Balance & Beyond
Balance and Beyond is the podcast for ambitious women refusing to accept burnout as the price of success. Here, we’re committed to empowering you with the tools and strategies you need to achieve true balance, where your career, relationships and health all thrive and where you have the power to define success on your own terms.
Balance & Beyond
The Over-Functioning Epidemic: Why You Can’t Stop Doing Everything
The world around us has pressed the turbo-boost button, leaving ambitious women struggling to keep pace while maintaining their sanity. In this powerful episode, we unpack the hidden epidemic of over-functioning and hyper-responsibility that's leaving high-achieving women quietly burning out.
When life feels like a runaway train, our instinct is to grip tighter and speed up - creating more lists, taking on more responsibilities, and micromanaging every detail. But this approach creates the perfect storm for burnout. We explore how this pattern extends beyond managing our own tasks to taking emotional responsibility for everyone around us, and why over 40% of women who take our burnout archetype quiz identify as the "silent martyr."
What makes this cycle so insidious is the contradiction at its heart. We desperately crave support while simultaneously rejecting it when offered. We sign up for self-improvement programs but never follow through. We tell ourselves we'll prioritize self-care "when things slow down" - but tomorrow never comes. The psychological barriers preventing us from receiving help run deep, often tied to our very identity as the capable one who manages everything.
At a time when technology is accelerating our world to unprecedented speeds, the antidote isn't trying to keep pace. It's strategic subtraction, authentic connection, and learning to push the "easy button" without guilt. We offer practical advice for breaking the cycle, including the powerful question: "If I were giving myself advice as my best friend, what would I say?"
Ready to stop being a lone wolf and put down some of what you're carrying? Join our 5-day "Smash Your To-Do List" challenge starting August 4th at balanceinstitute.com/smash and discover how strategic subtraction can transform your life.
To view the Transcript from this week's episode, visit our Balance & Beyond Podcast webpage: https://www.balanceinstitute.com/podcast/2025/107
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Thanks again for tuning in, and we'll see you next time on the Balance & Beyond Podcast!
Welcome to Balance and Beyond, the podcast for ambitious women who refuse to accept burnout as the price of success. Here we're committed to empowering you with the tools and strategies you need to achieve true balance, where your career, relationships and health all thrive and where you have the power to define success on your terms. I honor the space you've created for yourself today, so let's take a breath and dive right in.
Sabina:Oh, my goodness, can we just press pause? Everything's gone stratospheric, hasn't it? I know, certainly in my own life and my friends, the clients that we're speaking to someone has just pressed the boost turbo charge button and everyone's going. What's going on? Is it me? So yeah, there's a lot going on and we're always really keen to get underneath that and not get swept away in the story, but actually look at, okay, what's within my control, what can we do about this? And let's have the conversation so that we feel a bit more empowered.
Jo:Absolutely. And amongst all the chaos, the busyness, whether it's work, home, politically, economically, you could name the external stimulus that we're all operating in at the moment. That we're all operating in at the moment, what is a key trend we're seeing women fall into when we are living in such a fast-paced environment full of what can feel like so much chaos?
Sabina:Yeah, it's this over-functioning, it's speeding up. So when everything external is speeding up, we can easily get caught up with speeding up, over-functioning, becoming overly responsible, just taking on more and more and more. And really what we believe that is, it's, as things feel more and more out of control. We, as humans, want to then control more. It's like, wow, this is a runaway train. How can I just make sense of all of this? I need to grip on tighter, I need to double down on my to-do lists and I need to get even more productive and achieve more. And it's a fallacy, right, the more out of control life can become, we actually need to go inwards, but what we're actually seeing is this epidemic of busy is playing out even more and people are becoming more and more ragged, stressed, physically tired. It's important that we don't get sucked in by this story of over-functioning and also feeling overly self-responsible and acting like a lone wolf. It's all on me.
Jo:This is a version of hyper-independence, as you said, this lone wolfdom, where we not only feel like we have to manage everything you mentioned the lists work, the emails, the inbox, everything but that also, that over-functioning, extends to everyone else in our life, doesn't it? So it's not just managing the logistics that we tell ourselves well, I've now got to get this person here and pick up this and do this and respond to this by this date. We also start managing everybody else's emotions and we take responsibility for how they feel in their life. So it really can become incredibly draining, can't it?
Sabina:Yeah, there's no end to it. There's no end to it! And if you're a very emotionally intelligent, empathic, caring, heart-centered and, you know, savvy woman, you do care and and if you see people your nearest and dearest or people that you care about struggling, you do tend to take that on and then you want to try and be of service or to have a greater impact or greater contribution. But there is a balance. There's a balance between caring and carrying, or caring and rescuing, and the balance.
Sabina:The scale is being tipped so much further in the demands that are made of us that we're seeing so many women buckling under this burden of care, being overly emotionally invested in other people's happiness, and it's time to take a step back and really, what we refer to as strategically subtracting some of what is on your plate whether it's mentally, physically, emotionally, financially, energetically it really is time to strategically subtract and then consciously double down on what are my priorities, what am I making a stand for, what are my values personally?
