Overfunctioning
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Rebecca Hunter, MSW: [00:00:00] Thanks for listening to Take Out Therapy, where you can improve your mental health, emotional stability, and life skills in less than 20 minutes a week. Simple, straightforward, authentic advice and education, right from a private practice therapist and anxiety expert. I'm Rebecca Hunter, and this is better mental health, delivered.
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Okay, so on today's podcast, I want to talk about a very touchy subject. Because we all try our best every single day in life. And [00:02:00] we're trying to be kind and nurturing to other people and make sure we're good at being in relationships. But a lot of times this can lead to what we call over functioning. Do you know anyone who's always doing things for other people, like maybe cleaning up after them, making sure they don't forget things, reminding them to care for themselves. Reminding them to care for others or pets. Right. So sometimes where we end up with this type of behavior is that we feel like no, one's really doing anything right. You know, and that we have to kind of jump in there and do it for them. Do you know anybody who feels like they have to do it because no one else is gonna do it right. Yeah, maybe you are this person. Maybe I am sometimes this person. Right. [00:03:00] Overfunctioning can lead us to try to help people feel better all the time, whether we are over supporting them with this, that, or the other thing. What we're really doing is trying to feel like people are happy and comfortable in their lives. Are you relating to this?
Because today I'm going to help you identify overfunctioning in your own life and stop. Because here's the deal when we function on behalf of other adults, or honestly like when other adults function on behalf of us. It's really disempowering. What do I mean by disempowering? Like if I keep doing things for my adult children that they really need to be doing for themselves, for example, like making their own dentists appointments or doctor's appointments or. Um, canceling that gym membership. When we [00:04:00] function on behalf of other people and do the things for them that they need to be doing for themselves. It leads them to feeling like maybe they don't need to do those things for themselves, or honestly, maybe they can't do those things for themselves.
So it takes away the opportunity for other people to just gain confidence. Right. When we are trying to help people feel better. We're actually not allowing them to express their actual feelings. You know what I mean by that, like, when someone's really upset and we're very busy, helping them feel better. Like, why are we doing that?
Is it to help them feel better? Is it to help us be more comfortable? When we do things for others that they really need to do for themselves. It keeps them stuck. I see this all the time in the therapy office. [00:05:00] More importantly. Oh, just be a little upfront here with you and tell you. Overfunctioning for other people provides a really clever distraction from leading our own lives, from developing our own sense of self and knowing what is right for us. In every situation.
Remember the individuation episode from last week? Yeah. Overfunctioning actually prevents us from individuating, whether it's because our parents over functioned for us too late into our adult life, or we learn to over-function for our parents in situations where we weren't well taken care of maybe, or chaos was. Um, a muck. Right over a functioning.
It, we all do it in one way or another. You know, I like to say that because I guess for me, [00:06:00] it's important to just acknowledge that some of the things that I talk about on this podcast, they're not like reasons, um, to feel bad about yourself. They're just things to be aware of in your life. Overfunctioning is full stop exhausting, right?
Because not only are we doing all the things we need to do for ourselves, but we're doing kind of too much for someone else too. And that's a big burden. Both mentally draining, right? To think of what do I need, plus what does this person need from me? It's mentally exhausting and. The good news is that you can get out of it quite easily.
Actually. Do you want to learn. Do you want to stop? Overfunctioning do you want to help other people actually not over-function on your behalf. Maybe you're listening to me and going, oh boy. My partner is an overfunctioning person. And perhaps that's not good for us and for me and for [00:07:00] her and for our relationship or him, whatever. Right. Here's how you get out of overfunctioning.
One good way.
You may have heard this story. When I was, uh, when I had just had my second son, 16 months after the first one, we can talk about that later. That was pretty difficult. I was really determined to be a good mom. And I had an infant and a toddler at home. And it became very clear to me that I was not doing okay.
I was really, really anxious and stressed out. So I went to see Pam, who was my therapist at that time. She was my therapist for a few years and, oh my gosh, she, I did some of the most important work of my life, but one of the first things she had me do upon meeting her after a few sessions, she's like, listen, Rebecca, it kind of seems like you're doing a lot of stuff.
And I'm just like, [00:08:00] yeah, like I've got these kids. I got to do all this stuff. It's. It's very, you know, I have to do this stuff. I want to be a good parent. And she said, okay, great. I. I'm excited for you. Why don't you do this for me though? Go home and make a list of all the things that you do every single day. For other people, for the kids, for the husband, for friends, neighbors, whatever.
At that time I was involved in. A lot of different shenanigans. And of course I was making my own baby food because like, hello. I thought that that was the way to be a good mother. And for those of you make. Your own baby food. I know slight, no shade to you, my friend, but for me, It just added things to the list. A really long list.
