- As you all know, I've been a little burnt out lately,
and I have to be honest,
I don't know if this runs true where you are,
but almost all of my friends and family
and just people that I talk to with work and stuff,
I feel like everybody's feeling burnt out lately,
and I think it might just have to do with the shit show
that the last two years have been, I don't know.
But I was having a tough time going to sleep
a couple nights ago,
and I was just up feeling burnt out, feeling overwhelmed,
feeling like I had so much to do,
trying to think in my head,
what do I need to do tomorrow?
Oh my god, oh my god, just producing anxiety.
It's really fun, you should try sometime.
Anyway, so it was keeping me up all night,
and all of a sudden it occurred to me
what it was that was actually upsetting me
and making me feel so burnt out,
and I think it's responsibility.
And I know we put a lot of emphasis
in positive support behind the term responsibility,
like, oh, tell me about this friend,
Oh, she's really responsible.
It's seen as like a positive thing, right?
When you're looking for a job,
when you're learning about a new person,
being responsible is seen as a good thing.
But for me, I feel like it's kind of worn me out
and burnt me out,
and as I got to thinking about this,
'cause I was like, God, I'm so fucking sick
of being responsible.
I remember back even as a kid,
when we would go to the lake
or if me and my friends were gonna,
I don't know, have people over for a party,
I was the responsible one.
I was the one that was like, Oh, did we get enough towels?
How many people are coming?
We should probably bring a couple extra.
Did you put sunscreen on?
Or, How much food?
Well, what if people have more than two pieces of pizza?
I was that person, kind of like the mom of the group.
I even remember, that jogged another memory,
that when my friends found out I didn't wanna have kids,
they were like, what?
But you're the mom, like, you're already the mom.
And I think part of that might be
because I've already been to goddam responsible.
I'm tapped out.
You guys do that now.
You know?
And I was telling Sean,
'cause if you don't know we love Trailer Park Boys.
It's a funny show.
And they're always wanting to retire from,
they don't have jobs.
So retire from what?
Nobody knows.
But I was like, you know what?
I wanna retire, Sean, I'm retiring from responsibility.
I just wanna not do it anymore
because I think it's gotten in the way of my happiness.
And I also, like, I know this might be rambly,
this is just what you get.
I think it also might be tied a little bit
to like my people pleasing behavior and hang with me
for a second because I think I learned recently in therapy
that people pleasing, I always saw it as like a good thing.
Like I'm really nice to other people and I care
about other people and I'm always considering other people,
but my therapist, this was like, I don't know,
a few like let's say almost a year ago now she was like
do you think your people pleasing
could be a form of manipulation?
First of all, I was like, how dare you?
Take that back?
But I sat with it for a while.
She's like just consider it.
That was my homework, right?
Therapy homework.
But I did, I thought about it and I got her point.
All of a sudden it occurred to me that I was people pleasing
as a way to like assuage or calm my own anxieties, right?
Me pleasing others because I hate conflict.
And because I'm so scared of conflict,
if everybody's happy, it won't happen.
I feel better.
So it was, she was right.
God dammit, right?
But she was.
And so then I was thinking
about this responsibility with that lens and thinking,
well, I wonder if me being overly responsible
is kind of part of that people pleasing,
again, to help manage my anxiety
because if I'm responsible for everything,
than I know, I mean, I know not really,
but I know everything can go just as planned
which then makes me calmer.
Anyway, it just made my head explode
because I was like how much of my life is wrapped up
in the fact that I don't manage my anxiety very well.
I was like, I think all of it, like all of my relationships
all of the work that I do, the interactions I have,
it's just sometimes I don't know
if anybody else has this realization.
Maybe it's 'cause you know, I do a lot of like research
for you guys and I'm always working
on myself so I can be better for you and for me.
But as I do this deep digging,
sometimes I realize just how like palpable
certain things are or how intrinsic it is to my being.
And I feel like I've been anxious,
like maybe my entire life.
