During a conversation with a colleague this morning, “over-functioning” came up. In the mental health world, there are often conversations about working with clients who are lower functioning, or higher functioning.
Lower functioning generally defines someone who is struggling with daily living activities. Things like moving through a healthy routine on a day-to-day basis or maintaining steady employment. This is often due to socio-economic struggles, addiction, being without a home, and dealing with chronic and pervasive mental health challenges.
Higher functioning typically means someone who struggles with some mental health challenges, but who is still able to maintain a job, pay the bills, and keep to their obligations despite the challenging issues they face.
Over-functioning is when someone puts the icing, sprinkles, and candles on the cake of high functioning by not only taking care of themselves and their own needs but also veering out of their lane to take on the needs and wants of others.
Over-functioners often:
Chronically anticipate others’ needs and make attempts to meet those needs
Predict or mind-read situations and people to prevent distress or conflict
Take too much (or an inappropriate amount of) responsibility for situations
Jump in to rescue others from the consequences of their actions
Carry a heavy mental/cognitive load
Do the bulk of the emotional labor in their relationships
In a relationship, over-functioning can look like:
Preventing or mitigating one’s discomfort by doing things like overexplaining, repeating oneself, finishing other people’s sentences, or not allowing space for silence in conversations
Taking on tasks or chores one assumes no one else will want (without having the conversations that could clarify actual interest or desire)
Doing things for other people that they can do for themselves (often due to difficulty with tolerating the distress of waiting for something to get done or having it done in a way that you don’t like)
Asking “Does that make sense?” or asserting “But what do I know/I’m probably wrong!” immediately after sharing something
Overfunctioners are also known as:
Fixers
Rescuers
Codependents
People-pleasers
Self-sacrificers
Controllers
Perfectionists
“This sounds awful! Why would anyone over-function?”
The Early-Childhood Would of Responsibility-Taking: Over-functioning adults were once children who were likely given too much responsibility. Perhaps having grown up in a household with parents who were physically or emotionally absent or addicted created a situation where a child took responsibility for tasks or situations that were the adults to own.
Role-modeling: If you over-function, did you have a parent or caregiver who also over-functioned? If this was the case, then it’s likely that this relationship dynamic was normalized for you.
Anxiety: Many people over-function out of fear of what would happen if they didn’t. The feeling of discomfort or awkwardness that could potentially arise in a conversation that hits a lull can feel like it would be too much to bear.
Conflict Avoidance: Those who are averse to conflict and “avoid it at all costs” will often bend over backward to ensure that others stay happy so they can avoid any type of disagreement.
How to Stop Over-Functioning
I know I sound like a broken record here, but self-awareness is still Step One.You have to become aware of the fact of your over-functioning before you can do anything to change it. A couple of emotional cues that might alert you to your over-functioning include resentment, irritability, anger, and a loss of attraction or libido in your primary relationship. After all, taking emotional care of someone you don’t see as capable or view as an equal, or worse, that you see as entitled, is not sexy.
Once you become aware that you’re over-functioning, which you might realize you do, for example, in your conversations with friends, get to the heart of the matter and look at your anxiety. What are you afraid will happen if you let them finish their sentence? Finding ways to self-soothe in those precarious moments of silence using breathing techniques, body-based grounding skills, or a mantra such as “taking a moment to pause is normal” or “I can take a deep breath now” can be helpful as you shift into a new way of relating.
Experiment with not tacking on an “… If that makes sense” after you tell a story or share something. Does your conversation partner appear confused? Or does it seem like they followed along with you? Alternatively, catch yourself before you fall into the refrain of “But what do I know?” or “But maybe I’m wrong!” after sharing your perspective with someone else. Give them a chance to respond with their take on things or to inquire more about your experience.
Practice doing less. Even one less thing than you typically do. Let others pick up the slack and rise to the occasion of making more of an effort or contribution.
Develop assertiveness skills, so that if conflict does arise, you can stand up for yourself or share your viewpoint with confidence.
Develop a relaxation routine or practice.
Getting the support of a seasoned professional can also be helpful. If you’re ready to look at this over-functioning dynamic in yourself and would like some support, drop me a line.
Anxiety is a powerful condition. It can challenge your ability to access a calm, clear-headed perspective. Anxiety can use up a tremendous amount of psychic energy as it causes you to scan the environment for real or perceived threats. Sadly, it can also make you a control-freak.
It’s exhausting as you do the mental gymnastics to try and figure out how you’ll fare in innumerable possible worst-case scenarios.
And, anxiety can take a toll on your relationships…
Is your anxiety making you a controlling person?
Anxiety, and the fear that underlies it, grasps for control to make things that are out of your control feel more manageable.
Sometimes, this manifests as taking over in ways that the people closest to you don’t actually enjoy.
Consider the following possibilities:
Do your family or friends feel that they can’t be themselves around you?
Do they feel that they can’t express carefreedom, spontaneity or take risks in your presence because it evokes too much of your anxiety?
Are they not allowed to eat certain foods, drive a car, express certain parts of their personality, or go to specific places, because it would make you too nervous?
If so, that might be something for you to look at.
