116: Over-owning Others’ Emotions: Hypervigilance & The Nervous System

Over-Owning Others' Emotions: How Hypervigilance, People-Pleasing & Anxiety Keep You Stuck

Do you feel responsible for other people's feelings? Do you find yourself walking on eggshells, constantly monitoring everyone's mood, and trying to prevent conflict before it happens?

For many recovering people-pleasers, hypervigilance becomes a way of life. We learn to scan for emotional threats, manage other people's reactions, and carry burdens that were never ours to hold.

In this episode, MaryAnn explores the connection between people-pleasing, hypervigilance, anxiety, and nervous system dysregulation. You'll discover why trying to manage other people's emotions leaves you exhausted, how over-functioning keeps others from growing, and what it looks like to create healthier emotional boundaries without feeling guilty.

What You'll Learn in This Episode

• Why people-pleasers often feel responsible for other people's emotions
• The hidden connection between hypervigilance, anxiety, and an overactive nervous system
• Signs you're over-owning emotional responsibility in your relationships
• How rescuing, fixing, and over-functioning contribute to burnout
• Why allowing others to experience discomfort can be an act of love
• How to stop walking on eggshells and start creating emotional safety within yourself
• Practical ways to support others without taking on their emotional burdens

Work With Me

If you're tired of carrying everyone else's emotional load and want support creating healthier boundaries, let's talk.

Book a free 30-minute clarity call where we'll identify one simple shift that can help you feel more peaceful, confident, and emotionally free.

Schedule your free call here:
https://calendly.com/maryannwalkerlife/freeconsult

Don't Forget to Subscribe

If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to subscribe to Inner Work with MaryAnn Walker so you never miss an episode.

Each week, you'll learn practical tools to help you stop people-pleasing, regulate your nervous system, set healthy boundaries, and create more balanced relationships.

Links Mentioned in This Episode

• Free Clarity Call: https://calendly.com/maryannwalkerlife/freeconsult
• Website: https://www.maryannwalker.life

