Ironically, the way we’re taught to break the habit of over-giving is to give more, in this case, more to ourselves, with better “self-care.” While this sounds like a wise solution, adding this new item to our to-do list (self-care) essentially means that we should continue doing everything asked of us, fulfilling all responsibilities and demands (over-giving), but on top of it, should also squeeze in a spa treatment—for ourselves. And furthermore, if we don’t or won’t, then we’re responsible for our own exhaustion.

The reality is that far too many people “self-care” by anesthetizing and medicating themselves. Alcohol, food, shopping, Xanax, the smartphone—there are infinite options for dysfunctional “self-care,” ways to dull and avoid feeling what they feel, and experiencing the consequences of over-giving exhaustion and emotional burnout. Unfortunately, while squeezing in pampering sessions and checking out of reality may temporarily and superficially ease our exhaustion, in the long run, they don’t work, not with any sustainable results.

Noticing Your Choices

The first step in breaking the over-giving habit is awareness, that is, to start noticing the choices you’re making and how they’re impacting you. This requires that you get honest with yourself about how you’re choosing to give your time, attention, and energy. Ask yourself what it’s actually like to be you and live the way you’re living; how does so much giving affect your mental state, mood, vitality, and ultimately, happiness?

Simultaneously, it’s important to ask yourself what you really need, apart from what you’ve been taught you should need, to shake off the cultural narrative and conditioning about what should take care of you. The shift is to start noticing what really does take care of you, what nourishes and replenishes you. Notice when you feel fed, taken care of—for real, not just on a temporary or surface level, but deep down inside you.

Once you’re more aware of (and honest about) your own experience, a next and critical question emerges, or rather, shifts. When taking on caregiving responsibilities, the question that matters is not “Can I do this?” but “Can I do this… and be well?” It’s not enough to ask the question, however, you must also be willing to heed its answer. That is, if the truth is no, you can’t be well, your answer to whether you can help or give more, may also have to be “no.”

Understanding Yourself

The next step in this un-doing/unlearning process is investigating the roots of your over-giving. Specifically, getting curious about why you take on so much. What’s in the way of considering your own well-being, making yourself (also) important? What are your underlying beliefs about taking care of others and what you deserve? Are you afraid to stop giving so much, wary of the judgments (internal and external) if you didn’t give so much? Is there a belief that nothing gets done or done right if you don’t do it? What’s in your wheelhouse of beliefs about giving?

Whatever you find when you investigate your own mind, the most important thing is that you welcome it with an attitude of kindness and curiosity. This newfound awareness is not to be used as a weapon against yourself, to give you more artillery with which to shame and blame yourself. It is meant as a tool to help you recover from over-giving and, thereby, to help you. With that said, if you’re not willing to offer yourself a friendly attitude, to be genuinely curious (not judgmental) about your own conditioning, then it’s best not to investigate at all. (You can, however, be friendly toward your unwillingness to be friendly…but more on that later.)

Saying No

Still, you cannot change your behavior or break a habit just by asking new questions, you have to do things differently; you have to change your behavior. Step three is to start practicing saying “no.” Put “no” into your vocabulary in small (and big) ways, say it without apologizing, making fun of yourself, throwing yourself under the bus, or trying to convince the other person that you deserve to say “no.” The practice, at a deeper level, is about learning to tolerate the experience of not being who the other person wants you to be, and being able to bear their disappointment.

I can remember the first time I said “no” without an apology, story, or justification attached. The class mom at my daughter’s school had asked me to head the committee for the school carnival, and I responded with a simple, “No, I’m not going to be able to do that.” Looking confused, she asked me why, to which I kindly responded, “Because I don’t want to.”

And that was it. I didn’t offer a heartfelt apology, complicated explanation, justification, or anything else. I didn’t start offering her other options for fixing her problem. “I don’t want to” was the full sentence. I stood still and said nothing after those four words.

In that somewhat awkward and uncharted silence, it is not an exaggeration to say that a new me was born. And with her, a new life. Willing to respectfully present my truth, let it stand on its own, and let my experience be enough, was the direct embodiment of knowing that my experience matters, that I matter. It was a deeply empowering moment, and a life-changing paradigm shift.

So many people, intelligent, articulate people, struggle with the language around “no,” as in, how to actually say “no.” As one client expressed with genuine confusion, “What words would I actually use to say ‘no’?’” Well, the answer is simpler than you might make it. “No” is the word for no. And furthermore, “no” is a complete sentence, even though we’re taught it’s not enough and must come with an apology or explanation. If you’re trying to find the words for a “no,” the rule of thumb is to say less rather than more, say what you need to say and then close your mouth. Your job is simply to convey the necessary information, not to make the other person happy or solve their situation. Think “just the facts, ma’am, just the facts.”

Asking for Help

Next comes the all-important step of asking for help and delegating responsibility, building the courage to rely on and receive from others. Many people are too afraid or ashamed to ask for help. They don’t believe they deserve it, or that anyone would want to help them. So too, they think they should be able to do everything by themselves, without help. Asking for help is seen as a failure. Recovering from the habit of over-giving requires a willingness to challenge the belief that you don’t deserve to be helped, and that saying “no” is a failure. It requires getting honest with yourself, and accepting that maybe you cannot do it all, not without sacrificing your own well-being.

Get curious about when you’re choosing not to ask for help. When do you reject or ignore opportunities to delegate and take some of the burden off of you? Kindly ask yourself, “What are you afraid of? What do you believe about asking for help?” The willingness to face this fear and challenge these beliefs is a key factor in this habit-breaking process.