Your anxiety could be making you a controlling person.
And the reality is that no one wants to feel controlled.
If your anxiety is negatively impacting the people you’re closest to, it might be time to come up with some new solutions to manage it. After all, managing mental health is ultimately an inside job.
Anxiety tends to overestimate the possibility of threats and underestimate our ability to handle whatever comes our way.
While the people around you can offer support, relying on them to manage your fears isn’t fair to them, and it could undermine the quality of your relationships.
3 Tips to help you manage your anxiety:
1. Develop self-awareness. What are you afraid will happen/what are your fears?
Most people who bottle up their feelings don’t realize it’s a problem. On the contrary, it’s been a solution for a long time. If you’re someone who has been a feelings-and-thoughts-represser for as long as you can remember, you might be wondering…
“How come now, all of a sudden, my solution (that has worked so well) is causing a problem?”
The answer is that it’s pushing the important people away.
One of the main problems with bottling up your feelings is that sometimes, the bottle explodes. It happens when you least expect it, and it can come out in some pretty nasty ways. When all of those feelings finally do come out, they’re big and unfiltered and can lead to massive ruptures in your relationships.
Taking a good hard look at how shutting down communication became a solution in the first place is a great way to use your time in therapy. Figuring out where you learned this behavior and deciding if you want to continue can be very helpful points of insight and clarity. In this post, however, I want to give you a few skills to help you along your path if you have indeed decided that it’s time to change course.
How to Stop Bottling Your Feelings, 3 Key Tips
Know what you feel. To cut out the habit of not expressing what you feel, you’ve got to figure out what you do feel. There are lots of ways to do this. I suggest journaling, mindfulness meditation, walking, or running to reflect on your feelings that day. Here’s a Feelings/Emotion Wheel to get you started that will help you bump up your EQ (Emotional Quotient) and give you some clarity on what is possible in the wide world of emotions.
2. Express what you feel! You could write your feelings down in a journal, dance them to a song you love, draw them, let out a rage-y scream in your car, shed a few tears, or laugh to yourself. Get creative here. There’s no wrong way to express them, the point is to take them from the inside and let them out on the outside.
3. Lastly, and here’s the big one folks, you might play with expressing your feelings To Another Person. I know, I know, this one is big and hard and feels weird at first and you probably want to scroll right off this page and go somewhere else. But here’s the thing: that won’t get you out of the stuck place of always keeping your feelings bottled up, and having them come exploding out at inopportune times and in unskillful ways. Here are a few communication skills to get you started:
Once you know what you feel, and you know what you need, you might experiment with using the formula ” I feel ________________ and I want _________________.” It’s an easy way to start to open up and express yourself to the people you care about (and maybe even some people that you don’t care about so much…). Example: “I feel hungry but tired, and I want you to figure out dinner for us tonight. Are you willing to take that on?”
Ask your partner for a vent session, where you get to name whatever you want to about what you feel (an annoyance after a hard day at work, a frustration you’ve been keeping to yourself, some issue that’s been taking up your mind share). You can request feedback, advice, or just an empathic ear. See how your partner does with this request and information. Give them a chance to show you how supportive they can be. Notice how that feels. (spoiler alert: most people feel pretty good after a vent session.)
If you’re ready to take a deep dive and learn more about how to stop bottling up your feelings, contact me today. Let’s get it going.
Psychotherapy is more of an art than a science. There are many different modalities or methods of doing therapy and equally as diverse a set of theories about “what works best” in the therapy process. Despite all of those variables, there are proven ways to get the most out of your therapy experience. But what are the best ways to use your therapy session?
… And why do we even need a list like this? Well, because therapy is an investment of your time, money, and other resources. And if you’ve ever had a less-than-amazing therapy experience, you know the disappointment that goes along with a failed investment.
“Meh” therapy
Getting yourself into therapy is a huge decision and one that has the power to change your entire life. And I’m not overestimating things here. It’s true.
But, does every experience of therapy yield that type of transformational result? Well, no.
Some experiences of psychotherapy are mediocre. From clients who have come to see me over the years after having worked with other therapists, I’ve heard many reports of their previous therapies. Some of them have sounded like this:
“The therapist was nice, but, they didn’t say much at all. I got tired of hearing myself talk.”
“I want to be challenged. I want someone who will engage with me”
“The therapist kept asking me how things made me feel, but that was the extent of it. I don’t feel that I made any real progress with self-understanding or insight. I’m still where I was before I started.”
So how do you optimize your time in therapy to gain the greatest return on your investment?
How do you use your time in therapy wisely to ensure that you are, indeed, getting what you want out of it?
Here are some of the best ways to use your therapy session:
Collaborate with your therapist
Let your therapist explore, with you, whatever you are bringing in to talk about. That’s why you’re paying them. They’re knowledgeable and want to help you get your mental health and wellness needs met. If you notice that, during your sessions, you’re aimlessly rambling or monopolizing the conversation, name that “noticing” with your therapist so that you can look at that pattern and any function it may be serving for you together. You know, collaboratively.
