Are You Irresponsibly Overinvolved with Others?

Why it might not look like what you think.

Thanks again to everyone who’s signed up for the paid version of the newsletter. Last week I wrote about how to think differently about what we label as our family’s “dysfunction.” Hint: it has a lot to do with termites. - K

Last week I was attending a conference where there were some tech problems. None of this was my responsibility, but because the anxiety shot up in the room, the urge to direct, calm people down, or bolt for the elevator was overwhelming. A tiny part of my brain said to me, This is where the fun happens, Kathleen. Your one job is to sit in the audience and manage your own distress, while this all unfolds like a low stakes horror movie. Can you think of a worse task?

When anxiety goes up in a group, the lines between individuals tend to blur. It’s hard to stay connected when people are flailing, or making choices we wouldn’t make. The urge to take over, calm people down, or simply bolt, can be overwhelming.

When other people need to calm down for you to feel steady, it’s easy to become what Dr. Bowen called “irresponsibly overinvolved” with others. It’s easier to blame the group’s functioning, rather than tinker with our own. How do you stay connected in tough times, without trying to captain everyone else’s ship? And why take this on, when it’s easier to parachute out of there?

Overinvolvement can look like:

• Becoming an expert at other people’s immaturity.

• Giving advice instead of asking, “What are you going to do?”

• Abandoning your best thinking for solutions that keep people happy.

• Feeling over-responsible for people’s functioning and mood.

• Trying to manage people’s communication with each other.

• Needing people to think the way you think.  

• Anxiously monitoring a person or group for signs of trouble.

This isn’t a personality problem. Overinvolvement is a solution of the system, albeit an imperfect one. People do things that naturally invite our overinvolvement. We do things that promote their underinvolvement. And around and around we go, trying to keep things steady while sacrificing our best thinking.

People also forget that overinvolvement can look a lot like underinvolvement. Anyone who has a family knows you can be quite emotionally involved with people you rarely see. Often people distance themselves because they are too dependent, too stuck on needing people to function a certain way.  

A person can think they are quite independent, but this really is a kind a pseudo-independence. They may never talk to their mother because they need her to apologize a certain way for past mistakes. They may abandon a job, a religious congregation, or a group of friends because these people wouldn’t go along with their thinking.

I’m not saying you stick around in every relationship your entire life. But it’s useful to as yourself, “Is this distance a product of my best thinking, or my automatic response to the anxiety?” We sometimes forget that there’s more than one way to relate to people. That we can be in relationship to people without functioning for them.

Being more responsibly involved could look like:

• Showing up for important events/meetings.

• Making an effort to work on person-to-person relationships.

• Observing the level of anxiety and how people react to it.

• Not over-involving others in managing your own anxiety.

• Tolerating the distress when some efforts fail or disappoint.

• Getting a sense of how people see challenges and what they believe.

• Defining and sharing your own thinking about challenges.

• Staying connected to people while letting them be in charge of themselves.

In these examples, energy is being directed toward self, not others. But this is anything but selfish. It’s a gift to our relationships when we respect people’s individuality, while defining our own. When we aren’t just going along to keep things calm, but also not trying to force everyone to do as we do.

I’ve written about my tendency to shift between overfunctioning and distancing. For me, it’s easy to lead the group or skip the meeting. Planning the trip, or not going on the trip, are the easy options for me. Simply going on the trip is the real challenge, the real adventure. For others, the adventure might be stepping up more and leading. Or sharing their thinking, or being honest when they disagree. Or not showing up to every meeting.

What can happen in a family or group when a few people (or even one!) are thinking about being more responsibly connected? To me, this is more powerful than any “fix” we try and force on the group.

Your exercise: Think of a group you’re a part of (i.e. family, work, PTA, etc.). Observing how others react to anxiety can help you think about your own part in the system.

1. Who are the people who are clearly overinvolved with others? What are they doing, and how often do they burn out?

2. Who are the people who react by distancing, maybe making comments about not wanting to put up with the drama or dysfunction?

3. Now think about the people who somehow (bless them) manage to stay responsibly involved with the group. They’re present on important days. They’re interested in hearing from others. And they don’t seem to get as riled up by the anxiety of others.

Your assignment: Make your own list: what it could look like to be more responsibly involved in your family or a group that’s important to you? When do you need to be present? Whom do you need to stay in contact with in stressful times? What energy do you need to divert back towards managing yourself, rather than managing or anxiously monitoring others? Now you have some interesting things to focus on, instead of making everyone happy.

News from Kathleen

No big news this week! This month I’m looking forward to the increasingly over-the-top Halloween decorations you’ll find on Capitol Hill, as well as cooler morning walks to school.

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