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Love Your Life Show: Personal Growth, Mindset, + Habits for Busy Moms
Are You Being Compassionate or Codependent? How Overfunctioning Is Costing You Your Peace
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Oh, hello, dear listener. Are you the one everyone turns to when something needs to get done? The go to person who steps in, fixes the problems and makes sure everything runs smoothly? Do people sometimes say things like, wow, you really hold it all together. Or you take care of so much, or even like you're such a superwoman? Okay, if that's you, first of all, I totally relate. And second, if it is because you are likely smart, effective and a super functioning human, like yay, you. Okay, awesome. And yet, since this is also me, you can't fool me because I know that this helping, this over functioning, this taking care of all the things for all the people comes at a cost. A very real cost, my dear warrior. A cost to us and a cost to our relationship. Because the same women who are capable, dependable and emotionally attuned are often those of us who are quietly resentful, irritated, annoyed. We're the ones quietly carrying the weight of everyone else's feelings, problems and comfort. So today's episode was inspired by a couple of emails from listeners I received recently. And when I read them, I thought like, oh yeah, this is for real. This is something so many of us are struggling with, but rarely name out loud. And I wanted to bring the emails to you because I want to read them on the show and do a whole episode off them because I'm sure you can relate. Okay. And then also, if you want two real world examples of how this showed up in my life today, stick around till the end. Because after the outro, I'll do the whole episode. You, I'll do the whole episode. I'll share the emails, I'll give you the helpful tips, as I always do in the Love youe Life show, to break this pattern based on the emails. And then if you're interested, to get into like the real life Suzy, you know, stuff that looks kind of messy because I'm a life coach, but I'm also a human. Well, I will talk about those at the end and I guess I will just skip the intro music here because I'll play the outro music at the end and instead just tell you that if this is your first episode, welcome. You are like, welcome to the Love youe Life Show. Family. I'm so glad you're here. If this resonates at all, that you're that helper, you're the fixer, you're the or these emails are resonating with you, you are in the right place. You will want to look at the show notes because I will put links in there for how to get I have different PDFs with like. I have one for like. Like the podcast roadmap that starts with all the emotional intelligence and the basic framework of the work I do and how I help people. I also have a PDF of mom's favorite episodes to listen to that have been super helpful. If you're a parent, I have a PDF that is about the most popular episodes. If you're dealing with a narcissist or you have had a narcissist in your life and you're trying to recover. So all of those I will put in the show notes below and you just roll down and see the purple writing and click on that. Or just go to me and email susie SMB well.com and say I want the mom episodes or I want the codependent episodes or I want the narcissist episodes or just go to smbwell.com roadmap all one word for that Foundational. And for today, let's just dive into it. I'm going a little rogue here. I'm off. Like, I'm not doing the intro music. I don't think the podcast world will fall apart without it. And let's just dive into the emails. Okay? There this first one, a listener, just like you probably wrote in, and she said, how can I tell if I'm being compassionate or codependent? For example, when my partner is stressed or upset, I immediately feel anxious and start trying to fix it. I might offer solutions, reassurance, or try to help them see things differently. Even when they haven't asked, I can't seem to relax until they feel better. I tell myself I'm being supportive, but honestly, like, since I can't relax, I don't feel that maybe this is the best support because I feel exhausted and sometimes resentful. I don't know where the line is. All right? And then later that same day, Warriors, I got this email that says, how can I tell if I'm over functioning and being codependent? For example, when my child or a friend or a co worker is struggling or uncomfortable, I feel this urgency to step in. I rearrange my schedule, overthink what to say, and feel responsible to make things easier for them. I keep thinking about it even after we've talked, and if I don't step in, I feel guilty, like I'm being selfish or uncaring. But when I do step in, I feel drained and kind of invisible. Like sometimes they don't take my advice and I'm like, well, I just feel pissy about that. That's my word, not theirs. Then they say, I know this isn't working, but I don't know what to do instead. All right, dear listener, if either of those two emails feel like, oh, I could have written that, you are not alone. This episode is for those of us who care deeply, those of us who are thoughtful, capable and responsible, and those of us who are starting to wonder if the way we've been showing up in our relationships is actually costing us our peace and harmful for the people in our life. So today we're going to talk about how many of us were raised to do this, how it shows up in adulthood, and then most importantly, what to do differently so we can stay compassionate without being codependent, feeling so responsible for everyone and everything. All right, so let's start here. If you recognize yourself in these emails, I want you to hear this first. That this pattern did not come from nowhere. Even know if that sentence makes sense. But this pattern didn't come from nowhere. You did not wake up one day and decide to take responsibility for everyone else's emotions. This is not your fault. In fact, it's no one's fault. No one's, like, let's get out of the blame game. Everyone was doing the best they could with the tools they had. Our parents were not taught to self regulate. They were not taught emotional intelligence. They were not taught how to feel their uncomfortable feelings about us having our experience without needing to fix them or make them go away. So it stands