Who Am I When I’m Not Being Useful?

What if the reason you can’t rest has nothing to do with your to-do list?

In this episode of Over This Should, Pamela Meadows takes on the question that hits like a stomach punch and a heart check:

Who am I when I’m not being useful to everyone else?

Through a very real story about lasting only about 90 seconds on the couch before her nervous system staged a tiny corporate takeover, Pamela unpacks the belief underlying so much over-functioning: that our worth is something we have to keep earning by being helpful, productive, needed, and easy to love.

This episode is for the dependable one. The capable one. The “she’ll handle it” one. The woman who knows rest matters, but still cannot sit down until the dishes are done, the laundry is folded, the form is signed, the chickens are fed, and everyone else is okay.

Inside this episode:

• Why usefulness is not the problem, but tying your worth to usefulness is
• How “I should be able to handle this” becomes a quiet identity trap
• Why rest can feel unsafe when your nervous system has learned to equate productivity with belonging
• The difference between service and self-abandonment
• Why “everything is never done” matters more than we want to admit
• A simple practice to help you be “useless on purpose” and notice what comes up

The dishes can be important without being in charge of your humanity.

You are allowed to rest before the list is empty.

You are allowed to be a person in the middle of a life that still needs managing.

And you do not owe anyone usefulness in exchange for the space you take up.