Transcript

Speaker 0:00

Well, hello and welcome back. Are you somebody that feels personally responsible for making sure that everybody else is okay? Are you somebody that jumps into action the second that you notice that somebody else is upset? Do you often find yourself in the role of mediator or emotional processor for other people? If so, then today's episode is for you. We're going to be talking about what it looks like to over-own other people's emotions and also some of the unintended consequences that can arise when you choose to just handle it on your own. But before we dive in, I wanna share with you a story, and yes, I know that this is ridiculous, but stick with me here. So imagine for just a moment that your neighbor just bought a billy goat, and this billy goat is so darn cute. Oh my gosh, it's just the sweetest thing. It's got little horns and everything. It's just so cute. And after they bought this goat, then they realized, "Oh, I don't actually have a place to keep this billy goat, and now I need to leave for work every day, so where could I put this goat?" And then they see you outside getting your mail, and then they get a great idea and they say, "Hey, would you please watch this goat for me? I don't have a fenced-in yard and I need someplace for it to go, so can Billy stay at your house while I go to work? That would be so helpful for me." And since you want to be a nice neighbor, then you say yes, even though you know that this isn't your goat and it's not your problem and it's probably going to impact your life in a very big way. You might even think, "Okay, yeah, it's gonna be uncomfortable for me, but I would rather make myself uncomfortable than make my neighbor feel uncomfortable not knowing what to do with their goat. So okay, yes, I'll agree to it. Sure, your goat can come on in. Let's hang out, Billy." And so the neighbor leaves for work, and the goat comes in your house, and sure enough, it is chaos. You're following the goat around. You're scrambling to put away your valuable things so it won't break them. It's eating the laundry as you're trying to put it away. It's making holes in the wall with its little horns, and you're trying to patch things up, and everything around you is a big mess, but you manage. It's a struggle, but you manage. You're picking up everything exactly as it happens. And by the time the neighbor comes back over, then everything's been cleaned up. There's no more mess. There's no poop on the floor. There's no holes in the wall. You threw out all of the half-eaten socks, and everything appears to be fine for you. And your neighbor might even say, "Wow, I had no idea that my goat was so well house trained. This is such a wonderful solution that I came up with. I'm going to bring my goat over here every single day because apparently they're better behaved at your house than they are at my house. At my house, I have so much picking up to do, but your house looks great." And they are now convinced that the best way to solve their goat problem is to let you solve their goat problem for them. And the truth is that this is a workable solution for them, but it is not necessarily a workable solution for you. But because you have decided to take on ownership of the daytime management of the goat, then your neighbor, then they never experience what it's actually like to have a goat in the daytime. They never build a fence. They never build a shelter for their goat, and they never learn how to properly care for their goat because guess what? You are doing all of it for them. So while initially it may have seemed like you were doing your neighbor a favor, really, they're never learning how to navigate goat ownership on their own. And your taking it on for them is basically saying, "You know what? They can't do it. They're never going to learn how to do it. It is better if I just do it for them." But after some time, you're starting to feel burned out. You're feeling hypervigilant as you're following this goat around all day, right? You're starting to feel like you're walking on eggshells in your own home. And you know all of this, and also you're still believing that it's better for you to take on this goat And I get it that this is an absolutely silly example, but this is often what we do when we over-own other people's emotional experiences. We not only stunt their growth, but we put our own nervous system on edge while we're also reinforcing to ourselves and to other people that you're not capable of doing this right now, and you might never be capable of learning how to do this in the future, so I must do this for you, right? We're essentially infantilizing them, keeping them small, keeping them stuck. And on the surface, it can look like we're being helpful. It can look like we're being thoughtful or kind. I mean, you do just wanna help them to feel better, right? But what is actually happening for many people pleasers is that they're now struggling to know the difference between genuinely helping someone and trying to regulate their own nervous system. So for example, maybe as a child, then you learned that whenever your more emotionally reactive parent came home, that you needed to jump into work, and if you did that, then you could avoid becoming a target. So you would clean, you would organize, you would load the dishwasher to demonstrate your level of helpfulness in an attempt to lighten their parents' load And hopefully avoid their being grumpy. Or maybe in a friendship, then you learned over time that having needs and making requests would result in your friend becoming overwhelmed. So you learned over time to bend over backwards to accommodate them and fulfill their needs in the hopes that someday, maybe they would have the capacity to fulfill your needs. But until then, your needs, they would just remain quiet, unspoken, unimportant. Or maybe when there's a new task that's coming out at work, then you take it upon yourself to assess each individual person's current capacity. So you might be thinking, "Okay, well, that person, they're having relationship issues, so they shouldn't have anything else. They're still recovering from illness. That person always seems overwhelmed, even though they seem to have the fewest number of tasks." So in an attempt to prevent everyone else from having a negative emotion, in an attempt to prevent anyone from having to declare their own capacity, learn how to state boundaries, or feel their own feelings, then you decide to take on the task, even though your plate is already full. And when you do that, what do you think it does to your nervous system? It sets you up for hypervigilance. It sets you up for having to always be on, to always be ready, to always be in tune with other people's emotions, to always be ready to jump in, intervene, fix it, smooth things over. And your hypervigilance, it shows up as a way to attempt to minimize your own discomfort, but