Balance & Beyond

Breaking Free from Over-Responsibility

• Jo Stone • Season 3 • Episode 108

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Are you the one who always keeps it together? The fixer, the rescuer, the emotional buffer who holds it all? This powerful exploration of over-responsibility reveals how many ambitious women weren't born control freaks – they were trained to be responsible for others' emotions, outcomes, and wellbeing from a young age.

Through intimate personal reflections and client stories, we uncover how this pattern silently sabotages your wellbeing. From the perfectionist who can't sleep because of a missed contract clause (despite five other people missing it too) to the professional who dims her light to avoid outshining others, these are the hidden costs of carrying burdens that were never yours to bear.

The most revealing insight? We often choose to hold these responsibilities not because we want to, but because we fear what might happen if we let go. "We would rather hold it all than let it fail and have to feel what that means." This deeply ingrained pattern becomes our identity – one that brings success and praise but leads to burnout and exhaustion.

This episode offers both compassionate understanding and practical wisdom for recognizing when you're carrying too much. Look for signs like perfectionism, hyper-control, and feeling responsible for others' emotional states. Most importantly, it gives you permission to put down these burdens, even if no one else picks them up. Because while responsibility may have become your identity, it wasn't your choice – and now you can choose differently.

Ready to break free from the weight of over-responsibility? Listen now and discover how to reclaim your energy, shine your light without apology, and create true balance in your life. Share this episode with a friend who needs this message, and visit balanceinstitute.com to learn more about our toolkit for avoiding burnout and creating balance beyond.

To view the Transcript from this week's episode, visit our Balance & Beyond Podcast webpage: https://www.balanceinstitute.com/podcast/2025/108

Thank you for joining us today on the Balance and Beyond Podcast. We're so glad you carved out this time for yourself!

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Thanks again for tuning in, and we'll see you next time on the Balance & Beyond Podcast!

Jo:

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. If you've always been the mature one, this is for you. You didn't just become a control freak. You were trained to be responsible for others, for emotions, for outcomes, and now it's burning you out, quietly and relentlessly. The pattern of over-responsibility has been alive in my community for a really long time, but in recent months, I personally have become very aware of just how deep-rooted this pattern is and how it's showing up in really unusual ways. So my aim in today's episode is to not only share some personal reflections and what I've been uncovering on my own journey, but also to give you insight into how this may be showing up for you and, most importantly, give you permission to put this one down.

Jo:

I grew up as the oldest of five cousins, and even though there was only a three-month gap between myself and my closest cousin, who was also a girl. I was always the mature one. I grew up as an only child and I don't think I was ever really a kid that much, but anytime we were at family dinners and I was always in charge, of course, I became bossy boots, but I was always the one who had to be responsible. I was always the one that had to keep it together. Maybe you have a story like this where you were either the oldest or the responsible one, or the one that wasn't insert thing here. What happens is when these patterns or these responsibilities and expectations are put on us at a young age, especially when we are then given praise or recognition for being responsible for keep everyone alive or keep your siblings or cousins from killing each other. You then start adopting this identity of okay, well, not only am I the one in charge, but I also am responsible for everyone else. Overlay that with high achiever DNA. I'm gonna do everything and then I'm going to be responsible not just for outcomes, but for everyone else their outcomes, their emotions, their everything else, even though most of it is out of your control. This early wiring really takes hold and you have this internal dialogue that, if something goes wrong, it's my fault, because that's what responsibility is. It's your job to keep it going and therefore, if there's any error, any mistake, then it's your fault. If it goes right, it's your responsibility. If it goes right, it's your responsibility, but if it goes wrong, it's your responsibility. This means you become the fixer, the rescuer, the one who won't let things go, the emotional buffer, the one who holds it all, not because you necessarily want to, but because you think you have to. You don't feel there's any leeway to put it down, because when you feel so responsible for everyone else, then of course you hold it. You're responsible for how they feel, you're responsible for how they react.

Jo:

There's some really interesting and quirky ways that this can show up, and I'm going to share some stories from clients and from myself that will bring this to life for you. I recently had a client who was beating herself up for a clause in a contract that she missed. Now I'm going to get the specifics of the story wrong, but that doesn't matter. This was a contract that was 20 plus pages long. It was reviewed by at least five other people, many of whom were likely lawyers, and yet she was lying awake up at night, beating herself up because she missed this clause, because it was her responsibility and this clause had detrimental impacts for her clients. But the weight and the shame and the guilt and the beating up because she missed something, even though her logical brain knows all these other people missed it. Why was it not their responsibility? Because it was hers. She was taking responsibility, and not just for the contract, not just for the execution of the agreement with the client, but then the results they got, how they felt about it, what they told others.

Jo:

There's a chance you're listening to this and go, oh, but Jo, that makes me really good at my job. It's because I follow things through, that's why I follow up, that's why I don't let anything fall between the cracks, that's why my clients or my team or whatever loves me. Yes, and are you lying awake at 3 am? Do you feel like you're burning out? Are you holding it all and can't put it all down? There is a difference between a level of let's call it normal responsibility or healthy is probably a better word a level of healthy responsibility that you can take for something, an outcome, an objective, where you say, all right, I'm going to follow up, I'm going to make sure that my client or this thing I'm delivering, delivers outcomes, but you're not going to hold it all so tightly and make it mean so much about you if something goes wrong.