If this episode hits home, send it to the woman who never sits down.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Okay, it's confession time. I'm a liar. But not on purpose. Still, I spend my days coaching women, talking to women, writing newsletters for women, and saying things like, you don't have to be productive to earn rest. Rest is not a reward. You're allowed to exist even if you don't feel useful. And y'all, I believe that. I believe it all the way down to my core. I believe it enough to have it put on a mug. I have it in Instagram carousels, and I'm on a podcast saying things like that into the microphone with my whole chest. But when it comes to actual life, I don't always live it. Which is confusing and wildly inconvenient for my brand. For years my kids have been saying things like, Mom, you never sit down. Mom, you never stay still. Mom, can you just come watch a movie with us? And I say yes. Of course I say yes. I want to be a cozy mom. I want to be the present mom, the mom who crawls up on the couch and watches the movie and eats the popcorn and does not do a mental inventory of the laundry situation during the opening credits. But then I sit down and I immediately remember the dishes in the sink and the pile of laundry and the form that still needs to be signed, and the last day of school party bowls that I forgot to pick up earlier, and the graduation RSVP list, so I know how much food to order for my daughter's graduation. And did I feed the chickens in Water the Garden? And the fact that something somewhere in my house is probably sticky or one of my puppies peed on it. So no, I don't really sit. I hover. I stay near enough to the couch that I'm technically present. The movie plays, I fold laundry. The kids laugh, I clean the counters off. Someone says, Mom, you missed it. And I did. I missed it. But the towels are folded, so no one's gonna get out of the shower later butt-nicked, yelling, mom, I need a towel. So that means we're all winning and thriving in life, right? And then the other day, my husband was on the couch. And I just want to be really clear, this man works so hard. He is not exactly like a lying on the couch eating grapes while the kingdom burns around him, kind of guy. Keith almost never rests. But there he was, sitting on the couch, and he said, Come sit with me. And I said, I have so much to do. And he said, just come sit for a few minutes. And so I did. I lasted about 90 seconds. 90 seconds, not nine minutes, not one scene of a movie, not long enough for Keith to ask me how my day was or if I wanted to watch something on TV. 90 seconds. And then something in my body started to itch. It wasn't a thought, it was a literal body feeling, like a restless, prickly get up now feeling. Like my nervous system was standing in the doorway with the clipboard saying, adorable, love this for us, but we have tasks. And so I said, I have so much to do. He looked at me and asked, like what? And I rattled off my list. Feed the dogs, put the dishes away, sign the form for Bella, have to pick up stuff for the graduation party, someone has to do the laundry. I have so much to do. And here's the thing: all of that was true. Every single thing I listed off was real. And none of it was the actual reason I couldn't sit on the couch with the people that I loved for more than a minute and a half. The dishes weren't the problem. The chickens weren't the problem. The laundry well, literally compounding in the moment, was not the problem. The real reason underneath it all, I cannot stop moving, I cannot stop producing, I cannot stop scanning for what needs me. And when I get quiet enough to ask why, I land on the same question I've been circling most of my life. Who am I when I'm not being useful for everyone? That's the question. And if that question landed somewhere in your chest, stay with me. Because today we're not talking about your to-do list, we're talking about the belief under it. The one that says your worth is rent, and rent is due every single day. Hey, welcome back to another episode of Over The Should. The show for women who are done living inside all of the shoulds that she inherited, absorbed, tolerated, performed, and then somehow laminated into her personality. I'm Pamela Meadows, and today we're talking about a question that feels like a stomach punch and a heart check at the same time. Who am I when I'm not being useful to everyone else? Not when I'm leading. Not when I'm fixing. Not when I'm anticipating everyone's needs, like a heavily caffeinated emotional support concierge. Not when I'm doing the thing before anyone asks. Who am I when I'm not being useful? Because for a lot of high-performing women, especially the dependable ones, the capable ones, the shill handle it ones, the fear underneath the overfunctioning is not actually about the task list. It's not about the dishes or the email or the grocery order, it's not the project plan. It's not even the family logistics spreadsheet that somehow only lives in your brain. The fear is deeper. The fear is if I stop being useful, will I still matter? If I stop doing, will I still be loved? If I stop holding everything, will people still want me in the room? Oof, that's a hard question, isn't it? But we're gonna talk about it. Because I don't think most women need another productivity hack. I don't think you need another planner. I don't think you need another morning routine designed by somebody with no children, no pets, and suspiciously clean baseboards. I think a lot of us need to meet the belief that is making