I imagine that other counsellors can relate when I say that many of my clients could make great counsellors themselves someday, if they were interested in pursuing that with healthy boundaries in place. I am often reminded of a younger version of myself in sessions when my clients are the sort of people that others tend to come to with their worries and cares. They are empathetic, experienced listeners and advice-givers, but also anxious and completely exhausted. How do you balance self care and responsibility? How does one break the self-sacrifice cycle?
Like with any personality trait or type, these wonderful, caring people work with both the strengths and weaknesses associated with carrying the burdens of others. The reason why so many of them end up in therapy or seeking support for their mental health, my younger self included, is that they take on responsibilities that belong to others out of love for them. They also have a tendency to refuse help with their own worries and cares because they do not want to burden others.
They can be compared to someone who has just come home from a grocery shopping trip with all of their roommates and is insisting that they alone have to carry all of the groceries inside in one trip. Maybe one of their roommates dropped a bag once, another is sore from working out, and another has a fresh manicure. Maybe one or more of their roommates actually asked the one insisting on carrying everything to carry in their groceries, and went inside without witnessing the mammoth task of carrying all of the cares of oneself and others; maybe none of them asked at all, and would actually prefer to carry their own load, but the one who wants to carry their load has seen their past mistakes, their pain, or the breakable parts of them and insists that they should be the one to carry the entire load.
Unfortunately, carrying everything for everyone is simply not sustainable. Maybe they make it for a little while, perhaps half-way up the driveway while their muscles ache and the circulation in their hands is cut off, but something will have to give sooner or later. Because of this person’s caring nature, the feeling that it would be wrong at this point to drop someone else’s load, and their belief that there is no way now to give it back without hurting someone, they will most likely drop only their own groceries. This is the reason why we so often see people taking care of others to this extent but not taking care of themselves.
I would encourage anyone who sees this unhealthy cycle play out in their lives to seek support through counselling, because these are usually life-long patterns that need in-depth attention, but the key to get started on a journey towards a healthier balance is to broaden your understanding of responsibility and self-care.
Understanding responsibility in terms of care and relationships can feel counter-intuitive or even selfish, at first, but this is not about refusing to care about or for others. To get started is simply a matter of asking yourself the question: what is my responsibility in this situation?
For example, a friend may be working with depression, and your typical response would be to offer 24/7 emotional support if needed. Asking yourself what your responsibility is in this situation may lead to slightly different answers depending on context, but your responsibility for your own health and wellbeing does not change when the situation does. Additionally, in every case, your friend will ultimately be responsible for their own mental health and safety. This does not mean that you cannot or should not offer support, even (temporary) 24/7 support if that does not compromise your own health and the situation calls for it!
It means that you have not failed when your friend is feeling low, and you have not won when they are showing signs of recovery. It means that you are responsible for being authentic to your caring nature and showing love to your friend, however that looks in your situation; you are not responsible for your friend themselves.
Whether or not the question of responsibility changes your approach to specific situations, it will help you to set up healthy emotional boundaries within yourself. You will feel the difference, but still be able to be your own definition of a good friend/partner/parent/etc. The people around you will feel the difference too, and in ways you might not expect. You might think that they could feel let down or unsupported; this may be true of some people who are on a journey that leads them to (unconsciously) seek out people to take on their responsibilities. In that case, open communication and/or seeking professional support in that relationship can lead to healthier perspectives and approaches for both of you. For many of the people around you, however, the change will be a positive one from the start. Most people want to feel that they have agency in their own lives and that the people they love see how capable and responsible they can be, and will appreciate the subtle differences that come when you support them rather than take responsibility for them.
This shift will also naturally expand your understanding of self-care, which, up until this point, has probably felt like self-indulgence, selfishness, and/or a waste of time for someone who has learned a pattern of caring often being synonymous with self-sacrifice. A hard lesson for many is that there is no inherent value, moral or otherwise, in suffering or self-sacrifice. There are situations where self-sacrifice benefits someone else or yourself, in which case continually asking the question of responsibility and weighing benefits and costs is very important to keep from revisiting the unhealthy caring cycle; suffering can always have meaning if that is part of your growth or your story. However, suffering or self-sacrificing continually for others is not the same as caring about them or for them, has no inherent value, and is not more caring than setting up and maintaining healthy boundaries.
In the example of your friend working with depression, they may feel loved and supported by you “sacrificing” your time to just be with them and “suffer” with them for a while; essentially sitting with them in the feelings they have so that they know that they are not alone, but are also not expected to put on a happy face for you. In this case, that can have great value. Where the value becomes less clear and the harm to yourself (and likely to your friend as well, in the long-term) increases is when you take on responsibility for them, which may look like: feeling like you have to suffer with them or end their suffering somehow, and that it is selfish to think about anything else; feeling like you cannot leave them and sacrificing all of your time to take care of them; only feeling happiness when they show some kind of improvement; spending all your time worrying about them, even when you are not with them or fulfilling other responsibilities; feeling like no one else can take as good of care of them as you can; skipping basic care for yourself, like eating and sleeping regularly; etc. Nothing in this list benefits your friend in any way, no matter how much it feels like it must have value because you are sacrificing so much and feel so deeply for them.
The truth is that a great deal of your suffering and sacrifice has not benefited the people you were suffering and sacrificing for, and this enormous load you have been carrying for so long combined with your lack of self-care has actually decreased your resources, making you less and less capable of caring for others as time goes on.
I share this with you, not to devalue your care or hurt you, but because most people with these patterns of care need to hear that something needs to change or they will not be able to help others anymore before they will make a change and/or seek help.
Even if self-care only feels necessary to you so that you can continue to care for other people, the important thing is that you realize that you need it! I encourage you to ask yourself: what is my responsibility to myself?
This can be a hard question to answer if you do not value yourself very highly, so, for some, a better question can be: what would my responsibility to myself be if I was my own caregiver?
Answers may vary depending on context, your individual desires, and your individual needs, but it will always be true that you are responsible for your own mental health and wellbeing. If you are an adult, you will be responsible for your own basic needs, like shelter, hygiene, clothing, and food. That sounds easy, but it gets tough when you are continually driven to sacrifice yourself. Self-care includes providing everything you need for yourself to have a healthy life, from basic needs to needs to improved mental health and relationships with others, which is why it will virtually always include “selfish” things like leisure time and time spent only on you.
What would life be like if someone took care of you the way you take care of others?
I encourage you to find out. You are responsible for you, and you are easily the best qualified person to take care of you. It’s time to let go of responsibilities that you’ve taken on that are not yours, set healthy boundaries, and start taking care of someone who really needs it: you.