To change any habit, we have to change—how we act, think, and relate to ourselves and others. It’s no different with the habit of over-giving. In part 4 of this series, I’ll dive into the acceptance piece of change—allowing ourselves to be who we are, and accept our own truth. Learning to grant ourselves the grace that we so willingly (and unquestionably) extend to others, and how to start acknowledging (and living from) who we are, rather than who we should be.

The post Why It’s So Exhausting to Be the One Everyone Counts On appeared first on Nancy Colier.

Sharing a truth we think will be displeasing, inconvenient, or disappointing brings anxiety, guilt, and even fear. If it’s not absolutely necessary, we often don’t share it at all. But sometimes, we have to say something someone doesn’t want to hear.

To manage this conflict, we develop all sorts of strategies, the most common of which is to apologize for who we are and how we feel. We apologize in a thousand different ways… for having an experience that’s not OK for someone else. While apologizing, we often throw ourselves under the bus and criticize ourselves as a gift to the disappointed listener. We blame ourselves and feel guilty—for not being able to offer a more likable truth and likable us.

So, too, we justify our experience and explain, usually in multiple ways, why it makes sense for us to feel the way we do. We twist ourselves into all sorts of distorted shapes and perform high-level mental gymnastics to convince the other person that our truth is valid, understandable, and shouldn’t make us unlikable. And therefore, why they should give us permission to own it.

If apologizing and justifying don’t assure/save our likability, we move on to other strategies, attempting to explain why our truth should be OK for the other person. Not just why we’re justified in feeling the way we do, but why wanting what we want is actually a good thing and will work for the other—not just us (which would be unacceptable).

If plans A, B, and C don’t succeed at making everyone OK, we start rolling back our truth. We agree to a more likable version of what we need, or we abandon our truth altogether and agree to whatever is better for the other person to keep the peace and retain our likability.

In learning to communicate more authentically, many women struggle with the actual language to use.

Women ask me all the time: “What do I actually say when they ask me why I can’t or don’t want to do it?” “How do I explain my truth when it’s not OK with someone else?” “What do I say that’s not nasty but also doesn’t apologize for or cancel what I want?” It’s strange, but we don’t learn the language of sharing and standing in our truth.

To start with, something women are never taught is this: “No” is a complete sentence. Even though we think “No” needs to be followed up with a thousand other words, justifications, apologies, and sweeteners, it doesn’t. It’s a stand-alone word.

While an unadorned “No” may be the most direct, sometimes it just doesn’t feel right to only say that. And so you can also say things like: “That doesn’t work for me,” “I actually don’t want that,” and “I’m not comfortable with that.” These are just some examples of words we can use when sharing displeasing truths. Adding in “right now” can also soften the blow of delivering a difficult truth, as in “That’s not going to work for me right now.” Play with it; the skill is to keep your words short and simple, say less, not more, and stick to what’s true for you.

At the end of the day, the way to stop taking responsibility for other people’s responses to your truth is to practice not taking responsibility. Even if you still feel to blame, guilty, and desperately uncomfortable on the inside, the idea is to keep your mouth shut and refrain from reacting to that guilt. As you stand there with your mouth shut, not rushing to apologize or make it more comfortable, it can be helpful to repeat a mantra inside your head as a way to distract your mind from instinctively apologizing or justifying and also support yourself in this change process. “I’m not responsible for their feelings,” “It’s not my fault,” “They can figure it out,” “It’s not my job,” and “Say nothing” are mantras that may prove helpful. Use whatever keeps your mind occupied so you don’t react in the old habitual ways. This is a skill that gets easier with time and practice.

The notion that you are responsible for everyone else’s feelings is also a shared belief in our culture. That said, there’s a good chance you will be actively blamed for your unwanted truth and accused of causing the other’s upset. When someone tries to engage you in this way and insists that you’re responsible for their feelings, you can actively choose not to bite the hook, not to engage in this codependent system. You can stay quiet and silently repeat your mantra inside your head as many times as you need, which may be hundreds of times. You can also repeat your initial words out loud, “That doesn’t work for me,” “I’m not comfortable with that,” or just simply “No”—but without the apology that instinctively follows it.

The reality, however, is that we do care about other people’s feelings and don’t want others to be upset. We’re not unrelated, and it often doesn’t feel right not to address another’s experience, particularly when it’s in response to our words. Not all of this is about our conditioning; we are still human beings who care about other people.

And yet, there are ways to empathize without abandoning yourself, rejecting or distorting your truth, and fixing their experience. If it’s true, you can say things like “I’m sorry that this is upsetting or disappointing for you” (which is different than apologizing for your truth). Or perhaps, “I wish this weren’t difficult for you to know,” or some other sentence that attends to their experience, but without taking responsibility for it, making yourself guilty, or trying to make them OK. The point is to be intentional and deliberate about your words—to not engage in the entangled and archaic system that holds you back and disconnects you from your authenticity and power.

Despite what you’ve been taught, you are not responsible for other people’s happiness.

When what you want is unwanted, you’re not to blame and don’t need to apologize. Learning to speak your truth and then to stop speaking—not to sweeten, adjust, or abandon your truth to make it “work”—is one of the greatest skills you can learn. Know this too: When you get the hang of staying silent after sharing an uncomfortable truth, of not fixing what’s unlikable, that gap of unfilled space can shift from feeling scary and awkward to feeling exciting and empowering. You are literally standing on new ground and, most importantly, standing in your own shoes and showing up as your authentic self!

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