stillness feel unsafe. So that's where we're going. Let's take it apart. First, and I want to make something really clear. Being useful is not bad. Being helpful is not bad. Being generous, thoughtful, capable, dependable, loving, service-oriented, good at logistics, good in a crisis, good at seeing what needs to be done, none of that is bad. Really, a lot of it is beautiful. Useful can be kind. Useful can be loving. Useful can be leadership. Useful can be how we care for each other. The problem isn't usefulness. The problem is contingency. The problem is when usefulness becomes the condition for your worth. The problem is when you do not just enjoy contributing, you feel like you have to contribute in order to be allowed to stay, to be accepted, to be loved, to take up space, to rest, to need something, to be inconvenient, to be human. That's the trap. It's not I like helping. It's if I'm not helping, I'm a burden. It's not I want to support the people I love. It's if I stop supporting everyone else, I'll lose my place. It's not I have a lot to do. It's I don't know who I am without a lot to do. That's the actual sentence. And if I had to put this whole episode into one line, it would be this. I don't have a problem resting. I have a problem believing I'm allowed to exist when I'm not producing something. That problem and that belief, well, that's the thing that's been sitting on the couch with me. That's the part underneath the 90 seconds and then I'm up again and doing. That's the reason rest doesn't actually feel restful. Because your body is not experiencing rest as peace. Your body's experiencing rest as risk. Wait, we're not doing anything, we're not proving anything, we're not anticipating anything, we're not making someone else's life better. Are we sure we're safe right now? And then the itch starts. The urge to get up, to fix, to fold, to check, to wipe the counter, to answer the email, to send the text, to become useful again. Because useful feels like control. Useful feels like safety. Useful feels like identity. And that's why telling yourself, I just need to relax, does not work. Because your nervous system is over there saying, lovely idea, but absolutely not. Because who are you if you're not performing usefulness for someone? And this, my friends, is where the shoulds start talking. And they usually sound so reasonable. That's what makes them sneaky. They don't show up wearing the villain cape. They show up sounding responsible. I should always be useful. I should earn rest. I should be able to handle this. I shouldn't need help. I shouldn't need to take up space unless I'm contributing. I shouldn't make things harder for anyone else. I should be easy. I should be grateful. I should be graceful. I should be respectful. I should say yes. I should just do it myself. I should be able to keep up. And underneath all of those shoulds is often one core belief. I'm loved for what I do, not for who I am. Now I want you to hear me clearly. If that belief lives in you, it's probably not because you sat down one day and consciously decided, you know what would be fun? A lifelong worthiness wound with a sign of chronic overfunctioning. No. It was likely trained into you. Installed quietly, often very early. Maybe you were the helpful kid, the one who got praised for being so responsible, so mature, so easy, so low maintenance, so good. Maybe you were the oldest daughter who became an adult before you had the language to say, actually, I'm also a child here. Maybe you were the peacekeeper, the fixer, the emotional translator, the one who could read a room before anyone said a word. Maybe you learned that being needed was safer than being known. Maybe you learned that if you were useful enough, no one would be disappointed, no one would leave, no one would get angry, no one would notice that you had needs too. And listen, that worked. For a while, it probably worked beautifully. It made you capable, it made you attentive, it made you excellent in a crisis, it made you the person that everyone calls when the wheels fall off. But the same thing that made you reliable may be the thing that's making you unreachable. And that's the part we have to tell the truth about because what helped you survive in one season can suffocate you in another. And I say this with love because I have been here before. Honestly, I'm not sure that I've ever actually exited that belief and thought pattern. I am a work in progress. If you're willing to be honest with yourself for a moment, some of you aren't just the responsible ones. You're overfunctioning because when you're still, that old mean belief pops up in your head and it asks, if I'm not useful, am I still worthy? Of love, of respect, of that promotion. That is a wound disguised as success because being the capable one, the reliable one, the good one, she tends to be the high achiever. She usually has success in relationships at work in the community. Now, because I love a good emotional revelation, but also like my feelings with the citation, let's bring some research. Back in 1950, psychoanalyst Karen Horney, one of the early voices in feminist psychology, wrote about what she called, quote, the tyranny of the should. Which, first of all, how on brand is that description? This show is called Over the Should for a Reason. Horne talked about how we create an idealized version of ourselves. The person we think we're supposed to be, the perfect self, the unbothered self, the always capable self, the self who never forgets a permission slip, never forgets to message