Is Someone Leaning on You??

Mavis was standing in line with her 15-year-old son at a government office. She told me later that her thoughts—and her mood—began to turn dark. This is ridiculous, she thought. Waiting here. If this is what parenting is about, I made a BIG mistake. I don't have time for this! Why would anyone expect people to wait around like this?! And so on.

But, this time, she caught herself. She was doing it again, she thought. Getting all negative and hopeless over nothing. She began to stand up straighter—and realized her son had been leaning on her.?

“Don’t lean on me!,” she said, playfully pushing him away. “I love ya but you can stand on your own two feet!”

She hadn’t even noticed that he was leaning on her. But her thoughts reflected the pressure of supporting herself while supporting his weight. Or, in this case, him not standing on his own two feet.

How many people are leaning on you?

Once we start reaching some of our goals and functioning at a higher level, there’s a strange thing that can sometimes happen: we can notice that not everyone around us is pulling their weight.

We can discover that, while some of our functioning is just that, functioning, some of what we are doing is overfunctioning.

Which is a beautiful, engraved invitation to some people in our world to underfunction.

Overfunctioning is the habit of doing more than what is necessary in any given situation. It is taking responsibility, often slowly, over time, for the needs and tasks of others. It is the habit of not asking for help, not relying on anyone else for assistance or, sometimes, even participation.

There are many reasons why we might end up doing this. For Mavis, it was just a natural outgrowth of her ability to see, wherever she looked, a place where she could make things better. She gets things done, she often said about herself, so why not just do it for the people around her?

And there seemed to be plenty of? people in her life who figuratively—or sometimes literally—seemed to step aside and say, with a flourish, “Knock yourself out!”

What happened to me

“What are you up to today,” my friend asked me.

“I’ve decided it’s time to put Basil down,” I said, talking about my beloved dog who was now senile and confused, incontinent, in pain, and recently tried to bite my house cleaner. “I’m taking him this afternoon.”

“By yourself??” she asked, sounding alarmed.

“Well, yeah,” I said, confused.?

“Fran.” She paused. “That’s not something you do by yourself. You bring your family. You need the support. They might need to participate. They’re part of this, too.”

Really?? I thought. You don’t do that by yourself?? Sheesh. I had no idea.

That was the beginning. Over the next few years I discovered that there were a whole lot of things I did—largely by myself.?

I try my hand at normal functioning

The road to normal functioning took quite a bit of time—and took my marriage along with it.

And before this starts to sound like a veiled attempt to promote myself as a superwoman, accomplishing amazing feats of everyday functioning all by myself, I also discovered that there were whole areas of my life where I was underfunctioning—and allowing my husband to shoulder certain aspects of life all by himself.

We were siloed. Separate. Each adept at half of a life.

I’m working to live a whole life now.?

Mavis discovers “good enough” functioning

And so is Mavis. As our coaching work progressed, Mavis stepped back from some of the tasks she had unconsciously taken ownership of that were not actually her responsibility. And she stepped forward in areas where she felt she was underfunctioning.

Through our sessions Mavis began to cultivate “good enough” functioning. She had to allow space and time and patience and compassion for her learning curve. And she had to allow the same for others.?

Mavis quickly learned those negative, hopeless thoughts she shared with me became her key to realizing when she was carrying the weight of the world on our shoulders—or at least the weight of those who could support their own weight.

A proper share

And that’s the key. Overfunctioning, like caretaking, is about doing for others what they could do for themselves. Whether we’re the overfunctioner or the underfunctioner, it’s about not having a proper share of the responsibility.

A proper share. Not all of it and not none of it. But a share that reflects each person’s capacity.

And that’s where this gets fun. Because we can begin to take pleasure in our capacity—rather than, like the character of the Horse in George Orwell’s Animal Farm, simply resolve to work harder at every turn.

We read the signs

We can begin to read the signs of helplessness and abdication in those around us and refuse to do their tasks for them.

We can make reasonable requests of those around us—and see who can fulfill our requests and those who cannot.

As we claim what is ours to handle and what is not ours to handle our world will change. The people who really really need us to overfunction will find someone else to rely on. The people who really really need us to underfunction will find someone else to rescue.?

We might end up with a list of tasks that really are ours and a few people we can ask for assistance when we need it. And we may take pleasure in both of those aspects of our very full, and perhaps, newly whole, life.

Any of this resonate for you and your situation? Yeah? Let’s chat: DM me: https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/frangallaher/