The Freedom You're Really Craving: When Your Capacity Becomes Your Captivity

Have you ever looked around at a life that's objectively good…and still felt trapped inside it?

Not because anyone is forcing you to stay. But because somewhere along the way, you became the one holding everything together.

If you've ever found yourself exhausted, quietly resentful, or unable to fully relax—even during a holiday weekend—this episode is for you.

In honor of Independence Day, I'm exploring a different kind of freedom: not freedom from responsibility, but freedom from over-responsibility.

Because there's a subtle line many capable women cross without even realizing it. The very strengths that earned us praise—our competence, reliability, and willingness to help—can slowly become the very things that leave us feeling overwhelmed and emotionally burdened.

In this episode, I share a powerful mindset shift that has transformed the way I think about responsibility, along with practical questions to help you begin putting down what was never yours to carry in the first place.

In this episode, we'll explore:

• Why so many capable women feel responsible for everyone else
• How your greatest strength can quietly become your greatest burden
• The difference between healthy responsibility and over-responsibility
• Four signs you may be carrying more than is actually yours to carry
• One simple question that can help you experience more freedom this week

You don't have to stop caring.

But you may need to stop carrying.

If this episode resonates with you, I'd love to hear from you. Send me a message on Instagram and tell me: What's one thing you're finally ready to put down?

RESOURCES & LINKS

• Take the quiz: Are You a Gifted Woman?
• Sign up to receive my Sanctuary Letters
• Book a complimentary Flourishing Call if you're curious about working together
• Follow me on Instagram: @dr.andrealein
• Learn more: andrealein.com