their friend group for days, never snaps at her husband, never needs a nap, never feels jealous, never wants to run away to a hotel where nobody asks her what's for dinner, or if they can have a clean towel because they're butt-naked in the shower. You know? A fictional woman. And then we spend our days trying to force that real self to become our idealized self. And that's the tyranny. It's not just that we have standards, it's the should that becomes the ruler in your head. A tiny little dictator with excellent posture, probably really good heels. You should be more patient, you should be more grateful, you should be more productive, you should be more available, you shouldn't be less needy, you should be able to do all of this. You should be better by now. You should be further alone by now. And the more ruled we become by the shoulds, the harder it gets to hear what we actually want. Horny wrote about people becoming so dominated by what they should want that they lose touch with what they do want. Does that resonate with you? How many of you feel like you don't even know who you are anymore? But how many of you can manage everyone else's preferences with scary accuracy? He likes this, she won't eat this, that one needs a red cup, this one has practice, this one has a meeting, this one feels overwhelmed or looks overwhelmed, this one needs encouragement, that guy's gonna need a snack. But when somebody asks you, what do you want? Do you freeze? You know, we might have a moment like this scene from the notebook where Noah is shouting at Allie, What do you want? And she doesn't know. Or she can't articulate it yet, because wanting is a muscle, and some of us have been training the usefulness muscle instead. And then there's psychologist Jennifer Crocker's work on contingencies of self-worth. And that phrase does sound academic, but the idea is very human. A contingency of self-worth is a place where you stake your value. In other words, I'm okay if I succeed, I'm okay if people approve of me, I'm okay if I'm needed, I'm okay if I'm attractive, I'm okay if I'm productive, I'm okay if nobody is upset with me. And when you meet that condition, you do get relief. And that's why the pattern's so sticky. Being useful works for a minute. Someone needs you and you feel valuable. You solve the problem and you feel steady. You fix the thing and your nervous system exhales. You get the thank you, and for one second the ledger balances. The problem is that that release does not last. You need another task, another thing to rescue, another yes, another moment of being indispensable, another hint of see, I matter. And slowly, quietly, the chase starts costing you, your rest, your autonomy, your relationships, your ability to receive, your ability to know what you want, your ability to sit on the couch for 90 seconds without feeling like you're committing some kind of felony. I mean, that's the couch story for me. The dishes, the laundry, yes, those are real things. But they're also a cover story. And most of us have a cover story. Mine sounds like, I have so much to do. Maybe yours sounds like, it's just easier if I handle it. I don't mind. I'm fine. I'll take a break after this. I just need to get caught up. I cannot sit down until everything is done. Which might feel so true for you. But also, everything is never done. So, how do you know if your worth has gotten tangled up with usefulness? Well, let's do a little loving self-diagnosis. Not shame, there's never shame on this podcast. So, self-diagnosis statement one, you cannot rest without earning it first. Rest has to be paid for. You need to finish the dishes, return the emails, fold the laundry, clean the kitchen, check on everyone, complete the 17 invisible tasks that nobody else seems to notice, and then maybe you can sit down for seven minutes while still somehow feeling guilty. Statement two, you're terrible at receiving. Help feels suspicious. Compliments make you deflect. Gifts make you panic. Someone does something kind for you and your first instinct isn't thank you. It's how do I prepay this so the person knows how thoughtful this is and how much I also care about them. Three, you overfunction, you anticipate, you manage, you fix, you soften, you remind, you follow up, you carry the mental load like a tote bag full of bricks, and then wonder why your shoulders hurt. Four, you pick being needed over being known. This one's tender for me. Being needed can feel safer than being known. Because if you're needed, you have a role, you have proof, you have a reason to stay in the room. Being known is riskier. Being known means people see your preferences, your limits, your resentment, your longing. When you're tired, your actual self. And five, when usefulness gets taken away, you don't feel free. You feel vertigo. Vacation, a quiet Sunday, a day off, a slow morning, someone else handling dinner, a moment where nobody needs you. Instead of feeling relief, you feel strange, restless, untethered, almost guilty, like you're just waiting to be caught. This showed up for me again last night. I worked all day, made dinner, cleaned up most of it, and then went to take a shower. I came out feeling refreshed, like you know, Taylor Swift and I had just performed an entire private concert, and then I walked into the kitchen and I saw it. The food's still out, the pan's still sitting there, no help given. And did I calmly say, hey, can someone help me finish the kitchen? Nope. Growth was not available to me in that moment. I started making passive aggressive comments