(dramatic music)
I wanna take a minute to thank Better Help
for sponsoring this video.
With better help,
you can access their network
of over 20,000 licensed therapists.
It's not a crisis line.
It's not self-help.
It's professional therapy done securely online,
Better Help will assess your needs
and match you with your own licensed professional therapist.
If you've ever searched for a counselor in your area,
you know how long it can take to find someone good
or to even get a call back.
With Better Help,
you can start communicating in as little
as 48 hours and it's available worldwide.
So click the link at the top of the description to get 10%
off of your first month.
Go to better help.com/katie.
- And then I was remembering Sean,
one of Sean's closest friends.
We used to have these deep conversations
about like how we were doing.
And he remembered being a little kid
and like gripping onto the carpet
and having like what he thought was his first panic attack.
And he's like, I couldn't have even have been a year old.
He's like, I don't even think I could walk, let alone crawl.
And he was like, and I was already anxious.
And I'm like, I wonder if I was that way too.
And I just didn't realize it.
And I like compensated
with this like overly responsible people
pleasing type of person
because it wasn't until my thirties
that I ever would have said to anybody,
oh yeah, I have some anxiety.
Like I would never have said that.
'Cause I didn't feel like it was part of who I was.
I don't know.
Sometimes it's just funny to think about things
and like how realizations come to be
and how we identify, right?
Because I only recently took ownership over the fact
that I think my people pleasing is actually manipulation,
so that I don't feel anxious.
But now this is like a whole nother wrench in the system.
'Cause I'm like, wait, am I just being responsible
so that I don't feel anxious also.
I don't know.
Anyway, those are just thoughts,
things that keep me up at night.
Okay, I took some notes 'cause I had a lot
of thoughts and when you jot things down
in the middle of the night, sometimes they make sense.
Sometimes they don't.
But like I said,
today mark's the day that I retire from being responsible.
And the reason for this,
I made a list of reasons that this isn't good for me.
Is number one,
I don't think it comes from a healthy place, duh.
Number two, I think my anxiety feeds this
and is why I can't relax,
until I've "taken care of everything."
Kind of why I can come across as controlling.
Sean can attest to this.
There are times when he's like, you don't need to do this,
like stop trying to control everything.
And I'm like, again, how dare you, right?
But he sees it and he feels it.
And it's usually when I'm feeling really overwhelmed.
Number three, I think it's attached
to my people pleasing urge.
I told you guys about that.
And number four, it's tied
to my discomfort for conflict and my belief
that if I do everything just right, people won't get upset.
It's kind of that like that walking on eggshells feeling.
And then I had some other ideas,
if this might resonate with you, maybe it does.
Maybe it doesn't.
But I think it could also be a result
of being a parentified child
or what we kind of call the hero child,
which is like the child in a dysfunctional family
that like takes responsibility for things.
I think this could be part of that as well.
Or my sixth idea was that if we had a parent
or another close family member who was an addict
or is an addict since that can feel very out of control,
we can try to control only what we know, which is ourselves.
And I think that again could lead
into this like being overly responsible
and then number seven
I thought it could be fawning behavior as a result of abuse.
If you haven't heard me use the term fawn before,
we talk about fight, flight, freeze,
but another response is fawn
and that's when we like people please
as a way to prevent conflict,
so that we don't get hurt again.
It's just another way for us to protect ourselves, right?
And then my eighth thought was like
it could be hyper vigilance as a result of abuse.
I think hyper vigilance
and responsibility can sometimes be,
not misunderstood, but like swip swap, right?
We could sometimes interchangeably use them.
And I think it could be helpful
if this resonates with you to consider
if you think it is a part of the hyper vigilance
or if you are truly
just a responsible person.
I don't know.
I don't know if you'd be able to tease that out,
but that might be something
that could be helpful to think about.
And I'm sure there are more ideas that you come
up with and I'm sure there's more that I will come
up with as I try to consider this
and do some inner work.
And I'm gonna be honest.
I don't really know how I'm going to fix.