to reason they could not teach us what they never learned themselves. And instead what they did teach us unintentionally and without malice, was that uncomfortable emotions were something to either avoid or quickly solve. Think back, okay? Think back to when, you know, like our mom and dad. And just maybe instead of them noticing that something was uncomfortable with what was going on, like say we were having a tantrum or we come in from school and we're upset about a friend dynamic. They would usually say things to try to get us to think and feel differently about what was going on. Okay, so we say, mary said we couldn't sit with us at lunch, or her at lunch. We come home our little precious selves, and instead of mom or dad, like, getting down on their knees and being like, oh, tell me more. No, mom or dad would say something that is in their best skill set at the time, but that felt dismissive to us. They might say, oh, I'm sure Mary didn't mean it like that, or, well, tomorrow's a New day. Or maybe they'd be critical of Mary. Well, we know, like she's sort of snotty, right? Like what can you expect from Mary? Or maybe critical of us. Well, you probably asked her in that way of yours. Okay. And while again, they didn't do this maliciously, this is the best they knew how to do. So this was modeled for us. The message we absorbed was subtle and powerful. Instead of learning how to feel uncomfortable emotions, we learned feeling uncomfortable means something needs to change. And we learned that the fastest way to make that happen is to try to change the situation, change the person, change how that person's thinking about it so they'll feel differently. Instead of learning how to regulate ourselves and manage our emotions about the people in our lives having emotions, we learned and tried to manage people and how they were thinking about things. So if they feel better, we'll feel better. And that's high functioning codependency. If you feel good, I feel good. If they. If you feel bad, I feel bad. And so we try to function, function, function to get them to feel good so we can feel good. Well, that's completely out of our control, dear ones. Okay. And yet it goes stands to reason that when someone we love, since we had this patterning, when someone we love is upset, uncomfortable, anxious or struggling or in a bad mood, it activates our own discomfort. And because we were not taught how to be with our feelings, our brain looks for the quickest exit. And that exit often looks like advice. Fixing, explaining, dismissing, over functioning. It feels easier for us to change how the other person is thinking or behaving than it does for us to sit with our emotional response. So then we get into this exhaustion and what the people in the emails are talking about so we might tell them what to do. We soften the truth, we take over, we over explain, we try to calm them down so we can calm ourselves down. And let's return to those emails because both of those people were right to write in, they felt uncomfortable with this. They this is not compassion, this is codependence. When it seems easier for us to change how they're feeling than to feel what we're feeling about them feeling that way, that's co dependence. Does that make sense? It feels like the urgency the first writer was speaking of. It's not because we're trying to be controlling or that we like taking responsibility for everyone and everything. It's because we were never taught another way. So this feels very uncomfortable to our bodies. We see someone else having an uncomfortable emotion and we're like, quick, get out of the discomfort. Instead of learning to sit with and feel our uncomfortable feelings, which is something I do all the time in my coaching, helping people learn how to do that. And instead of learning emotional regulation how to do this in a way that works for you, okay. We rush into that more over functioning mode. All right. That's all right. There's also another whole reason why we do this. There are like two really strong things leading you to be in this place and those. Those writers to be in this place. Okay. Say that we got these amazing unicorn parents who did help us to regulate. Well, warriors. We were raised in a society in an era when we were praised to be a good girl. I don't know if you listened to that episode on the Gen X, you know, the blind spots of the Gen X, but this is what we were raised in. We were raised that over caretaking and over consideration of others was what good girls did. This message that good women consider other people before considering themselves. Good women are considerate. They don't rock the boat. They're helpful. They put others first. This whole, like, low maintenance. And I want you to see how this also adds to the pressure we feel to take care of everything for everyone. Not so you can feel like a total mess up or to get angry at the system, but I want you to see this so you feel more compassion for yourself. Why it feels so hard in the moment to do something different. Like that email said she thinks about it long afterwards we get that. No, it goes to figure then that we learn to be hypervigilant. We learn to scan the room. We learn to notice who's uncomfortable. Like, even if I'm in a restaurant, it's like, I could just tell you, I'm like, oh, you know, table four over there. Hey. We learn, like, we think that when someone else is struggling, it's our job to do something about it. Oh, my goodness, you know, husband's upset. Better make sure we placate him so we feel better, he feels better. And then, oh my gosh, what if he erupts at the kids and we take responsibility for him erupting, not letting him be the adult that he is and have the consequences that he has. We confuse codependency over functioning with kindness. The difference between these two is how we feel in our body. If it feels urgent when someone else is unhappy, or we feel tense when someone is disappointed, or we feel that fix it energy, that responsible energy when someone is struggling. You know, you're in codependence when our nervous system treats other people's emotions like a fire alarm and, and we want to rush in, we want to fix, we want to suit. That's co dependence over functioning. Not helpful for relationships. We are over considering others and under considering ourselves, which as a professional, I know this leads to lots of problems.
