Have you ever noticed that even when you are exhausted, overwhelmed, frustrated, or resentful… you still continue doing more?
You still continue explaining something you were already very clear about, you still remind, or anticipate, you still carry…
Until one day you realize you are compensating for someone else’s lack of functioning. You are doing the emotional labor that is not reciprocated.
You are left feeling drained, burned out, exhausted. You start to realize your precious energy is leaking and you are losing aliveness and vitality. And than you ask yourself “What for?” We will explore that further more into depth.
What is Overfunctioning?
Over-functioning is not doing a lot, it is consistently doing more than what belongs to you.
Over-functioning is the habit of taking on the emotional, mental, or physical responsibilities of others – doing things for them that they are perfectly capable of doing themselves. While it often stems from a desire to be helpful or to keep things running smoothly, it paradoxically breeds dependence, resentment, and chronic burnout.
Examples;
You plan everything, reminding other adults repeatedly, compensating for someone else’s lack, carrying emotional atmosphere…
Also, participating and saying yes to events and environments where you don’t feel emotionally well in. Where you do not feel safe, chosen, protected, respected for your boundaries, needs and limits. In other words – over-functioning can also look like staying in situations that repeatedly require you to abandon yourself to maintain the relationship.
Anything that you are carrying a lot of emotional work for the relationship alone and it doesn’t feel reciprocal, it is over-functioning.
Why We Overfunction
But the most important question to understand is – why we do it?
For each one of us there may be different reasons and here are some of them:
- Control creates safety
- Fear things collapse otherwise
- Childhood roles – earning to manage the emotional states of caregivers to feel safe or valued
- Anxiety reduction – stepping in to fix other people’s problems often serves as an unconscious way to calm one’s own anxiety or feel in control of chaotic situations
Over-functioning feels like responsibility, but often it is anxiety with good PR.
What We Are Trying To Avoid
There is the underlying fear of what might happen if we stop, and maybe you can recognize yourself in some of them:
- If I don’t do it, things may fall apart
- If I don’t carry this, nobody will
- If I don’t anticipate problems, I won’t be safe
- If I stop, I may feel disappointment
- If I stop, I lose control of the outcome
- If I stop, I have to tolerate uncertainty
What Over-functioning Gives Us
Even though it costs us dearly, overfunctioning serves a purpose.
It can temporarily:
- reduce anxiety,
- create an illusion of control,
- delay disappointment,
- help us avoid vulnerability,
- protect us from uncertainty.
Because people don’t over-function for no reason.
The debt you are paying for over-functioning
You might feel like you are more in control, but prolonged over-functioning leads to emotional burnout, resentment, exhaustion, loss of attraction, carrying relationship.
For me personally, the best indicator that I am over-compensating is feeling resentful.
For example; partner is not taking accountability or respecting your boundaries and then you jump in with explaining again and again why and how it hurts you. You over-compensate for his lack of emotional responsibility and stepping in. By repeating yourself, you are taking on the burden of making him understand, hoping that if you just find the right words, he will finally step up and protect the relationship.
If you want to know more about how to stop over-explaining yourself read here.
There is a paradox: sometimes over-functioning creates the exact outcome we don’t want.
Because – people contribute less, resentment grows, attraction decreases, exhaustion increases, imbalance becomes normal.
Overfunctioning is not always generosity. Sometimes it is anxiety trying to create safety.
The Shift
The actual shift happens when we tolerate what happens when we stop over-compensating.
For example – Emotional labor:
When partner doesn’t fully meet you emotionally and you start to do emotional labor for both people.
I had found myself many times in this exact scenarios and then I started asking myself these deeper questions: Am I willing to risk finding out if the only way that there is connection in this relationship is if I am chasing my partner, living in his sphere, orbiting him, and essentially abandoning myself, my own center and my own well-being? Or in a simpler way, is the only way there’s connection in this relationship if I over-compensate? What happens if I start to choose myself more, if I pull back my energy back to myself?
What if by taking a risk and pulling back over time, my partner actually starts to come more toward me in my direction and meet me in my world, and start to take more responsibility for proximity and connection? Or maybe he won’t. But the only way to find out that is to stop over-functioning.
This is where discomfort appears. Staying with the uncertainty and fear of vulnerability of the possible outcomes. Anxiety may peak up, desire to fix things, to address them one more time in order to maintain connection.
But, if you over-function, you never need to know what happens when you stop.
Over-functioning is exhausting because you are doing your job and someone else’s at the same time.
I want to leave you with these questions – What happens when you stop carrying what was never yours?
If I would be in a emotionally reciprocal relationship, how my life would be different now? How would I feel inside of myself? What parts of me would have more space to flourish?
When you stop overfunctioning, you make space for healthier relationships. You give others the chance to show up, and you rediscover parts of yourself that have been hidden under constant responsibility.
Love&Light,
Romy
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