Sabina:What do I need to double down on at work instead of trying to be all things to all people? So, with AI coming on board, we know that things are going to get faster and faster and faster. We can't keep up with machine learning, we just can't. And so I strongly believe, jo, that we're at a point in time when we have to make a conscious choice to stop, take stock and ask ourselves what is it to be me in my family, in my life, in my workplace right now, and what am I making a stand for? Because the runaway train of busy is not working.
Jo:That's going to be challenging. For one, there's a pretty good chance that I might fall over and get sick. But also, if I was to slow down and not be busy, who am I? What do I really value? And that can be incredibly confronting and difficult to do by yourself, because your nervous system is wired for busy. Your identity is based on being busy and helpful and rescuing, so it can be very difficult to break those patterns, can't it?
Sabina:Yeah, and we're so used to working at 200 kilometers an hour. The minute your alarm goes off, you're up, you're feeding the dog, you're preparing the lunches, whatever it is. We go from nought to 200 straight away and our nervous systems are screaming. And, yeah, there's this worry that if I slow down, what will I even have the energy to get up? Or I don't even know what I like anymore, so it's easier just to make myself busy with everybody else's needs. And we're also seeing a trend of women saying, oh, I signed up to my boot camp. I thought, yeah, if I just get fit over the next six weeks. And then they go to two sessions and they don't carry on.
Sabina:Or you know that gym membership or agreeing to be in a book club and read a book that you know is going to uplift you. So there's this desire to choose yourself, to value your health or to uplift yourself spiritually or mentally. But then again, with the best intentions, we end up dropping off the list and focusing on everyone else, and so the hamster wheel continues. And this is something we're really passionate about, jo, isn't it that we're not meant to do it on our own? We're not meant to do it on our own. This is why accountability buddies are great when you join a boot camp or a gym. This lone wolf mentality is not the way we are meant to evolve as humans. We're meant to be in community. We're meant to have people high-fiving us, cheering us on, you know, telling us kind and loving wise words when we're on our knees. And life is meant to be more simple and we may tell ourselves a story that, oh, that's just a pipe dream. But we can.
Jo:We can actually consciously cultivate simplicity and accountability and community, but it does take a decision and a choice to do something different it does, and that can be the hardest part right when you've felt let down either by yourself or by circumstances, and then tell yourself well, until the football season is over, there's no way I could ever do something for myself.
Jo:We continue to put this hyper focus on everything outside ourselves, waiting for ABC, unicorn and rainbow to all line up and then, when that's happened and the mermaid has, you know, swum with the leprechaun, then we will do something for ourselves. And is it any wonder years and years and years go by and another wasted gym membership or other program you don't do? There has to become this point, and what we're really passionate for is not waiting until you are on your knees, either on the brink of divorce or on the brink of illness or having lost your job, for you to have that wake up moment, to go. Okay, maybe it's me, maybe there's something that I can actually take back control of, and even though I don't think that it's possible for me to do any less, I don't think subtraction is possible for me Well, there are ways that every single human can actually step in and do this work.
Sabina:And I'm a firm believer that prevention is better than cure. Don't wait until you're on your knees. Don't wait until you feel like you're having a nervous breakdown. Speak up, get honest with yourself. What do you need? Are you really secretly craving to be taken care of more Great. Be honest with yourself and then look at how you're behaving. Are you actually allowing people to step in and support you? Are you investing in yourself, in your health, and actually following through? Are you choosing to work with a mentor who's walked the path that you want to walk before? Are you asking your partner for help or are you just quietly ruminating and spinning your thought wheels, constantly thinking I need some help, but I don't know how to. I'll just carry on. You know you have to stop. Prevention is better than cure and tomorrow never comes when you need to choose yourself. Your life, your wellbeing, your joy deserves to be looked at today and not put on the back burner.
Jo:And there's a reason. Over 40% of the women thousands now who've taken our burnout archetype quiz are the silent martyr, which is that exact profile. I do everything for everyone. I do it full of resentment, often things they didn't ask for, and I quietly grumble that I'm unappreciated and nobody sees me. And yet you're doing all these things that nobody ever often asked of you to a standard that perhaps isn't required.
Jo:And then you sit there and tell yourself a very valid it feels very true story about I've got no time, there's no time for, and the number one answer of all the quiz answers was I want to be taken care of, just for once. But to your point, you probably won't allow anyone to actually take care of you. So their ability to receive, even though they desperately want it, they're so wired for this over-functioning and over-giving that it's impossible, even if they get the courage to ask for help, that they won't actually take it, which is part of that self-sabotage pattern of I'll sign up to the course that I know is going to help me, but I'm not going to do it because that means you're receiving. Isn't it crazy the way our brains work? Yeah.
