Burned out overfunctioners
Providing telehealth in illinois and South Carolina | In-person in Oak Park, Illinois
On most days you’re the one giving the help, not asking for it.
Most of your life, you’ve been called “the responsible one.” You go further, do more, and people always rely on you. They count on you. They trust you. You’re on top of things, you seem easy going, you rarely need anyone, and anyone that you’d ask would say you seem fine, maybe even great. Spoiler alert: these are all protective strategies, developed by your mind to have your back when maybe no one else in the world did. But you’re running out of steam. By now, you’ve been living this way for years, maybe decades. The cracks are starting to show even though you might be desperately trying to hide it. The responsibility and the pressure has grown as you’ve matured. Overachievement, hypervigilance, and people-pleasing may mask to deep emotional exhaustion. The competence that exists inside you is real, but so is the collapse that’s either here or on the way.
It is possible to untangle this web and build something new inside of you mind, body and heart. We have to take a step back, together, and look at how all of these ways of existing have helped you, allowed you to succeed, and protected you. Then, we have to figure out how we can take these protections and transform them into something that allows you to feel more free, more like a person and less like a reliability machine. These internal protections don’t need to be eradicated, just evolved. Let’s tackle it together.