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Have you ever looked around at your life that is objectively good, relatively good, and still felt trapped inside of it? Not because anyone is forcing you to stay, but because somewhere along the way, you became responsible for everything and everyone. Well, friends, since it is the week of Fourth of July here in the States, I've been thinking a lot about freedom. And not the kind of freedom we usually talk about this time of year, but I've been thinking about the kind of freedom so many women like myself, like you, quietly crave, which is the freedom from feeling like you're the one holding everything together. The family, the relationships, the emotional temperature of the room, all the schedules and the plans, all the expectations. And if you have been feeling exhausted, resentful, overwhelmed lately, or like you could just never fully relax, even in the middle of the summer, then today's episode is definitely for you. Welcome to the Power to Flourish podcast, where science meets the art of a beautiful life. I'm Dr. Andrea Lyon, positive psychologist, giftedness expert and coach, and modern-day spiritual godmother to brilliant, deep-feeling women. This isn't just another self-help podcast. It's a sanctuary, a sacred space to come back to yourself. Each week we'll explore the emotional experience of gifted, sensitive women and what it means to live a life that feels as beautiful as it may look. Because flourishing isn't a luxury. It's your birthright, and your life is waiting. This is the Power to Flourish Podcast. So today I want to talk about one of the most common patterns I see in women, and I definitely fell into this trap, and I can still fall into this trap, and that is this it is the belief that if you don't carry it, everything will fall apart. So I don't know what your childhood was like, but I'm just gonna share a little bit about mine. And yours could be really, really different, but I'm just gonna point to some things that I think are common patterns. And there is a lot of discussion these days about eldest daughter syndrome and all of these things, but I definitely am like a classic oldest daughter. So not only am I the proud oldest daughter of four children in my family, I am the daughter of an immigrant. So my father grew up in the Philippines, came over to the States when he was a young man, and he and my mother had married. They met in Australia, actually. That's a side note. But they came over, he came to the States. And if anyone knows anything about Asian culture, or you are a child of an immigrant yourself, you know the added layer of responsibility and expectation that is placed on you, even if it's never spoken, which it oftentimes is, but even if it's never spoken, it is sort of like this ingrained, it's it's almost like it's just seeping through your blood and your psyche. So there's that layer. Then if you know my story at all, you know that at the age of 19, I became a mother. That was unexpected. But what that did was it took me from a whole lifetime, eight, 19, let's say 18 years. Maybe I wasn't super responsible when the first year or two of life, but you know, it took me from many, many years, let's say safely 15 years of being the oldest daughter, because I was about, I think, two when my brother was born, all this time. And then, you know, more children came into the picture. I definitely was mommy's helper. I definitely was teacher's helper. I definitely was like this Girl Scout Leader's helper and all the helpers. And then I have a child of my own, and I never had a moment in between ever, where I was just sort of like free of responsibility. I then, you know, in the middle of being in college, got pregnant, had my baby, then went into a long journey, many, many, many years of being in graduate school that also required a lot of responsibility. And of course, all along this way, from childhood into my 20s, I am being rewarded over and over and over for my competence, for my helpfulness. I mean, I was babysitting, like probably if any of you grew up in the 80s or 90s, like we were babysitting somehow when we were 10 and 11 years old. I have no idea how that was happening, but I was getting paid to babysit not only my mother's children, but other people's children on top of it. Like I had a lot of free time. So I definitely had the identity of being the helper. And I was the competent and strong one, right? Like when you're the oldest in the family, that's obvious, you know, that just oftentimes happens by the nature of your birth order. So again, you might not be the eldest daughter, you might not have that going for you, you might not be the daughter of an immigrant, you might not have that going for you. But if you are a bright and capable woman for whatever reason, you most likely got rewarded at some point in time in some places, whether it's school, at home, elsewhere, where your competence and your helpfulness was validated and reinforced. So my point in sharing all of that is that I did not choose that role consciously. And you probably didn't either. We were just praised for being responsible. Like I I can find myself easily falling into the trap of praising children for skills or abilities that, you know, stand out to me. And I mean, I side note what I also do on the side, whether I don't really like talk about it a lot, but I do a lot of parent coaching and I help parents, um, whether they have little kids or teenagers or even sometimes young adults, I'm helping them navigate. And it's really important but hard for us, especially if we have gifted children who can be very advanced in some areas as they're developing, to not overly praise those aspects of them that make them more mature or really helpful or fill in the blank. So it's a constant thing. But this is what happened to us, most likely, right? And so over time, our capacity became part of our identity. This is again very common. If you're a woman listening to this podcast, you can probably relate to this. The problem is that what begins as in some ways, in in some places, like this special gift, right? Even if it's not a gift of ability, although it oftentimes is, but even the gift of say birth order, we don't normally think of that as a gift, but like it's a it's a position that we didn't ask for, right? It's a position we didn't ask for. Or maybe in school we we were the class president or representative, or we ran for SCA, student council, you know, some I I did these things growing up anyway. And so we we have these positions and they're wonderful. We could think of them as gifts, we could think of them as opportunities. But eventually, when so many of those things happen and we begin to melt our identity with these things, it eventually can become a trap. And so what I want you to hear clearly, and what I want to not just name, but talk about okay, how do we move from this, is the fact that sometimes, oftentimes, especially for gifted women, our capacity becomes our captivity. Our capacity becomes our captivity. So how do you know if you're caring too much? Because being responsible is really important and great, and we don't want to necessarily uh step out of responsibility fully, and we're not just gonna be like lazy adults in the world, right? That's not that's not the point of this podcast, and that is not what I am encouraging you to do. But here are a few signs where what I would call like healthy responsibility has bled over into there's like some blurry lines, and we are now becoming captive. We are now becoming over-responsible for things that really aren't our responsibility. So, sign number one you feel responsible for other adults' emotions. Now, if you're a parent and you have kids, you know, this can be a little different conversation because our goal and our responsibility is to help our kids