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 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, as you unswervingly persevere to come through for all those around you (your kids, pets, partner, colleagues, parents, friends, neighbors, and even strangers) who reap the benefits of having an incredible life (you helped create)—all while not stopping 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 buried too deep to consciously acknowledge, within you.

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

For centuries (millennia, actually), women have been cast in a role of unequivocally supporting and prioritizing most others above, and often at the expense of, ourselves. So deep is this societal conditioning, that to go against the grain of it often produces tremendous feelings of guilt (for ‘shirking our responsibility’), uneasiness and unworthiness (for making ourselves the ‘priority’), unconscious rage (for not understanding why we feel unable to honor or prioritize ourselves), as well as delivers the back-handed ‘slap’ of irritation, annoyance, and anger (not our fault) in all those around us who have been trained to believe and to expect that our unconditional caretaking of them is our moral and fundamental 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, at the expense of our own awareness that our peace, health, emotional well-being, or pleasure is being 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 will face, should we decide to SAY NO. And yet, I ask you,

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

If you find yourself experiencing internal (or external) dread, annoyance, frustration, or rage, when required to do a task, or favor, for someone…feel obligated to oblige the request of another, despite strong internal resistance or an emphatic, inner NO…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 entanglement can feel overwhelming and I can help.