Jo:

Over-responsibility also shows up in the need to be across everything. If you live in your inbox or your Teams or your Slack and are very, very responsible let's start that again wrong word If you live in your inbox or your Slack or your teams and are highly responsive, you get back to people very, very quickly. That is an element of over responsibility where you feel like you have to get back to them really quickly, otherwise you're letting them down. This has elements of people pleasing woven into it, which sits on top of over-responsibility. But when you are being responsive and being across everything and staying up late to prep for something because you feel like you have to have every answer to every possible question, yes, to control it looks like that, but it's because you believe it's your job to carry it all. You have to have all the answers. You to control? It looks like that, but it's because you believe it's your job to carry it all. You have to have all the answers. You have to know every number, every reason, because that's your responsibility. And if they ask you a question that you don't know well, then you feel like you're going to shrivel up and die because you didn't know it, even though, logically, your brain will say it's okay, I don't need to know everything, I can get back to them later. This deep internal drive of I'm responsible for everything will override any logic that you have Other ways.

Jo:

This shows up is internalizing others' emotional states. The amount of clients I have heard say to me well, so-and-so is giving me the silent treatment I must've done something wrong, or my husband's grunting at me. I'm clearly in the wrong Once again, taking responsibility for other people's emotions, believing that it's their job to make their husband happy. And if their husband is depressed, they're doing something wrong. And what do they need to do to help make their husband happy or their child happy, or their parents sad, or their parents this, or their siblings this, or their teammates going through this, and they've got to fix it. They've got to rescue them, they have to support them and, of course, it's incredibly helpful, it's incredibly empathetic and it's a wonderful thing to do from a place of genuine connection and human decency. However, when you are holding it all, when you are holding their shame, their guilt and tearing yourself in knots because you have to feel everything that they're feeling.

Jo:

Once again, there is that over-responsibility at play, and over-responsibility can come out in really sneaky places. I've been doing a lot of deep work myself on what are my upper limits and how do I burst through them as I step into new levels of growth and expansion. What I have found is I have a deep-seated fear, which comes from childhood, of outshining others, of making others feel bad because of either my success or my grades or my, whatever it may be. And this was drilled into me as a child when my my kinesiologist asked me the question okay, so if you feel like you're outshining someone else, why are you responsible for where they stand? I just looked at her and I went. She said they can take one step left and then you're no longer outshining them. But why is it your job or why are you responsible for where they stand? And so you can taught yourself to not cast a long shadow, to not outshine them. You dim your light because you think it's your fault or your responsibility for where they are, and my whole system just went. Oh my God, what a place for it to sit. What a place for it to sit right. If you have ever shrunk, if you've ever worried what others think of you, if you have ever feared outshining somebody or being rejected because you get too big for your boots tall poppy syndrome in its all its glory well, why are you responsible for how others think about you?

Jo:

This is so deeply baked in, but it's also weirdly familiar. We would rather hold it all than let it fail and have to feel what that means. That right, there is the crux of why we do this. We would rather hold it because we believe we can. We're responsible. We've been doing this for a long time. So we've built the muscle, we've got the emotional bandwidth, we've got the capacity, we've got the speed, we've got the intelligence, and so we hold it and we keep holding it until one day we can't.

Jo:

We were told for a long time that it was noble. We were probably given accolades for this because we could hold so much. But it's a trap. We were trained in this role. It was our identity that was gifted or given more or other to us. It wasn't our choice. It's an identity that we adopted and a role that we played because it kept us safe. It made us valuable. It kept us seen. It kept others close to us. It made us feel significant when we jumped in and rescued somebody, when we could be the savior. My team at one point gave me a firefighting hat to hang on my partition because I was so good at jumping in and putting out fires. I'd been practicing since I was four. I hit a head start on anybody else who perhaps only started putting out fires when they came into the corporate world.

Jo:

Hearing all these examples, there's a chance you're going oh my gosh, either this is me or how do I know if I'm doing this. Truth is, I would say about 90% of women in our world have this in some capacity. So I want to share with you three signs that you are carrying too much and you are being responsible for more than your fair share. If you are in any way perfectionist hello, over-responsibility, the desire to clean up others' messes, even if they've got it to 80%. If you feel like you have to make it perfect, then this is all about this element of control and being responsible for the output, the outcomes, how it looks, how it's perceived.

Jo:

Layering over this is the hyper control which often comes with the perfectionism and hyper control is not just yeah, I'll take that piece of work, it's, I'll take it, I'll do it all, no matter what it costs me, I'll take that piece of work, it's, I'll take it, I'll do it all, no matter what it costs me, I'll do it on the couch at midnight and I will do it to 150%. It's a real tight grip, white knuckling, because your identity is so deeply entrenched in this excess responsibility that you can't dare to let it go. Because, I'll say it again, if you would rather hold it all, then let it fall and have to feel what that means. Because if somebody else suffers or somebody else experiences pain or somebody else isn't rescued, what does that mean about you? And that is where it all sits.

Jo:

So perfectionism, hyper control and also this emotional identification, this belief that it is your job to make others happy, it is your job to regulate others' emotions. It is your job to protect somebody in your household from somebody else who's grumpy. It's your job to keep the peace. It's your job to resolve conflict or stop it ever occurring. So if you're a peacemaker, hello. If you're any way a people pleaser, hello.

Jo:

You have this sense of over-responsibility. This sounds all very noble and it's very easy for us to have seen all the good that has come from this. The career success, the ability, the emotional intelligence, the ability to intuit what others are thinking is fabulous, but it's time to put it down. It's time to shine your light bright and not give a stuff about where everybody else stands, because that's not your job. You are allowed to put it down even if no one else will pick it up.

Jo:

So my question for you to reflect on today is where have you taken on too much because it made you feel safe? And this is the permission slip that you may need to put it down to let them feel what they're feeling, to let them suffer the consequences and learn yourself how to feel what that means if it does fall, because this responsibility may have been your identity, but it wasn't your choice. So let's choose different today. 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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Jo Stone

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