it's actually creating a lot of discomfort for you. In fact, let's talk about a few of the signs and symptoms of hypervigilance. You might feel like you're walking on eggshells. You have a hard time slowing down or resting. You're probably exhausted all the time, but you're unable to truly rest. In fact, even when you have the time for a much-needed nap, then your mind start racing, your body feels restless, and even though you might be laying still, you can't seem to relax enough to actually fall asleep. When you're hypervigilant, then you keep scanning the room. You're observing everybody's body language, their microexpressions. You're overanalyzing the text message that you just received, attempting to read between the lines to hopefully preempt any negative emotion for anybody else. You might feel anxious, on edge, insecure, uncertain. And when you're experiencing those emotions, the tendency is to actually increase your level of hypervigilance in an attempt to calm down your own anxiety. But it keeps getting worse. Somehow, the messaging that you've received over time is that if there's a problem, it is your responsibility to solve it. And yeah, the truth is, you've probably become pretty good at reading other people. You've become pretty good at knowing how to navigate different situations. And other people, they may have also learned over time that when I am feeling uncomfortable, I know just who to turn to in order to feel better. And so now, your hypervigilance then it's just turned into over-functioning. You're taking on more than your share in relationship. You are always initiating the conversations, the texting, the planning to hang out, because you're worried that the relationship is going to fall apart if you don't. You're constantly adjusting your schedule to accommodate other people so that they are not inconvenienced. You spend hours listening to other people's struggles, hoping that maybe eventually they reciprocate and ask how it is that I'm doing. You start doing tasks for others, even basic tasks, that they could actually do on their own. This might look like staying up until 2:00 AM and helping your high schooler with an assignment that they delayed starting till the night before just so that they won't experience the negative emotions that can come with getting a bad grade. Or maybe you're scheduling your partner's appointments and becoming their personal secretary, reminding them of what's coming up in an effort to be seen as helpful and necessary. Or maybe rather than allowing your family members to follow through on their chores, like emptying the dishwasher or the litter box, then you just do it for them because you know how burned out they are, which is fine every now and then, but now you're doing it all the time. You're jumping in to fix problems without being asked. For example, maybe a friend mentions having relationship issues, and without being asked, now you're offering up solutions. You're offering up childcare and an overnight getaway to help them to fix the relationship. Or maybe your partner comes home feeling really frustrated about work, and rather than just listening, then you're jumping into problem-solving mode and offering up solutions. Or maybe you're interjecting yourself as mediator between two family members that are struggling to see things eye to eye. You volunteer to take on the lion's share of the mental load and the emotional load in your relationships by monitoring everybody's moods and adjusting your behavior to keep the peace. You work to remember everybody's appointments and commitments rather than just allowing them to track them on their own. You spend hours worrying about how somebody else might react to a conversation before it's even happened. You're thinking and overthinking, thinking, "Well, if I can just find the exact words, then maybe I can avoid any upset when I make a request." Or maybe you've become the unpaid coach or therapist for many of the people in your life, helping them to feel seen and heard and understood, while at the same time they have no idea what's going on for you. And while on the surface all of these things can appear to be helpful, they're actually just attempts to create emotional safety for ourselves. And the more that you do these things for other people, the more your nervous system learns over time that if I stay on top of everything, then nobody will be upset. If I can solve problems quickly, then conflict won't happen. If I can anticipate everybody else's needs, then I won't disappoint anyone. If I can just do it myself, then I can avoid criticism from others. So then you're constantly monitoring the environment for emotional threats that aren't actually yours to manage. Now let me share with you a common example. So Pam overhears a conversation that's happening between her husband and her teenage daughter, and the volume is getting louder, and she is becoming more and more uncomfortable. So she intervenes because she knows them best after all. And so she goes in and she tells her husband, "Okay, this is what they were trying to say." And then she turns to her daughter, "Okay, and this is what your dad was trying to say. This is what he meant to say," trying to soften the blow. But the thing is that while intervening might bring temporary peace as she assuages all of their feelings, then it will not ultimately lead to her husband and her teenager learning how to talk to each other and navigate their differing viewpoints. And a really interesting thing happens when you choose to take on someone else's emotional experience. The first thing is they never learn how to navigate things on their own. They never learn how to self-regulate, how to communicate, how to problem solve, how to hold themselves accountable for the impact of their actions or their inaction. But something else really interesting happens for you when you try to manage others. More than likely, when you are choosing to fix it for other people, you are so focused on them that you're also not learning how to navigate your own negative emotions, your own discomfort. What you're doing instead is making your emotional well-being contingent upon other people's emotions. Something that, yes, you can have influence over how other people feel, but ultimately you cannot control other people's emotions But today, you can start to do things differently. You can choose to start playing the long game and trusting that people will figure things out rather than trying to create short-term immediate relief for yourself. You can choose to allow yourself to experience discomfort as you're practicing how other people will choose to solve their own problems. You can choose to be there for others without taking on their burdens yourself. You can start allowing space for both of you to feel just a little bit uncomfortable as they gain the confidence to create change for themselves. When you start to