into the air, hoping Keith would hear them and become a different man through Ioasmosis. Not my finest hour. But underneath that irritation was the same thing. Oh my gosh, I was tired of being useful and also terrified of what would happen if I stopped. Here's the wild part. Most people around you don't even know that if you are moving, cleaning, doing, proving, hustling, you might feel lost or guilty. You could be quietly bone tired, like the kind of tired that actually hurts. They see capable. They just see you moving. They see responsible. They see she's got it. Meanwhile, inside your body there's this whole committee meeting happening. Can we sit? Should we get up? What if they think we're lazy? What if something or someone needs us? What if we're not doing enough? What if this means I'm selfish? What if no one needs us right now? Then who are we? And that last question is the one. Who am I when nobody needs me? Now this is the part where women hear things like, just schedule self-care, light the candle, take the bath, block me time on your calendar. And listen, I'm not a day bath, I totally support the bath community. Big fan of a candle. I keep the TJ Maxx candle aisle pretty empty. I love a you go at this moment. But if the belief underneath your overfunctioning is I'm only safe and worthy when I'm useful, a bubble bath is not going to solve that. It might help relax your shoulders for a moment, but it's not going to rewire that belief. Because this is not an information problem. You already know rest matters. You already know burnout is bad. You already know you cannot pour from an empty cup. We've all heard the cup speech. So I'm not giving you a tip. I am giving you a practice. And it's simple. Not easy. This week, I want you to be useless on purpose. I know. Sounds offensive. Stay with me. Do one thing that has zero output. One thing that you cannot justify. One thing that you cannot turn into productivity. One thing that you can't put on a list just to cross it off. Sit outside with coffee and do not turn it into content. Watch the show without folding laundry. Take a walk without tracking it. Read the book without making it a self-improvement. Lie on the floor with your dog. Sit on the couch with your people. Stand in the garden and don't pull a single weed. Just be there. And here's the part that nobody tells you. The point is not to relax. The point is to notice what happens when you don't need to perform usefulness. The itch is the data. The discomfort is the doorway. When your body says, get up, I want you to pause and ask. What am I afraid will happen if I stay? Not what tasks needs me. What am I afraid will happen? Will someone be disappointed? Will I fall behind? Will I feel guilty? Will I realize I'm tired? Will I realize I don't actually know what I want? That's where the work is, not in some perfect rest, in staying long enough to hear the belief. And if that feels like too much, start with 90 seconds, literally 90 seconds. Set a timer if you need to. Sit down. Do nothing useful. Let your nervous system act like you're committing tax fraud. And stay. When the itch comes, don't obey it immediately. Just notice it, name it. There's the belief, the old wiring, the part of me that thinks I have to earn my place. That's practice one. Practice two is called catch it live. Next time you reach to be useful, pause for one second and ask, am I doing this because I want to, or because I'm afraid of who I am if I don't? That question will tell you a lot. And I want to be very clear. You don't have to change the behavior every time. Sometimes you still have to do the thing. The kid's form still has to be signed. But you can start catching the difference between love and fear. Between service and self-abandonment. Between I choose this and I'm proving I deserve to be here. That distinction matters because the villain here was never service. Service is beautiful. The villain is a belief that service is the price of a mission to your own life. You're allowed to be useful. You're allowed to exist when you're not useful. Both, always. Now I want to pause here because I can already hear the objection. And honestly, it's a fair one. Because some of you are listening and thinking, okay, Pamela, that sounds beautiful, but how am I supposed to rest when things still need to get done? How am I supposed to be useless on purpose when the dishes are piled up? How am I supposed to sit on the couch when the laundry is in the dryer, a permission slip is on the counter, and a kitchen counter that looks like everybody that I love has personally betrayed me? It's a great question. Because personally for me, this is where rest advice gets annoying. People say just rest, like the house magically cleans itself, like dinner will make itself, like the dishes are going to look at each other and say, ladies, let's organize. They won't. So no, I'm not telling you to pretend the work isn't real. The work is real. Ladies, the dishes are real, the laundry is real, the permission flips, all the things that we've already talked about, they are real. Understood. The mental load is real. And for a lot of women, especially the ones running homes, careers, kids, pets, aging parents, teams, calendars, and everybody else's emotional weather patterns, the work isn't just physical. It's cognitive. It's the remembering, the anticipating, the planning, the noticing, the invisible tracking of what needs to happen next. That load is real. So the question is not, how do I rest because nothing needs me? The question is, can I rest for