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It leads to problems for us which we've already spoken about and how we feel and how we act and we can get burnt out and all that sort of stuff. But also it's not helpful for the other people that we're doing this for. It creates this learned helplessness. And us over functioners like, this is where we feel the resentment, the irritation, the annoyed, the frustrated. And yet to break this unhelpful cycle, this cycle of person appears with uncomfortable emotion. And we rush in. You know, we feel uncomfortable, so we fix it. The fix is we also have to feel uncomfortable like the solution. So the thing that's continuing the pattern and continuing the problem and we're just going to keep doing it and doing it and doing it and doing it again until we choose something else to do, the different thing is also going to feel uncomfortable. Okay? We're going to feel like we've done something wrong. So I really want you to hear me that in order to stop the longer lasting, icky feelings of feeling disconnected in a relationship, like no one understands everything you do. No one understands the real you. That feeling of resentment, irritated, annoyed and flat out emotional exhaustion, we need to first feel discomfort. When we're doing something different. We feel discomfort and have an inner questioning of like, am I doing something wrong? It's like the middle muck on the way to more authentic and connected relationships. It's such a paradox of life and it's one of the main things I help with in the Love youe Life school. So when we're having this feeling state and we go to our, possibly the people who have trained us to be this way or the environments that we're in and we have that inner questioning and we bring it external. We're like, am I doing the right thing? We often get faulty messages. We're like, yeah, you know, he's your brother. Self abandoned, better do the right thing. That's why a big part of this healing is having a community or a coach where you can get supported in this new way of doing things because it will feel uncomfortable. All right, for today I am going to give you an action step that is the base of making this sort of moving through that middle muck a little easier. I'VE done it, and it's a better option. You need the community around you or the coach around you for sure. Okay. And you can. This is something you can practice today, right? Because the goal is not to stop caring. The goal is to stop trying to regulate your emotions by controlling someone else to stop me. Okay. The real work is learning to address your own feelings instead of trying to change their human experience. It's not fair. Let them have the experience they're having. Okay. And then turn towards you and see what kind of experience you're having. So this one two punch works. Think of it as like a two power. Like two power P's from Susie Pettit. There are a lot of P's there. Okay. But two power P's, that's what I like thinking. And the power P one is the power of the pause. Feel like I'm in some nursery rhyme. I'm doing, like, helping you practice the word P, the sound p. But power P1 is power of the pause. When you feel the urge to talk, to fix, to explain, or jump in that urgency, that tension in your system that, like, let that be a sign to you to pause. And instead of using your mouth to speak, use it to breathe. One slow inhale, one slow exhale. You are not ignoring the other person. You are giving yourself space to respond instead of react. One breath can help you get out of this pattern. So you have one breath and then move into the next. Power P tool, which is the power phrase. So power P1 is power. The pause number two is a power phrase. Decide ahead of time what you will say to yourself when this old pattern gets triggered. This is not to shame yourself. It is to point out to your reactive brain what is happening with compassion, to slow down its automatic response. We're trying to not be reactive. We're trying to be responsive, proactive. So we want to have a phrase so that instead of jumping into old patterns, we do something differently. And I literally have a phrase that I'll be practicing currently. My phrase is, it is hard for me when someone I love is struggling. Okay, so I'll take a deep breath. Someone in my life is struggling. They share that with me. I feel the tenseness in my system. I feel the urgency to, like, open my mouth. I use my mouth instead to breathe. And then I say to myself, it's hard for me when someone I love is struggling. I've also used these other power phrases. I say, oh, wow, this is that old pattern. Or I'll say, oh, this feels so hard right now. Or oh, I'm feeling the urge to fix right now. These things work. We're getting out of our automatic childish ways of rushing into fix that are not helping us. And instead we inhale, exhale, feel a little bit of calm in our system, and then say that phrase inside our head to ourselves. This interrupts the automatic response and brings you back into choice. Over time, these small moments of pause create massive change. There are a couple other things that I do after that in the relationship that will help move it even faster, that I'll save for love, your life, school or coaching. But I promise you start here. Your relationships will start to get healthier. Start practicing this until you can get a one on one with me. You will feel less burdened. You will stop carrying the emotional weight that was never yours to hold. Okay, so I want you to practice those two power moves to help you in your life. And I want you to, I want to invite you to work with me, see if I have room on my one on one schedule and you can join the Love youe Life school. We do this every day, all day in there. We have all live trainings, we have live coaching. This is where we heal these patterns together. Where you learn to be compassionate with yourself without abandoning yourself and where you get to practice in real life with guidance and support. You do not have to do this alone and you do not have to keep living like everyone else's. Emotional experience is yours to solve. You matter too. I'm going to end this podcast here, here with links to the helpful things below for you. I'll play the outro, which is my wonderful son talking. Okay? And then if you want to hear the real life examples that the universe gave me, fellow human here, doing this with you. Keep listening. All right, dear, one big love to you.