take on other people's emotions at your own expense, you are teaching other people as well as your own nervous system that their feelings are the priority and that you are not safe until their feelings have been managed. But since we can't actually manage other people's emotions, all that we're really doing is just perpetuating our own discomfort. So yes, it may be uncomfortable to feel your heart race and your face get hot when your partner comes home upset. You may experience shallow breathing and panic as you witness an exchange between your adult child and your partner. You might start to sweat when somebody brings up politics at your family reunion and openly judges another family member. And also, sitting in that discomfort for just a little while longer, it can allow space for some very necessary and real experiences to take place, which could honestly be the most compassionate thing that you could do for other people. Maybe allowing them to work things out without your intervening is what is actually going to help them to see that the way that they're currently approaching things is not actually working, right? They might think it's working because, "But I took the goat to your house and everything seems fine, so problem solved, right?" But allowing them to do that can help them to see what is not actually working. Maybe being there to just sit with them without fixing it is what is going to help them to find their own more permanent solution. Maybe allowing somebody to fail is what is going to help them to self-reflect on how they could do better next time. Maybe somebody experiencing a negative emotion isn't the worst thing that could happen. Maybe it's believing that they're never going to be able to overcome it on their own that's actually worse. So start to notice today where you might be sliding into hypervigilance and emotional management of other people. Notice what happens when somebody gets angry and you calm them, when somebody creates conflict and you fix it. Notice what happens when somebody makes a poor choice and you rescue them, when somebody avoids responsibility and you pick up the pieces. And notice that, yes, it does feel good in the moment, and we might even think that we're modeling how to handle things moving forward, and sometimes it does do that. But when their takeaway isn't, "I need a fenced-in yard for my goat," but rather, "Oh, things are so much better when they just do it for me," then that might be a sign that you've actually stunted their growth rather than supported their growth. And when that happens, then sometimes we're confused. We're confused about why they aren't changing. But why would they change? They're not experiencing the full impact of their choices. We are carrying it for them. And meanwhile, our nervous system is paying the price. We're exhausted from monitoring everybody else's moods. We're anxious from anticipating problems that may or may not arise. We're overwhelmed. But let me remind you that other people's emotions are not our personal emergencies. Your friend can be disappointed. Your spouse can be frustrated. Your child can be upset. Your coworker can be irritated. And none of those things automatically require you to jump in and fix it for them. Sometimes the most loving thing that you can do is allow somebody to feel what it is that they're feeling and just allow them to figure things out. Allow them to have the hard conversations without intervening. Allow them to practice making a repair. Allow them to come up with their own solutions. Healthy relationships require healthy boundaries. It is possible to care about other people's feelings without becoming personally responsible for them. It is possible to love and support without rescuing. And when you finally stop trying to manage everybody else's emotions, then something really incredible happens. You get your life back. Your nervous system, it finally gets a chance to rest. You stop walking on eggshells. You stop scanning every room for problems. You stop carrying burdens that were never yours to begin with. And the people around you, they finally get the opportunity to become stronger, more resilient, and more capable of handling life on their own. And letting them learn and grow and evolve, that just might be one of the most loving things that you could possibly do for them. So many people, and especially women, have been conditioned to believe that they are personally responsible for managing everybody else's emotions. So if someone expresses a negative emotion or if somebody says something that could be interpreted as rude or insensitive or even aggressive, then the highly sensitive person is suddenly activated. They jump into action to fix it. But today, we start to do things differently. Now, if you are ready to create change, please come and book a free clarity call with me. On these calls, we'll talk about what is weighing on you most and identify one small change that you can start today that will make a huge impact for you. And I hear you. You're probably thinking, "Okay, why does she keep offering these calls for free? She must be selling me something." And guess what? You're right. I do these calls to make coaching feel more accessible to people, to help more people, to get more clients. And if we are a good fit, then at the end of our call, I will tell you how it is that you can work with me. And also, this is truly a low-pressure call. Remember, I am a recovering people pleaser myself, and I hate telling people no. I am the person that would rather drive to a different store than go into the store that I could see that there were people out front of that were selling something. It was the worst thing for me to walk by somebody and say, "No, thank you." And I have learned through that experience and grown. I know that experience very well. So I want you to know that of all the people that you could go to for coaching, I understand that aspect, and so this is absolutely a low pressure call. I just wanna offer you one tip that can help you to create lasting change. And if you want to hear more, great, and if not, that's fine. I'm just happy to help. But please take some concrete action. Listening to podcasts on people pleasing, it's great, and it can be so helpful. But I will be honest with you that I 10X'ed my personal progress the moment that I started investing into myself and investing into coaching with somebody that could look at my specific circumstances and help me to see things more clearly. So if you are ready to invest into yourself as a recovering people pleaser, I promise you that there is no safer person to explore the idea of coaching with in a non-confrontational, low pressure way than by chatting with me, somebody who totally gets it. So you can book your free 30-minute call by clicking the link in the show notes. I am so looking forward to meeting with you, and I'll see you next week. Bye now.