a moment even though things still need me? And that's different. That's the practice. Because if rest is only allowed after everything is done, then rest will almost never happen. Everything is never done. Everything is a movie target with crumbs on it. So we have to stop treating rest like the prize at the end of a perfectly completed day. Rest isn't denial. Rest is sequencing. It's saying, yes, the dishes need to be done. And I'm going to sit down for 10 minutes first. Yes, the laundry needs folding. And my body needs to exhale. Yes, people need me. And I'm also a person with needs. That's not laziness. That's self-leadership. Because when you can't pause until everything is handled, you're not actually being responsible. You're being held hostage by urgency, and urgency is an awful boss. Very dramatic with no boundaries. So yes, be useful, do the dishes, feed the animals, sign the form, care for your people. But don't confuse task completion being equivalent to you earning the right to sit down. That's the line. You're allowed to rest before the list is empty. You're allowed to pause while the work is unfinished. You're allowed to be a person in the middle of a life that still needs managing. Because if your life only works when you disappear into usefulness, your life has asked too much of you. Here's what happens when you start practicing useless on purpose. You begin to separate your worth from your output, not intellectually, not as a cute quote. In your body, you begin to learn I can sit here and still belong. I can receive and not immediately repay. I can rest and not disappear. I can be loved even when I'm not solving something. I could take up space without making the space easier for everyone else. That is a big deal. Because a woman who believes she must be useful to be loved is very easy to exploit. At work, she becomes the one who picks up every loose end. At home, she becomes the one who remembers everything. In friendships, she becomes the unpaid therapist. In leadership she becomes the fixer, the smoother, the one who absorbs dysfunction and calls it being capable. And because she's so good at it, people keep letting her. Not always maliciously. Often they simply benefit from the system she keeps running. But the cost is real. Because if your identity is built on being useful, anything less feels like a threat to who you are. Receiving feels like a dent. Rest feels like danger. And joy? Well joy starts to feel inefficient. Which is truly tragic. Because joy is not inefficient. Joy is part of being alive. Connection is part of being alive. Stillness is part of being alive. You're a person. A whole person. And whole people, they aren't always useful and performing. Sometimes they're funny. Sometimes they're tired. Sometimes they're tender. Sometimes they're annoying, ask my kids. Sometimes they need help. Sometimes they want to watch the movie. Sometimes they want to sit in the sun. Sometimes they have absolutely nothing to offer except their presence. And let me tell you something. Presence is not nothing. Presence is the thing many of us have been too busy to actually give. I could tell you that as I'm standing in front of a 20-year-old, an 18-year-old, and 16-year-old kids. It goes fast. This is exactly the kind of work I care about. Not just helping women manage the calendar better, although yes, sometimes we need a better system because chaos. But underneath that, I care about helping women stop organizing their lives around the belief that they have to earn their own existence. Because you can have the best planner in the world and still be running your life from fear. You can have color-coded calendars, automated reminders, Sunday resets in a refrigerator that looks like the container shop proposed marriage to it and still not know how to rest. Because rest is not just a schedule issue. It's a worthiness issue. I want you to take this seriously. If your life only works when you're constantly useful, your life is asking too much of you. Because you're not weak, you're not useless, you're human. I told you at the top that I was a liar, so let me tell you the truth now. I'm not a liar. I'm standing in the exact same gap you are. I know what's true, and I'm still learning to live like it, and maybe that's the most honest thing any of us can say. I know I don't have to earn rest, and sometimes I still try to. I know my worth is not measured by how much I can carry, and sometimes I still pick up the bag and everybody else's bags. I know that the people who love me don't need me to be useful every second, and sometimes I still hover near the couch like I'm performing presents instead of actually being present. But the difference now is that I can name it. I can feel that itch to get up, and I know it's not really about the dishes, it's the question. Who am I when I'm not being useful? And naming the question is how you start answering it differently. So this week, when somebody you love says, come sit with me, I want you to try to stay past the 90 seconds. And when the itch comes, because it probably will, do not obey it immediately. Just notice it. Name it. Breathe. Let the dishes sit there. Let the laundry have its little pile up moment. Let the chickens wait 90 seconds, they're going to live. And remind yourself, I'm not a resource to be allocated. I am not a task machine. I'm not rent. Someone else collects. I'm a person. I was always a person. I don't owe anyone usefulness in exchange for the space that I take up. Remember, you're allowed to be over it, and I'll see you next week.