Is Competence Your Downfall?

Have you ever noticed the more capable, competent, and resourceful you become, you simply find yourself enlisted (and re-enlisted) to do more and more—which you then do, faster and faster? And despite the uncomfortable level of tasks and obligations piling up, you hustle along, radically perfecting your efficiency (as human machine), determined to do (and be) better? Have you noticed that as you unwaveringly persevere to come through for all others (your kids, pets, partner, colleagues, parents, friends, neighbors, and even strangers!), everyone around you is reaping the benefits of having an incredible life (which you helped create)—yet you’ve not once even stopped to realize you’ve completely abandoned yourself and neglected your own?

Do you look up and painfully wonder, years or even decades, later, Where is my life? What happened to me? Whose life am I living? What happened to my dreams and plans? Or, perhaps, it’s simply too deep to consciously acknowledge, within you.

If this is you, it’s not your fault. You are not alone.

For centuries (millennia, actually), by automatic default, women have been unwittingly cast in the role of unequivocal support partner, required to prioritize all others above ourselves, and at our own expense, as well. So deep is this societal conditioning, that to go against the grain of it often produces tremendous feelings, from uneasiness (feeling ‘amiss’ at the thought of ‘not being there,’ for another), guilt (for ‘shirking our responsibility’), and unworthiness (on making ourselves the ‘priority’), to both conscious and unconscious rage—on not understanding why we feel unable to experience mere privacy or enough time for ourselves, without feeling ‘wrong’ about it. In addition to our own uncomfortable feelings, we may experience the irritation, annoyance, and anger (not our fault) of others around us, who have been trained (by us) to believe and to expect that our unconditional caretaking of them is our moral responsibility.

For any woman who has been responsible to and for others, by default, for years, the sheer overwhelm of trying to feel, process, or even question such an onslaught of incredibly uncomfortable emotions, all at once, can cause us to simply cave from its pressure and re-submit to remaining in lock-step with what is expected of us. This comes at the expense of our own awareness that our peace, health, emotional well-being, and pleasure stand to be compromised. To competently ‘effort’ and perform, on autopilot, something we’ve been doing for many years, is often much easier than the potential battle and ensuing consequences we’d potentially face, should we say, ‘NO.’ And so, I ask you,

Is sacrificing your joy, happiness, pleasure, and peace worth what continuing to prove your ‘enough-ness’ (ie: your competence) to another, is costing you?

If you find yourself experiencing internal (or external) dread, annoyance, frustration, or absolute rage, when required to do a task, or favor, for someone… If you feel obligated to oblige the request of another, despite strong internal resistance or an emphatic, inner NO… If you feel resistance, guilt, or even a panic attack, at the prospect of declining a task or a request that does not feel good to you…

You may be compromising your feminine integrity by pulling yourself out of alignment, to come through, for another. This experience can feel overwhelming and I can help.