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Thank you for listening to the Love youe Life show. If you want to hear more from Susie and support the show, be sure to subscribe. Subscribe to this podcast on itunes. Also leave a review and share this podcast with friends and family. Go get em warriors.
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Okay, listeners, we're back. I love listeners like you, just looking to learn all the time and you know, knowing that often when we can see ourselves in examples, that is a great learning. And luckily I have the opportunity to give you two live examples that literally happened to me this morning. It's so funny. Monday mornings are when I record podcasts and in the universe it's like they knew what I was going to record on so they handed me these two experiences on a platter. Okay, so first I'm going to start with the one with my husband. So little background. My husband and I have one car and we both work from home and have a little whiteboard where we share our schedule so we can see what the other person has going on just from sort of a connection piece, like, but also to note when one of us will be using the car. And I had on there that I would be using the car from 9 to 12 this morning. And I had actually, at dinner last night, had been speaking to him about how I was going to do this. Like, I was going to go to the library to do this thing and I was going to do my training there and try out this new room that they were renting, blah, blah, blah. So I actually also, in addition to the whiteboard, said something to him last night. And anyhow, that's like, good girl, Susie here needing to tell my listeners. I'm like, do you see how, like, proactive I was? I was using my adult brain, planning. I was doing my happiness habits. I, like, planned ahead of time. Anyhow, that's another podcast, but it is interesting to me how I'm feeling a little, like, righteous. Like, come on, listeners, can you see how I, like, did the right thing? Anyhow, being right is not always keeping us connected. So. So rewind to about 30 minutes ago when my husband came into my office and said something like, can I drive you to library this morning? I want to stop at this store, like the equivalent of Home Depot. It's Bunnings, if you guys are an Australian listener. But he wants to stop at this store to get this thing for the tomato plant. I don't know. He can drop me at the library, run his errand, and then pick me up. Okay, so this literally was lifetime. And I noticed with myself what my system did, that I. I felt instantly reactive, that I was like, one, okay, he didn't listen to what I like. I'm not just going to the library to drop off a book. But two, oh, my goodness. My husband has a need. And, like, he has a need that he hadn't thought of or planned of ahead of time. And I better meet that need. All right? Because I've done this work. I noticed that. I noticed that tenseness this podcast episode was talking about. And I did my two power moves, and I took a deep breath in and out. Well, first, actually, I told him I was like, actually, I'm going to be at the library for, like, three hours. And he's like, oh, okay. And he left the room. Okay. He didn't say anything, like, overly. He certainly didn't say anything mean. But he also didn't say anything overly like, oh, don't worry, Susie, that's fine. Like, you know, whatever. He just was like, oh, okay. And left the room. That's when I noticed my system was like, ugh, what have I done? Have I done something wrong like that, you know? And so I took that moment to pause, to take a breath, to breathe in and breathe out. My inclination was to like go follow him out of the room or to go send him a text. Well, like, if you need it, then maybe I can like all of that that was there. I want to be very real with you. These are old patterns. I noticed it. I paused, I took a breath, and then I said to myself, wow, this is that old pattern, I think I said to myself, wow, it's so uncomfortable for me when he wants something and I like stick up for what I want. It felt so uncomfortable. And so that's example number one. All right, but I. And I can go back to that in a second. But the second example, so I did that, I paused. I didn't follow up. I didn't do my like old patterning of like defending myself or over explaining. I just was like, trust in the relationship. Trust in him that he can handle this, that he's fine. And then also with myself, like, I turned. Instead of then going to fix it with him, I fixed it with me. I took some breaths, I spoke kindly to myself and I was like, all right, okay. Example number two, I get a text. Actually, I got four texts this morning from a female in my life. I will keep it sort of neutral for privacy sake, but I got four texts at about 7am I saw them come through. I had. Was. That's when I had scheduled to sit down in my office and write my podcast seven to nine. And I got on my phone to, I think actually turn on airplane mode. So I wouldn't see notifications like this knowing myself, but instead I saw that four texts came through from this woman. And I had. In that moment, my chest was like. Because I knew that she is