So just for fun, I started making the list one day and by noon I gave [00:09:00] up on it because again, infant toddler doing way too many things, I got the point of the message. So this is a great technique to bring some awareness to all of the things that you do every single day, just for funsies, make a list of all the things you do, every. Day, just pick a couple random days.
Uh, classic days, average days in the life of you. And do a little listing. And see what you think. And then go back and underline or highlight all the things you do for other people.
And then think about overfunctioning and how exhausting and mentally draining it is. And then stop doing so many things for other people, friend. It's okay. It's okay. To stop cooking every meal or making all the lunches. It's okay. To stop [00:10:00] offering to do so many things for other people. Right. It's okay to let go of some of your maybe volunteering or voluntold thing.
A lot of people get volunteered for things at their jobs, and they're like, why am I on this committee? I didn't want to do this anyway. Right. We can get involved with our kids' school in a way where we're kind of taken up a lot of space, right there. So look around you. And kind of challenge yourself to back away from some of these things. In an effort to. Spend time with yourself to nurture your relationship to yourself so that you can figure out actually how you want to be spending your time. When we start to do this just on a regular basis, when we start to say. Do I need to do this? Do I want to do this [00:11:00] thing? Then we really start to change the dynamic of overfunctioning because some of it is automatic. You know, some of it comes from our growing up experience.
Some of it comes from our experience in relationships and what people have expected with us over time. So my encouragement is to just really have some intention around the decisions that you make. About what you're doing for yourself versus for other people, right. And I would encourage you to start cultivating your own life. Like we talked about last week, examining your own true nature will help you become more of that individually. That we're looking to, um, well, be in relationship, frankly, because lack for lack of a better explanation, my friend we're stuck with ourselves.
So how do you actually feel about things like. [00:12:00] What do you want to do with your day and your time? Give yourself some room to experience boredom. Oh my gosh. This is one of the reasons why we over-function anyway. Right. Because if I'm not doing anything, why can't I be doing something for you?
Boredom is a really uncomfortable emotion. That's what it is. It's an emotion. And we're trying to get out of it. You know, a lot of people think that human beings are pleasure seeking. Oh, funny. We're we do like pleasure, but really we're just trying to avoid discomfort most of the time. So give that some thought, right?
Like give yourself some room to stop functioning on behalf of others, let the people in your house learn to do their own laundry, for example, and make their own lunches. You want to teach people [00:13:00] to rely on you for. Emotional stuff, but if you're mentally drained, Like you want to teach the people in your life that you are there to support them. Emotionally for sure.
And yes, logistically, but you want to sort of have boundaries around that because when someone comes to you for support emotionally, if you don't have the energy for it, the mental space, the emotional room for it, you're not going to be as supportive as you want to be. So that's why kind of stepping back from overfunctioning in some of our relationships can be quite helpful for us and the person we're in relationship with.
So try new hobbies, go see what new activities are out in your community. Go meet some new people. I'm loving, um, the meetup app right now. I live in a bigger town. And so there's just so much [00:14:00] stuff going on. It's shocking. Really. And if you can't figure out kind of how to move forward right here, how to build your own life so that you're not distracting yourself with functioning on behalf of others and volunteered for every committee out there. Thing, get a little bit of help with this.
You could get a therapist or a life coach. Call me up. I'm right here. But at the end of the day, you have to remember that you only have yourself, right. We're stuck with ourselves again. And we need to understand ourselves. I love ourselves. And leave room in our lives for a fun exploration of who we are.
Weird and wonderful selves. Right. Here's the thing I just want to, um, I need to issue a warning. As often as helpful.
The people in your life are going to get hacked off when you stop overfunctioning on their behalf. So, if you're [00:15:00] doing it for your kids, they're going to be like what the what? Right. And if you're doing it for your partner, They're going to be like, oh, what's going on? So as usual I will. I will give you this piece of advice of like, just communicate, just say, you know, I've kind of been doing things for you that I don't really need to be doing for you.
You got you. Totally do these things for yourself. And I'm sorry if I've done these things for you for too long. Right. Just communicate the people in your life. Get upset when you stop overfunctioning on their behalf. And they don't know what's happening because it feels like disconnection. And they like that you do a bunch of stuff for them. The, the school board, whatever the committees, they love that you're always there to volunteer. And so just saying, Hey, I'm going to step back from some of my volunteer work right now. And cultivate my own life.
No, you don't have to say that. Just say I'm stepping back. It's [00:16:00] nobody's business. What's going on. Right. You're not helping anyone. Not them, not you. And certainly you are not helping your own individuation. By overfunctioning. So I encourage you and I will be here. Right along with you doing the work.
Cause I definitely have some areas where I totally over function. So you and I we're going to work on it together. In the spirit of developing ourselves and coming into relationship with ourselves just a little bit deeper. I'll be here right beside you doing the work. I'll see you next week.
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