SELF-CARE: How Being Overly Responsible Sabotages Your Loved Ones & Relationships + FREE Break Through Overresponsibility Worksheet
When I used to take responsibility for my parents’ feelings, I thought I was helping them.
I thought that when I apologized for, made up for, or even changed choices I made that my parents didn’t like, I was doing them a favor.
In my mind, I was helping them go from feeling upset, disappointed, or abandoned to feeling happy again.
After all, no one wants to feel sad or angry when they can feel happy instead, right?
And isn’t it better if someone else can do the work of making you happy again instead of having to figure it out for yourself, especially if they are the reason why you’re upset?
That’s what I thought.
But I was wrong—and not just about being the reason why my parents were upset about my choices.
I was also wrong about the impact I had on my parents when I took responsibility for their feelings.
You see, I thought I was helping them. And in the short term, I might have been.
In the long run, though, I was actually limiting their happiness.
That’s the sneaky thing about overresponsibility. On the surface, it seems like a helpful thing for the people you love. But in reality, it can limit their joy, confidence, competence, and growth. And it can make it really hard to maintain strong, healthy relationships with them.
My dear, if YOU are someone who struggles with overresponsibility, I know that you really care about the people you love.
But the truth is that your overresponsibility could be holding them back from living a full life. And it could be jeopardizing your relationships with them in the process.
I have good news, though: there are ways to break free of your overresponsibility and stop it from limiting your loved ones and your relationships.
And in this blog post, I’m going to explain what they are.
Keep reading below to learn how overresponsibility can harm your loved ones and what to do about it so that you can support not sabotage your loved ones and relationships.
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How Being Overly Responsible Sabotages Your Loved Ones
You don’t let them do things for themselves
When you take responsibility for people’s choices, actions, and feelings, it might seem like you’re being generous because you’re doing something for them.
For example, imagine that your son has a habit of sleeping through his alarm every morning. By the time he finally wakes up, it’s too late for him to walk to school and be on time. So what do you do? You drive him to school on days that he wakes up late (which seems to be pretty much every morning lately). And you end up being late for work as a result.
It might seem like you’re being generous or even just “being a responsible parent” by driving your son to school when he wakes up late. After all, if you don’t drive him, he’s going to get into trouble for being late and will also miss part of his first class.
But the reality is that if your son is old enough to get himself ready for the day and walk to school, he can take responsibility for waking up and getting to school on time. So if you jump in to save the day every time that he sleeps in, it takes away his chance to learn that’s it’s important to make sure that he can get himself to school on time. It also prevents him from learning that he needs to take responsibility for his mistakes, such as sleeping in on a school day.
Of course, kids aren’t the only ones who need opportunities to learn to take responsibility for themselves. Adults do too. That’s why you sabotage your mom’s growth when you bend over backwards to keep your mom happy and make her feel better whenever she’s upset. By trying to manage her emotions for her, you take away the opportunity for her to learn how to manage them herself. This is important because just like you won’t always be around to drive your son to school or work in the morning, you won’t always be available to manage your mom’s emotions.
Does this sound familiar?
You give unsolicited advice instead of support
If you take responsibility for other people’s feelings and choices, you might have a habit of giving them advice whenever they tell you about an issue (even if advice isn’t what they want or need).
For example, let’s say that your friend Maria comes to you feeling upset and starts telling you about the issues she’s been having with her boyfriend, Sam. Maria has a history of dating men who aren’t right for her and getting hurt as a result. To you, Sam seems no different from Maria’s previous partners. So you’re not surprised that Maria is having issues in her relationship with him.
When Maria tells you about what’s been happening with Sam, you might immediately tell her that she should break up with him and find someone who’s different from the guys she’s been dating lately. To you, it might make sense to respond like this because you feel responsible for ensuring that Maria makes good choices and feels happy. And in your mind, giving her a solution to the problem she’s facing is a way to achieve both goals.
But because you immediately jump to handing out advice to Maria, you don’t even realize that the first thing Maria needs is someone who can just listen and offer empathy. Maria is experiencing a lot of intense feelings right now, but she doesn’t need you to fix or change them. She simply needs someone to listen to her express them and to respond with empathy. When you rush to give Maria advice, you don’t meet her need to have an empathic, supportive ear.
By always jumping to fix people’s problems, you might think that you’re giving them the “solution” they need. But because your loved ones might not want or need a solution, you might be addressing a need that doesn’t exist while completely missing their need for empathy and support. And because your loved one isn’t getting the support they need from your relationship with them, it could also limit your ability to enjoy a deep connection with them.
You disregard their autonomy
When you believe that you’re responsible for other people’s feelings and choices, you might also disregard their autonomy by telling them how to fix or change their life.
If you tell your friend Maria that she should break up with her boyfriend, Sam, and date a different kind of guy, you might think that you’re helping Maria by figuring out the solution to her problem for her.
But Maria is an adult who’s fully capable of making the choices that she wants to and believes are right for her. She gets to decide whether she ends the relationship with Sam and who to date afterward if she does. You might not agree with Maria’s choices, but this doesn’t make them wrong. Plus, because you aren’t Maria, you’re not in a position to know what’s truly right for her.