I don't even like the term fix,
but like how I'm gonna work on this or manage this.
But I am going try to utilize
some of the tools that I use back in the day.
And even as I say this, I know there's like lights.
Like these are red flags, light bulbs going off.
But I used to be a total clean freak as a kid.
And when I had to move into the dorms,
I was so stressed about like,
it was like Katie's colliding.
Katie's a clean freak
and doesn't like germs and stuff like that.
And then the Katie that like wants to be a people pleaser.
They were like battle battle royal
when I had to move into the dorms.
And so I tried to institute some like,
with the help of my therapist, don't worry.
I was already in therapy by this point.
With the help of my therapist,
to like let it go and have these mantras
I would say to myself where I'd say,
is it the end of the world?
Is it gonna be that big of a deal?
Is it worth the fight?
And if the answer was like, no, it's not that big of a deal.
It's not of the world.
It's not worth the fight.
Then I wouldn't bring it up.
And so that was how I kind of managed
and I also allowed myself to leave messes.
Part of my homework in therapy
was to like leave messes overnight
or leave messes for the day.
And that helped.
But I also, it's like a slow, let go.
It's not like I was able to just move on.
But when it comes to this responsible thing,
here are some things I'm gonna try.
I'm gonna try to not be reachable all the time.
Because with this handy dandy phone
your life is like, you can be, you feel tethered.
And as someone who's responsible
or people pleaser, you're like,
oh, they called 'cause some something might be wrong.
You might need to take care of something.
No.
Number two, I'm gonna put
off replying to people so quickly.
And I don't mean to be,
this isn't a rude thing, again no judgments, right?
But I'm not supposed to be at people's beck and call.
No one's gonna expect me to text back
within the first minute or two.
And if they do, they'll get used to the fact
that it takes me a while to get back to them.
Number three, I'm gonna let Sean plan things for us to do.
I hope he heard that.
- [Sean] What?
- I'm gonna let him plan some things
because I tend to do that.
Like I'm the one that's responsible
in the whole house to like order things and plan things
and schedule everything and make reservations.
That's usually me,
but I'm gonna pass the torch 'cause I've retired.
And then number four, I have this mantra that I used
in the past and it's they get around
on their own when you're not around doing things for them.
So I'm sure they'll figure it out and be okay.
I know that's kind of long,
but I even say that in the car sometimes
when I think someone's like
not that great of a driver.
I'm like, hey, they haven't killed themselves yet.
They get around normally.
You don't need to freak out.
We can do things to calm ourselves down
and people do get around and manage their life without me.
I know.
Unbelievable, right?
And the fifth and final,
is I'm just gonna try to notice when I'm doing it,
'cause sweet Jesus.
Like I said, I think it's like completely permeated my life
and I didn't realize it until now.
So it's like the realization and then like the understanding
and then the management, right?
It's kind of like stages.
So if you are ever feeling like,
but I just learned about this diagnosis
or I just realized that I'm doing this.
Be patient and compassionate with yourself.
The realization honestly is
like the hardest part from my experience
because it can take us a long time to come around to it.
But then we have to learn about it
and understand how we're doing it and apply it in our life.
And then we can manage it.
We can't do one before the other.
So don't,
if you don't have all your together, don't worry.
I don't either.
And it takes us time to get there, right?
We're all works in progress.
And I wanna check my notes because you know,
I don't wanna miss anything.
Late night notes can be helpful.
I guess, overall, the last thing that I had is like,
I don't have all the answers.
That's okay we're gonna learn together.
And if anybody else is struggling with this
I would love to know your thoughts.
Is there anything that helped you?
Because that way we together can learn
'cause this is something I'm personally struggling
with and working on and maybe together we can feel better.
Anyway, I hope that was helpful.
It was just something I've been thinking about.
And so a realization I had that honestly still
feels pretty overwhelming,
but if you're feeling that too, it's okay.
We're in it together.
Take care of yourselves.
Have a wonderful week and I'll see you next time.
(upbeat music)