SELF-CARE: How to Stop Overgiving & Get More Balance in Your Life + FREE Self-Care Time Hacker
I’m not proud of it. But years and years ago, I spent a lot of time feeling incredibly frustrated with my partner, my family members, and even some of my friends.
Why?
Because as I shared in last week’s post on overgiving, I used to be the poster child for overgiving. And I was miserable as a result.
I spent decades suffering as an overgiver because I was completely unaware that my giving was unhealthy. In my mind, I was the generous, obedient person who always simply did what other people asked or expected me to do.
From my perspective, it was their fault that I felt so frustrated at times. They were the ones who were expecting me to give, give, and give all the time. And even though I constantly did things for them at the expense of my own well-being, they were the ones who never showed the least bit of appreciation for it.
What I didn’t understand at the time was that it was this very kind of thinking that kept me trapped on the overgiving train for such a long time as I thought I was doing “the right thing”. Specifically, I couldn’t put an end to my overgiving and create balance in my life because I didn’t understand who was really responsible for my overgiving. And on top of that, I wasn’t even aware I was overgiving.
You know what, though, my friend? YOU don’t need to spend decades suffering as an overgiver or struggling to figure out how to stop being one.
Because in this blog post, I share the key to stopping overgiving in its tracks and getting your much-needed time and energy back.
So if you’re the type of person who always says “yes” with a smile on their face but secretly feels frustrated or resentful behind everyone’s back, stick with me.
Below, I’ll tell you exactly what to do to feel like YOU are the one in control of your time, schedule, and life.
Here we go!
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Understand Your Power
Stopping overgiving really all comes down to understanding your power.
Why? Because when you understand your power, you’re able to uncover where your overgiving actually comes from in the first place.
You see, as overgivers, we feel resentful of the people we overgive to because we think that they are the reason we lack the time, energy, and balance we need to be happy. We see them as people who take advantage of our kindness and generosity. And we think, “If only my friends and family didn’t shamelessly expect me to do things for them all the time. Then, I’d have the time to do the things I want to do, and I’d be happy.”
The reality, though, is that it isn’t our partner, family members, or friends who make us overgive. Instead, we make the decision to overgive (although we don’t necessarily make this decision consciously).
You see, most of us overgive because we were socialized to overgive. For example, maybe you grew up in a family where you had to overgive to your parents to ensure your safety or receive love from them. If you needed to overgive to have your physical or emotional needs met, you would have learned that overgiving was a way to maintain relationships, avoid rejection, and ensure your survival.
Alternatively or in addition to this, you might have grown up with a parent or another caregiver who was an overgiver themselves. By modelling overgiving, they taught you that overgiving was a good thing—that it was key for navigating relationships successfully and receiving approval or praise. And as a child, there’s nothing more powerful than seeing someone you love and trust behave in a way that seems effective and advantageous.
In either case, you learned to overgive as a child. And as you became an adult, it was all too easy to keep approaching relationships in the same way. After all, when you were a kid, overgiving either made you feel good or allowed you to avoid feeling bad. So it only made sense that you would keep overgiving as an adult.
When you don’t know that your overgiving stems from your childhood or other experiences that you’ve had, it’s easy to believe that it’s something that other people make you do.
But once you recognize that overgiving is something you do out of a habit that you developed long ago, it’s easier to understand that you play an important role in your overgiving. And as we’ll talk about next, understanding the role you play in your overgiving empowers you to break free of it.
Embrace Your Choice to Break Free
If you feel embarrassed or ashamed to realize that you play a key role in your overgiving, I get it. It’s never easy to look inward and acknowledge something about ourselves that isn’t flattering.
What I hope you can find some comfort in, though, is that it’s a good thing to be the one who’s responsible for your overgiving. Because even though it often feels easier to point the finger at other people when we feel bad about something, it’s often pretty difficult to change other people. In comparison, although it can take some work to change something within yourself, it’s 100% within your control to DECIDE that you want to change and to take the steps to do it.
Once you claim your power to both overgive and to put an end to your overgiving, you can work toward inner change. Specifically, you can identify the need that your overgiving fulfills and take steps to address this need or fulfill it in other, healthier ways.
For example, if you overgive because you have a fear of saying “no” and creating conflict, you can look inward to uncover why you have this fear and how you developed it. Maybe, for instance, your parents punished you as a child for saying “no” to them. And as a result, you developed a strong fear of saying “no” to people and learned to quell this fear by always saying “yes.” Through inner work, you can break through this fear of saying “no” and, therefore, eliminate your need to overgive.
Similarly, if you overgive to earn praise and validation, you can work toward recognizing that happiness and satisfaction come from within. Sure, healthy relationships bring love and joy to your life. But the only person who can truly affirm your worth is YOU. Once you recognize this, you can work on building self-love so that you no longer feel compelled to seek validation externally through overgiving.