going through something in her life and that is stressing her out right now that is causing her discomfort. And I had a choice in that moment. Do I click on the text and abandon my plan and over consider her and get into that good girl programming of like, oh my gosh, I wonder what she needs? Or do I pause, take a breath, say something to myself like, wow, this is interesting that you're so. You're one Millisecond away from abandoning what you had planned was your best intention for the morning and all of that, and going with what she needed. And I was able to take that break. I was able to take a pause. I was able to notice that that was there, that she had vortex, and instead say to myself, like, susie, you're not the only one that can support this woman, is the phrase I said to myself in that morning. And it feels so uncomfortable thinking someone might be struggling. Okay, so those are my two examples of where real life, I mean, this happens all the time. I'm a life coach. I've been working on this for at least a decade now that I've been out of my marriage and trying to work on this codependent programming. But we have deep neural pathways, the deepest. This is what we've been learned that feels right to our nervous system. And in order for us to get to feel like something else is right, we need to practice differently. And I practice differently, and I feel foundationally better right now. Okay. In fact, I'm realizing it's like I am recording this at the library now, and I haven't checked those texts yet from this female because I have done the work. And I do know it's like, no, I'm not the only one that can support her. And I also, with my husband, when I went to leave, I was like, okay, I'm going now. And he's like, okay, have fun. So I got some reinforcement there that's totally safe, that he's not like, my past relationships, maybe holding grudges or feeling resentful. And I don't need to over explain myself or do something totally unsexy and ridiculous in my marriage and be like, well, you know, that I planned ahead of time. And if you had planned ahead of time, then, like, that doesn't go over well. What is interesting, I guess I want to highlight two things. One, these things work, and two, that when we let our old patterns run, which is us and our sort of immaturity, like little child type energy, not like doing what we were taught when we were younger, you know, that it's like, oh, my gosh, like, you know, shut it down, Shove it down. When we do what we were taught as a little child, we often then act and feel like a little child. All right? I promise you that if I had been reactive with my husband and I did, let's say I did what I just said I was going to do, and I'd be like, what? Well, I did this, and you should have Done this and blah, blah, blah, blah. Like, that is so immature and not in my highest self. Okay? Like, own it, Susie. Be an adult. It's okay. Just notice your discomfort. And then with. With this, the texting. All right, If I had abandoned myself, abandoned my plan, clicked on her text, I know how this would go. I know enough about this woman that she gets up around the time that she sent the text. I know enough about the brain that when we wake up, our brain is anxious. It's looking for things to obsess about. And so she chose to text me, which some mornings, fine, I'm available for. This morning, I was not. Okay, I know how this could play out because I've done it. Not with her, but with other people in my life. That if I then, like, go back and I answer the text and it probably could have been half an hour, you guys, that I'm going back and forth, back and forth, then she's going to feel better because she gets emotional support from me, which sometimes I'm available for. Sometimes that's great. This morning I wasn't. Because I also know that if I do that at a time when I'm not available for it, when I haven't slowed down and seen, like, is this the right thing for me? When I consider myself before considering everyone else, what happens? I feel resentful. I feel irritated. I feel annoyed. The next day when she texts and looks for the same way of managing her emotions, using me to help her feel better. Okay, I'm gonna feel resentful. I'm gonna be like, why doesn't she do what I told her to do? It's not a good street to end in. So I want to keep this semi short, but those let me know if you want to dive into either of those. You can email me or reach out to me on Instagram. I just wanted to give you those real life examples and how these things that we work on in coaching in the Love youe and that I speak of on this podcast really work. And then also just to give you a big warm hug in that, like, I'm doing this stuff to you guys. Okay? The goal to healing or feeling better is not to have these triggers not come up that is unreasonable and unfair for you to expect of yourself. These are things that have been brewing in our system. They're in our society for our entire lives. The goal is to do something different and to do it enough times different so we start to feel differently. All right, big love to you. Thanks for listening in and may you have a day of practicing your two power P's. Love you.