Be intentional with your therapy sessions
Come into your sessions with some sense of what you want to address. It could be that you have a goal in mind for that day such as “I want to figure out how to respond when X happens” or “I need to talk about X thing that happened today.” You don’t have to have the specific outcome in mind, but it’s often helpful to have some sense of your own needs. (As a sidebar: knowing what you need is a huge step toward healing.)
Bring in your triggers
Especially as a Schema Therapist, I am particularly interested in what your triggers are and where they “go off” when you’re moving through the world. Starting a session by letting your therapist know where you got triggered over the previous week gives you the rest of your therapy hour to explore it. Hurray!
Elicit feedback from your therapist
When you start therapy you might have a few specific goals that you want to focus on. Over time, those goals will hopefully be met. If you are choosing to enter into a longer-term therapeutic relationship, you feel like a certain “piece of work” has reached completion, or you feel satisfied with where things are, but you don’t want to stop therapy. When that is the case, talk to your therapist about areas that they’ve noticed could be worth exploring.
Release your goal-focused agenda completely once in a while
Ok, I’m going to backtrack a little bit here. While I firmly believe that all of the above suggestions are great ways to improve your experiences in therapy, I’ve also noticed that sometimes, it’s good to come into sessions without any of it. Research has shown repeatedly that the most powerful factor in therapy is the relationship you have with your therapist. Sometimes, when clients come into the room with absolutely no agenda, we end up getting to explore our relationship, which, as a microcosm of how you generally “do” relationships, can be super therapeutic. It can also strengthen the bond and the sense of trust you have with your therapist. In my case, I also love incorporating experiential exercises into sessions like that. Things like relaxation, guided imagery, and meditation.
Take A Pause
Lastly, if you’re finding that your sessions feel aimless, or you’ve got an overall feeling of a lack of progress or momentum, it might be time to do something different.
One final option to consider, especially if you aren’t even sure why you’re going to therapy anymore or what you’re working on, is to pause the therapy.
Taking time away from personal work can allow you to live life on your own, using self-reliance and taking an opportunity to flex your skills. The good news about therapy is that you can always return when you’re ready.
Do you have any other tips about the best ways to use your therapy session to share? Please let me know in the comments! And feel free to share!
Are you a clinician that wants to do some of your own work?
Are you seeking a therapist’s therapist?
Awesome! First, let me say, kudos to you, for doing your own work.
As a profession, psychotherapy is one of the most meaningful and most rewarding work I’ve ever done. It allows us to be in a position of privilege with the humans we serve. We work to co-create spaces safe enough for clients (or patients) to tell us the stories of their lives, express the unexpressed, and open themselves to our feedback. Being a therapist is truly a position of honor.
Sometimes, those same clients can bring up some of our own psychic material. Insecurity, grief, longing, and unresolved trauma may manifest as a result of working with others. Dealing with countertransference and struggling to make headway with challenging clients can be hard on even the best clinicians. Working with all of this material is crucial for several reasons.
As part of our training, clearing out our own cache of residual “stuff” is a key to feeling present for the people we serve. If you are responding to clients out of your own woundedness, you are not doing them a service. Additionally, if you are going to sustain this career as a counselor and prevent burnout, you’ve got to be sure that you’re taking good care of yourself.
A Therapist’s Therapist
Therapist self-care is real, and a bit of a minefield in a career where we’re often underpaid and overworked, and where the issue of personal and professional boundaries can get muddy.
I have been in private practice for over ten years here in Asheville and I have worked with many fellow clinicians over that time. I have an eclectic toolkit that includes certifications in Buddhist Psychology, Traumatic Stress, and Schema Therapy (the other parts-work model). My degree is in Counseling Psychology with a specialization in Holistic Studies and I am an attachment geek and lover of Jungian work, including using dreams and symbols to explore your inner world.
I aim to use a skillful blend of gentle support and care while also challenging you in places where you might be stuck.
If you’d like to work together to get some help, gain clarity, or elicit feedback on new ways to work with challenging clients, drop me a line. I’d love to support you.
I specialize in therapy for people pleasers. Do you fit into that category? Consider the following questions:
Do you tend to sacrifice what you want or need in the service of accommodating other people?
Do you identify as a people-pleaser?
Are you caught in the caregiver archetype?
Are you reliant on external validation to affirm your goodness or worth?
Do you ever experience anger or resentment toward the people closest to you, as a result of feeling like they’re always taking and never giving?
The Problem with People Pleasing
When you chronically compromise what you want you run the risk of betraying the most important person in your life: you.
Over time, that betrayal leads to a loss of self-trust and, in many cases, depression.
So many of us are people-pleasers because we’ve been conditioned to do so. We learned how to do it from our mothers or our culture, as a way to stay safe and connected.
But this way of relating to others has dire consequences.
Learning to differentiate yourself from other people is one of the most important avenues of personal growth. The health of all of your relationships depends on it.
Therapy for People Pleasers
Doing this work of individuation, which includes exploring your Whole Self, is one of my favorite things. If you’re on this journey of personal growth, going it alone is incredibly challenging. I’m an expert and I’d love to support you.
If you’re ready to abandon the people-pleaser in you and reclaim your self-trust, inner power and deep knowing, drop me an email. I’d love to connect.