So when you try to tell Maria what she should do so that she can “fix” her feelings and choices, you violate her right to steer the ship of her own life. You don’t let her exercise her autonomy to make the choices that she wants to and experience the outcomes of these choices (whether they’re good or bad). You also implicitly communicate that Maria isn’t capable of making good choices or that you don’t trust her to make good choices.
Over time, Maria might begin to feel that you’re imposing your beliefs and opinions on her, and she may become resentful about it. This could gradually strain your relationship and make it hard to truly see each other in the way that’s necessary to enjoy an emotionally close bond.
How to Stop Sabotaging Your Loved Ones and Relationships with Overresponsibility
Now that you understand how overresponsibility can sabotage your loved ones and your relationship with them, you might be wondering what you can do to stop it.
Here are 3 steps you can take:
1. Respect your loved ones’ autonomy
One way to stop your overresponsibility from affecting your loved ones and relationships is to respect the autonomy of your loved ones. This means understanding that your loved ones have the right and the ability to make the choices that they believe are right for them.
Respecting other people’s autonomy can be challenging at first if you’re used to always giving people advice or “fixing” their problems. You might not understand or agree with the choices that they make. And you might worry about them being harmed by their choices.
But remember that it isn’t your job to “save” your loved ones from situations that you think will hurt them. It’s your job to understand their right to autonomy and trust that they can make their own decisions. Because when you give your loved ones that chance to make their own choices, you liberate them and give them the chance to be their authentic selves.
2. Reframe your role in their lives
If you’re overly responsible because you think you need to “save” your kid from their mistakes or help your friend make good decisions that she can’t make on her own, it might feel very scary to relinquish your responsibility. After all, if these people need you to succeed, avoid failure, or be happy, what will happen to them if you take a step back and let them take on these responsibilities for themselves?
Remember, though, that when you always do things for other people or “fix” their problems, you deny them the chance to learn how to do these things for themselves. So by relinquishing the responsibility to always “save” them, you actually grant them the opportunity to develop their skills, whether it’s learning how to be on time for commitments or making healthy life choices.
When you reframe stopping your overresponsibility as “helping a loved one grow and learn,” it can make it easier to let go of the reins and hand them over to the person they truly belong to. It also allows you to see that you’re actually helping your loved ones MORE when you give them the space to learn how to fulfil their responsibilities themselves.
For example, when you make it your son’s responsibility to wake up and get to school on time, he might arrive late at school for the first few days and get into trouble as a result. By once he learns the importance of arriving on time for commitments and how to make sure that he’s on time, he’ll have a lifelong skill and won’t be dependent on a parent, roommate, or partner to make sure that he’s punctual.
3. Return responsibilities that belong to others
Of course, a critical step of stopping overresponsibility and its toxic effects is to actually return responsibilities to their rightful owners. For example, this could mean handing back the responsibility of waking up and arriving at school on time to your son. Or it could mean returning the responsibility of managing your mom’s emotions to your mom.
When returning responsibilities, keep in mind that you don’t have to relinquish all of your false responsibilities at the same time. Instead, feel free to take baby steps by starting with one responsibility that doesn’t belong to you. Once you hand back this responsibility, identify another false responsibility and return that one. As you become more comfortable with returning responsibility, you can work on returning multiple responsibilities at the same time until you’ve cleared your plate of overresponsibility.
Be prepared for the possibility that when you return responsibilities, your loved ones might need some time to learn how to handle their responsibilities successfully. So they might initially make mistakes, experience failure, or feel stressed or upset. If this happens, you might be very tempted to rush back into the picture and try to save them. But remember that your loved one is capable enough to figure their responsibilities out and will be much better off in the long run if you give them space to grow.
Overresponsibility Does NOT Help Your Loved Ones
Being overly responsible is a bit like letting your friend copy your math homework.
In the short term, it might help your friend out because they’ll be able to get good grades without having to put in the work themselves. But in the long run, it prevents them from gaining the skills they need to succeed and be happy on their own.
After all, the reality is that even if you live until you’re 100 years old, you won’t always be physically and emotionally present to help your friend out of every tough situation in life. So even if your overresponsibility keeps her happy, comfortable, and out of trouble now, it won’t be able to forever. In fact, it might even set her up for MORE unhappiness or failure in the future when the stakes are higher.
In both this blog post and the one I recently published on how overresponsibility harms your mental health, I shared some of my top strategies for stopping overresponsibility in its tracks.
The reality, though, is that you’re most likely to succeed in breaking free of overresponsibility when you’re aware of just how much you take on responsibilities that aren’t yours. That’s why I encourage you to grab a copy of my FREE Break Through Overresponsibility Worksheet.
This FREE worksheet will help you recognize the extent to which you take on other people’s responsibilities. And it’ll show you how to return these responsibilities to their rightful owners.
And if you haven’t done so already, follow me on my Facebook page Vera Velini – The Assertive Happiness Coach. That way, you’ll be among the first to hear about new blog posts, resources, and courses.
Until next time!
Vera
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