Chapter 15: When Caring Becomes Losing Yourself
Tessa was, by common agreement, the nicest person any of her friends knew. She was the one who remembered birthdays and organized the group gift. She was the one who answered messages within minutes, who took the shift n
Tessa was, by common agreement, the nicest person any of her friends knew.
She was the one who remembered birthdays and organized the group gift. She was the one who answered messages within minutes, who took the shift nobody wanted, who stayed on the phone for an hour with a friend in crisis even when she had to be up at five. Her calendar was a mosaic of other people’s needs. She was exhausted, and she called it being a good friend.
What no one saw was the machinery running underneath. When Hana sent her a flat reply to a message, Tessa spent the evening wondering what she had done. When her sister’s tone seemed cool on the phone, Tessa rehearsed what she might have said wrong. At work she agreed to every request, and then lay awake planning how to complete them all. Before saying anything, she silently scanned the faces around her to measure what they wanted to hear. It had become second nature.
One evening, a new friend named Lucas asked a simple question while they were choosing a restaurant. “What do you feel like eating?”
Tessa opened her mouth and nothing came. She looked at the menu. She thought about what Lucas might prefer. She thought about the cost, and whether the others would mind. She thought about everything except her own appetite.
“I honestly don’t know,” she said, and was surprised to feel her eyes sting.
The shape of it
What Tessa was doing has several names: people-pleasing, emotional caretaking, over-accommodating. The psychiatrist Aaron Beck described a personality style he called sociotropy, a deep investment in relationships and approval, and a heightened sensitivity to disappointing others. Many such people are warm, generous, and loyal. They are also vulnerable to a particular kind of exhaustion.
The psychologist Dana Jack, studying women’s experiences of depression, described a related pattern she called self-silencing: judging yourself by external standards, putting others’ needs ahead of your own, suppressing your own feelings and opinions in order to preserve the relationship, and presenting a compliant outer self while the inner self goes unheard. The costs, Jack and later researchers found, can be considerable: resentment, a sense of emptiness, and loss of connection with one’s own wants.
Notice how directly this connects to overthinking. A person who is constantly managing other people’s reactions has an enormous amount to monitor. Is she upset? Did I say too much? Does he think I’m selfish? It is a full-time analysis of other people’s minds, with no day off.
It is worth saying that over-accommodation is not always only a habit of personality. It can be shaped by caregiving duties, by economic dependence, by family or cultural expectations, or by the need to stay safe around someone whose reactions are unpredictable. Where those pressures are real, the work is not to blame yourself for adapting. It is to notice which parts of the adaptation are still necessary and which have outlived their usefulness.
Vigilance is not the same as love
There is a belief sitting at the heart of this pattern: that if I watch closely enough, and adapt enough, I can keep the people I love from being disappointed, and so keep them close. It is an understandable belief. But it has some quiet problems.
First, you cannot manage another person’s feelings. You can be kind, honest, and considerate. You cannot control how someone feels about what you do. Every attempt to do so is both exhausting and doomed.
Second, vigilance displaces presence. While Tessa was scanning Hana’s message for hidden meaning, she was not actually with Hana. Love requires attention, but attention to the person, not to the risk of losing them.
Third, hidden preferences make shallow relationships. If you always agree, others never get to know the real you. They are fond of the version you present, and you are left with the lonely suspicion that they would not love the rest. Ironically, the strategy intended to secure closeness limits it.
And finally, it quietly disrespects other people. Treating others as fragile, as people who must be shielded from your honest preferences or from the possibility of being told no, assumes that they cannot handle disappointment. Most can.
Boundaries: a gate, not a wall
The remedy is not coldness. It is boundaries, and boundaries are often misunderstood. They are not punishments or ultimatums, and they are not attempts to control what other people do. A boundary is a statement about what you will do. I won’t take calls after nine. I can’t host this weekend. I’m not able to lend money.
It helps to think of boundaries in four areas.
Time: how much of it you give, to whom, and when you rest. Attention: what you will hold in your mind, and what you will let others carry. Communication: how quickly you reply, what you will discuss, and in what tone. Emotional energy: how much of other people’s distress you can hold, and where you say, I care, and this is more than I can carry tonight.
Good boundaries tend to be calm, clear, and kind, and they tend to be stated once, without a lengthy explanation. Over-explaining is often a sign that we are still seeking permission.
The boundary hangover
You should expect a wave of discomfort after setting a boundary, particularly if you are not used to it. Many people call it a boundary hangover: guilt, anxiety, a conviction that you have been selfish, a strong urge to apologize or take it back.
This feeling does not mean you did something wrong. As we saw in Chapter 9, guilt is not always an accurate alarm. If you have spent years putting others first, the discomfort of putting yourself on the list is simply the discomfort of a new habit. It usually fades with practice.
You may also meet some resistance. People who have benefited from your unlimited availability may be surprised, or disappointed, and may say so. That is not proof that the boundary is wrong. It is a sign that the arrangement is changing. Often, people adjust. Sometimes a friendship reveals that it was built mostly on what you could provide. That is a painful discovery, but it is also useful information.
Staying a person
A final thought. Part of coming back to yourself is simply practicing the small, ordinary act of knowing what you want. What would I like for dinner? Which film do I want to see? How would I like to spend Saturday? It may feel absurdly basic, but for someone who has spent years consulting everyone else’s preferences, it is real work. Start with trivial choices where the stakes are low and let your own voice get stronger.
Try this: Create one boundary
Choose a single area where you feel drained or resentful, and design a boundary for it.
- Choose the domain. Time, attention, communication, or emotional energy.
- Write the sentence. Use this simple structure: “I can ___. I can’t ___. What I’ll do instead is ___.”
- Keep it short. One or two sentences. No elaborate justification.
- Pick a first occasion. Decide when you will use it. Choose something low-stakes to begin.
- Plan for the hangover. Decide in advance what you will do when the guilt arrives. A walk, a call to someone supportive, a reminder note: Feeling guilty is not the same as being wrong.
Tessa chose communication. She decided she would stop replying to messages at all hours, and she told her closest friends: “I’m trying something new. I’m going to stop looking at my phone after nine, so if I don’t reply right away, it’s not because I’m upset. I’ll get back to you in the morning.” Two friends said “Good for you.” One said, a bit sourly, “Okay.” Tessa felt a wave of guilt that lasted most of the evening. Then she noticed that nothing had broken.
On Friday, when Lucas asked again what she wanted for dinner, she said, “Dumplings.” It was the first thing she had decided for herself in a long while. They were excellent.
Expect resistance, inside and out. The first boundary usually costs more than the tenth. Start with low-stakes ones and watch what actually happens. If a boundary is repeatedly ignored, or if saying no is met with anger or threats, that is important information about safety, and outside support may be needed.
A THOUGHT TO CARRY
Caring about people does not require disappearing into them.