Sabina:And all of it is a self-protective mechanism. Right, we're always doing the best that we can do. There's no shame in judgment here, but the human psyche is fascinating, and so the thing that we want most dearly sometimes is the thing that we have a 10-ton shield, you know, keeping it at arm's length. Oh, my husband's asked how I need help, and then I just end up doing it anyway because it's quicker, faster, easier, better if I do it. Or, you know, my boss has offered to provide me with some more resources or help, but I haven't sat down to actually do the planning for my team, and so three or six months go by, or oh look, there's another financial year that's rolled around and I haven't actually taken the time to get clear about the help that is potentially on offer crazy cycle of self-sabotage.
Jo:As you said, the human psyche, the human brain and the nervous system are controlling so much more of us than we realize and yet we think the answer is better lists, color coding. I know I'll meal plan and put that on the fridge and that's going to be my salvation. I literally had someone tell me that yesterday. No, I just need a meal plan and a shopping list and then my life will be 100 better. Like there is merit in little things can help, but I can promise you your meal plan is not going to change your wiring of overfunctioning.
Sabina:It is good, but it's also a band-aid. We really need to get underneath the hood of what is driving your behavior. What are your beliefs about yourself, your level of deserving the help that you're allowed to ask for, and once you really get clear on that and what's really important to you and what you really value, then then you can put in place these strategies that can help you. Um and we all have a growing to-do list we do need to take things off. We do need to be productive and efficient, but we also need to strategically subtract what we're expecting ourselves to do. But the key really is don't be that lone wolf that's over-functioning. How can you get honest with yourself? Ask for help, surround yourself with awesome people, surround yourself with people who call you out on your over-functioning, and start to get honest about what you really desire, and then find people who have walked that path, who know what they're talking about, who can really help you get to where you want to be.
Jo:What do we see? Sabina, you mentioned this. You know we've got these patterns here of over-functioning obviously overthinking goes with that. But then this hyper-independence and inability to ask for help Pretty good chance somebody knows that they're not asking for help, but any other signs that we could give someone listening to this who's like oh, I keep telling myself I'm gonna do this thing, but I don't do it A piece of advice or just one little thing that's going to get them into action to either ask for help or to be able to receive whether it's a shift in identity or a hack or a mindset shift.
Sabina:Well, what we know is the type of women that come into our world. They are, as I said before, they're so overly caring, overly responsible, and they've often got advice loving, wise, practical, pragmatic advice for the people that they care about. So one way in which you can have a bit of a record scratch moment that stops you in your tracks is to ask yourself, if I were giving me some advice as if I was my best friend, what would I be saying? What wise, loving or agony aunt advice would I give myself right now? What is it that I really need to hear for the next step and how could I push the easy button right now, for today, what is something that I just don't have to feel responsible for, and sometimes it's just as simple as that. It doesn't have to be a grand life redesign. You know figuring out the school strategies for your kids, and you know, just in this moment, how can I push the easy button right now so that I can take care of myself better or ask someone else to help take care of me?
Jo:One of the hardest things to do is to actually ask for that help, to say can you go and drop the kids or can you pick them up. It's layered in so much story and emotions. That part of the work I love that we do is we unravel that and we make those requests clean and easy to do without all the gumph that comes with them.
Sabina:Yeah, because when we're not speaking up, when we have a silent desire that's not being met, that we're not admitting to ourselves, let alone to someone else, these rising layers, levels of seething, resentment you're not giving from an unconditionally loving bucket. People feel the resentment, or the depletion, or the tiredness. So is that actually the energy you want to be bringing to your hyper efficiency and hyper independence? Actually, no, no. What if you could be giving a little bit less, but a little bit more authentically? And so learning to ask for help is actually of benefit to everybody, to yourself. It allows someone else to give, it allows you to do less. It's this gift of reciprocity. And so, in this landscape where everything's getting busier, more AI, how can you become more human, more vulnerable, more authentic?
Jo:do less, get support, give yourself permission to enjoy this life that you have just a little bit more, even one percent, as you said, without the big grandiose gesture, can go a really really long way to unlocking more fulfillment, more joy, more fun, more contentment, which is the things that make life living in the first place. Yeah, exactly so. We mentioned the art of strategic subtraction. We invite you to come and join us for a challenge with a difference. So if you visit balanceinstitutecom, forward slash, smash. You're going to join us from the 4th of August for five days to smash your to-do list. We're talking strategic subtraction. It's through WhatsApp, so no extra stuff. It's going to be a voice note of me in your ear giving you practical tools on how to put some stuff down.
Jo:So if you are holding too much and if any of what we said resonates with today, with you today around over functioning, around over giving or being a lone wolf, come and join us. Be a lone wolf no longer and we will see you inside the smash your to-do list five day challenge. Thanks for joining me, sabina, thanks Jo, thanks for joining us today on the balance and beyond podcast. We're so glad you carved out this time for yourself. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend who might need to hear this today and, if you're feeling extra generous, leaving us a review on your podcast platform of choice would mean the world to us. If you're keen to dive deeper into our world, visit balanceinstitutecom to discover more about the toolkit that has helped thousands of women avoid burnout and create a life of balance and beyond. Thanks again for tuning in and we'll see you next time on the Balance and Beyond podcast.
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