As you can see, the specific inner work that will help you break free of your overgiving will depend on WHY you overgive in the first place. But regardless of the specific root cause, stopping overgiving comes down to identifying why you overgive and addressing this reason head on.
Give Yourself Permission to Redirect Your Giving
Addressing the need that your overgiving fulfills is an important part of stopping overgiving. But it’s also important to give yourself permission to redirect your giving—either toward yourself or to people you genuinely want to give to.
A good way to do this is to make a list of all the ways that you give. Include not just the giving you do toward individual people but also any responsibilities or commitments that involve giving. This includes being part of the parents’ association at your kids’ school, participating in the annual neighborhood yard sale, or volunteering as a moderator of an advocacy-based Facebook group.
Once you’ve made your list, go through each item and identify whether it’s a type of giving that you genuinely and authentically want to do. For each item that you’ve identified as overgiving, think about how you might be able to scale back or stop altogether (either immediately or within some timeframe).
For example, maybe you decide that you will immediately stop participating in the annual neighborhood yard sale. You’ll also resign from your position on the parents’ association, but you’ll wait until the end of the school year when it’ll be easier to replace you.
When you give yourself permission to scale back your overgiving, you also give yourself permission to spend your time and energy in the ways that you actually want to. If you’ve been overgiving for months, years, or decades, reducing your overgiving will give you much-needed time and energy to focus on your needs and desires. You might finally have time to prep the healthy meals you’ve been wanting to eat, take up cycling, or even just treat yourself to a massage.
Scaling back your overgiving also frees up time and energy to give to others in ways that you genuinely want to. For example, maybe you have an aunt who you don’t get to see as much as you’d like to because you’re stretched so thin. When you give yourself permission to scale back on the giving that you don’t want to be doing, you’ll have more time to visit her and give in other ways that are authentic to you.
Check in with Yourself When You Give
I mentioned earlier in this post that overgiving is an ingrained habit. That’s why even when you know why you do it and are taking steps to stop, it’s easy to fall back into the habit from time to time.
For example, let’s say that you’ve made a commitment with yourself to stop volunteering to organize social events at work. You’ve recognized that you do it because you like the praise you get for doing it, and you’re working on finding this validation internally instead.
But then one of your colleagues approaches you and asks if you could just organize one last holiday party because “you’re so good at it” and they haven’t been able to find anyone else to do it instead. You might feel compelled to just agree and think, “Well, I’ll just do it again this one time.” The reality, though, is that when you’re knee deep in party planning while wrapping up a massive project before the holidays, you’ll regret it and feel resentful.
That’s why it’s helpful to check in with yourself whenever you make a decision about giving. Specifically, before you commit to giving, think about WHY you’re doing it. Are you giving because you genuinely want to give? Or are you giving because you’re worried about saying “no” or want validation from someone? If you’re giving for the latter reason, it’s a sign that the giving might not be authentic or healthy for you.
You can also do a check-in with yourself to assess how you genuinely feel about an ongoing form of giving. For example, if you’re not sure whether pet sitting for a neighbor is something you really want to be doing, think about how you feel after you pet sit. Do you feel energized, fulfilled, or full of love? Or do you feel annoyed, drained, or resentful? If you feel unhappy or depleted after pet sitting, you probably don’t genuinely want to do it.
Checking in with yourself to understand why you’re giving and how it makes you feel can help you identify when giving is right for you and when it isn’t.
YOU Have the Power to Stop Overgiving
If you’re an overgiver, it’s easy to blame your exhaustion, unhappiness, and resentment on the people you overgive to.
But the reality is that you’re not depleted, unfulfilled, and resentful because people in your life take advantage of you and make you overgive. Instead, you feel this way because you have a habit of giving to fulfill an important unmet met.
The good news is that because your reason for overgiving comes from within, your power to break free from it lies there too. That’s why the key to stopping overgiving is to recognize this power and step into it.
It’s by looking within and understanding why you habitually overgive that you’re able to uncover what it is within yourself that needs some love and attention. And it’s how you ultimately address the unmet need that fuels your overgiving so that you can have better balance in your life.
As I mentioned in the section on redirecting your giving, creating time and energy for self-care is an important step in breaking free of overgiving.
The tricky thing is that because we’re so used to doing things for everyone BUT ourselves, it can be easy to postpone self-care or push it to the backburner if we think there’s something “more important” that we need to do.
That’s why I created the Self-Care Time Hacker.
The free Self-Care Time Hacker makes it easy to create time for self-care in your schedule and actually follow through with this commitment to yourself.
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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