In Far Enough to be Overwhelmed, but not Far Enough to Get Ahead - how women can unconsciously keep themselves and others in limbo.

While many women can be quick to lend a helping hand, many of us have not developed the necessary boundaries to do so with ease and balance.

Without appropriate boundaries we can easily become overwhelmed: overwhelmed with the volume of work to be done or overwhelmed with the distress that drew us to help in the first place. 

We can step in. We’ve proven this over and over. The question then becomes, can we step back out again?

Identifying appropriate boundaries is not always simple. Situations can be complex. But when you’re fairly competent at boundary-making and still find yourself perpetually overwhelmed, there are likely other factors at play. Factors that can be unconscious and personally compelling.

One such factor that’s important to call out of the shadows is when we unknowingly attempt to heal unfinished psychological business through participation in situations of distress and overwhelm.

For example, when you are drawn to please a tyrannical boss, or volunteer your time to constantly shore up failing groups or enterprises, or accept a toxic environment or one that meets few of your needs, you may in fact be living out unfinished business from the past.

When your participation in a situation is motivated by your own unconscious and unfinished business, even though it may look like you're helping, you place both yourself and those you would help in a "shadow" state.

Shadow because not having emerged from your own old story, you run the risk of perpetuating that story in the present, drawing yourself and others into circular and failed patterns.

And while you might personally be drawn to these old patterns as a way of finally resolving them, you cannot truly heal your own history but through tackling your own history. Unconsciously reliving the past through the present is like being stuck in a loop of one’s worst memories.

While I deeply respect and honor women’s willingness to volunteer and to shoulder the challenges and even suffering of others, let this responsiveness not be an unconscious effort to avoid the primacy and call of our own history to be healed.

Staying mindful of your story as you work to triage present situations can further your understanding of both. Where possible, it can also reveal a shared path to resolution.

Eva Papp/The School of Dae Nova

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