navigate their emotions, but that's different than like feeling responsible for another person's emotions. So specifically as it relates to other adults in your life, here are some examples. Your spouse's mood, your adult children's choices if you have grown children or even like pretty old developed teenage children, right? Are coworkers' feelings, like are they having a good day or not? And any kind of family conflict. So sign number one is you feel responsible for other adults' emotions. This is a place where we have blurred the line, we have stepped over the line of what is our responsibility and what is not. Sign number two, you struggle to relax. You struggle to relax because your brain is always scanning and you are always assuming this posture and this position of being the responsible one. If you really have a hard time relaxing, listen up. Sign number three, this is really important. I have lived through this a lot more than I want to admit in my life. But sign number three is you feel resentful. So resentment is often a clue that we have taken on responsibilities that we were never meant to carry, or at least we were not meant to carry it all alone. And so if you are feeling even a little, a little bit of resentment, that's always a clue for me now. I rarely feel resentment, which is like hallelujah. That is a sign for me that I've really adjusted my approach to life. But in the old days, I would say, again, not proud of it, but I felt a lot of resentment because I was taking on so much, not just, not just at home. Let me be really clear. This resentment bled into almost every area of my life, including the places where I was volunteering, which doesn't make sense. I was volunteering. It should be volunteer, but you can tell that whatever the motivation or all the other things that I was juggling, it was too much. And so I felt resentment. So that's a clue for you. Resentment. Okay. Sign number four. I know so many of you can relate to this, but this is like whether you secretly believe this or you say it out loud. If I don't do it, finish the sentence. If I don't do it, it won't get done. Okay. Or if I don't do it, maybe it'll get done, but it won't get done the quote unquote right way, right? Okay, so that is your fourth and final sign. So hear me out. I am talking today about freedom, a kind of freedom that I think many of you are desiring. And we might think it's freedom from responsibility. I can tell you, there were definitely times in my life in the past where I fantasized about being on a beach with not a care in the world and maybe a pina clotta in my hand. Now I can tell you fast forward, I've been on a beach plenty of times, plenty of pina clot is in my hand. And it's lovely, but having no responsibility, freedom from all responsibility, is not actually going to give you a flourishing life. You will not feel happy and fulfilled ultimately. What you are looking for, most likely, my dear, is freedom from over-responsibility. Over-responsibility. Okay. So healthy responsibility is life-giving. I think we know that. We feel that. When we do the things that we know we're called to do, that is our job description and we feel good about it, it is life-giving. Even if it's hard work, it still can fuel us in a certain way. It gives us meaning and purpose and fulfillment. Overresponsibility is exhausting. And I don't have to tell you that. You already know, right? So what are some examples of healthy responsibility? Caring about the people we care about, loving them, contributing to important uh issues, whether that's at home or in our community, at work, at church, whatever, right? And leading. Again, many of you are natural leaders. And so that's going to be a part probably of what healthy responsibility looks like. But over-responsibility can and often does, especially with women I work with, they really struggle with this. Rescuing, whether that's emotionally or very practically speaking, managing, overmanaging, controlling. I know we don't like that word, but let's face it, we can sometimes struggle with that. And carrying that emotional labor, other people's moods and emotions that's just not ours. So today's episode is short. It's summertime. I'm making this short for you. I'm making it short for me in the spirit of freedom, in the spirit of freedom of decreasing our overresponsibility. I'm going to keep this short and sweet. I want you to ask yourself today, what is the one thing that you've been carrying this week that you know belongs to someone else? You know it. Probably something just popped up into your mind. It could be someone else's emotional state, probably likely someone close to you. Maybe it's someone else's own growth, right? We do this. Especially if we're like really into personal growth, which you probably are if you're listening to this podcast. Where we like make ourselves, you know, the manager of other people's growth, not our responsibility. Maybe it's someone else's just decisions or their healing or some hard, maybe even really negative consequences that someone dear to you, maybe it's a child, again, maybe it's a spouse, a friend, is going through. So what is one thing you've been carrying that bel actually belongs to someone else? And what would it look like to loosen your grip just a little? You're not abandoning them. It doesn't mean you've stopped caring. You just stop carrying the load. You can care without caring. Does that make sense? And lastly, this week, while everyone else is talking and focusing about freedom, which is really, really important, I want to encourage you to consider a slightly different question related to the freedom piece. Because I'm interested and passionate about women becoming more free. Again, not from responsibility, period, but over-responsibility, exhaustion, resentment, all of these things, the emotional burden, the things that really weigh us down and do not promote at all our flourishing. So what might become possible if you stopped holding together that one thing that was never yours to carry? What might become possible? Because oftentimes I think freedom isn't found in doing more. Although when we are free, we have usually the energy and space to do more of what lights us up. But it often begins the moment we finally put something down. So I want to encourage you today, my friend, in this freedom week to think about one thing, one area, one place where you are carrying something that is not yours to carry. And I would love for you to DM me on Instagram, tell me what it is. I am lit up when I it doesn't have to be a huge thing. It can be small. Start small. But if there's something big and you're like, I am ready. I am ready to let this go, put it down, my friend. Put it down. That is all I have for you this week. I hope you have a wonderful, wonderful week and time with time for yourself, time with your family and friends, or whoever you are spending the holiday time with. And until next week, when I see you right back here, same time, same place as always. Keep flourishing. Thank you for listening to the Power to Flourish podcast. I hope today's conversation left you feeling more seen, more supported, and more deeply connected to yourself. And if this episode resonated, would you take a moment to subscribe, leave a review, or share it with a friend? It's one of the best ways to help this work reach the women who need it most. You'll find show notes, links, and resources from today's episode at powertoflourish.com. And now just a quick reminder: this podcast is for educational and informational purposes only. It's not therapy, medical advice, or a substitute for professional support. Listening doesn't make me your therapist or doctor, though if you're looking for a coach, you know where to find me. All right, beautiful one. That's it for now. Until next time. Trust yourself, honor your guests.