin to do the work of reparenting the parts of myself in need of care.
I let that part of me know it doesn't have to work so hard anymore. I play the role of the parent for that part of me, because that part of me is young. It's back in that eight year old self, thinking its job is to scan the needs of everybody else. And I let that part of me know, thank you so much for working so hard, but you don't have to do that job anymore. I'm here. I can handle it. You can rest inside my soul.
You begin to parent that part of you in a way that it never got parented.
Lastly, number three, as you begin to notice more of your own internal anxieties and fears that lead to the over-functioning and you begin to reorient to your own needs instead, then you can begin to set healthy boundaries with your impulse to over-function. Now, notice I didn't say set healthy boundaries with other people. I said, set healthy boundaries with your own impulse to over-function.
And here's why that's important to me. Part of why I wrote The Best of You is because I was concerned that most of the conversation about boundaries is written through the lens of saying no to other people, which if you think about it from this over-functioning lens, can easily become about managing other people.
I need to say no to other people because then they'll stop doing this thing. The focus is on other people. And that isn't helpful to those of us who over-function by managing other people. Instead, think about boundaries as figuring out what you want to say yes to inside your own self.
So for example, I don't like family conflict. I feel anxious. Instead of managing others, what other choice do I wish to make in this moment? Do I wish to leave or excuse myself from the room? Do I wish to limit the time that I'm present at these types of gatherings? You flip it from “I'm going to say no to other people”, to “What do I want?” instead.
What would I do if it weren't my job to intervene in this conflict that someone else is having? What would I do with my time if I weren't compulsively fixing other people's problems? What would I want to do in this moment if I wasn't cleaning up other peoples’ problems?
Let yourself wonder. It might take a while to answer those questions. This is the harder part of the equation. What would I do instead right now if I didn't race in to clean up that mess that someone else made?
One of the tools that I have found recently that has been really helpful for me on this boundary setting journey is by Mel Robbins, and she's got a new book out. It's called The Let Them Theory. It's everywhere. I highly recommend it. I would love to get Mel on the podcast. She's super busy, understandably, so I'm going to briefly use her words, but go check out her book to get the full deep dive on it.
She uses these two steps in the context of over-functioning. The first part of it is to let them have their mess. Let them have their disappointment. Let them have their emotions. Let them engage in that conflict that's not in my control, that's not mine to manage. That's the first part, recognizing that it's not mine to manage.
The second part of her theory, and this part is a lot harder and it gets at boundaries work, is let me. What can I control? What can I manage? What I can manage is myself. So I'm going to let them have their reaction, have their conflict, but then I'm going to let me choose to remove myself.
I'm going to let them work through their own problem that they created, and then I'm going to take a deep breath and I'm going to let me do something really nice for myself, because it's really hard for me to watch someone else suffer the consequences of their own actions.
That second part, what she calls “let me”, gets at this proactive side of boundary setting. We have to go, what do I need to do in this situation to take care of myself, to manage myself, to regulate myself?
This is a tool that honors our own agency. We let other people be responsible for themselves, and that allows us to take responsibility for what's ours, for our own anxiety, for what actually helps me. When I feel anxious, what soothes me? When I'm fearful, what makes me feel supported or connected or cared for?
Man, that is next level healing, when we actually start to tap into what we need from other people, what we need from God, what we need from our family members and from our friends to thrive and feel supported and loved.
When you shift away from managing other people to leading and nurturing and caring for and reparenting the parts of your own soul in partnership with God's spirit, you create an oasis of goodness and kindness and calm inside your own soul. And from this place of taking charge of your own self, you can begin to empower others in their own healing journeys.