For Women--and Men--Who Give Too Much

I can still hear Marcy’s desperate tone:  “No matter how much I give at work, it never feels like enough!”  As she spoke, her eyes filled with tears of frustration. Marcy (not her real name) went on to recount endless evenings when she would stay at the office until 9:00, or even 10:00 pm--a behavior that was beginning to threaten her relationship with the man in her life.

When we explored this dilemma, it became increasingly clear that “good enough” didn’t exist for Marcy.  No matter how hard she worked, she never felt satisfied with her accomplishments—though her boss definitely was.  When I asked her what “good enough” might look like, she was perplexed, and said in a tone that sounded both sad and lost:  “I guess I don’t have a sense of what good enough might be—I’m always reaching for something that feels endlessly beyond my grasp!”

As with all psychological challenges, this issue took Marcy back to her childhood in a working class town in Massachusetts.  Her father was a bitter man who always felt that life owed him a lot more than it gave him.  He would return home tired and depressed from the car repair shop he ran, and would immediately start drinking to salve the wounds of the day.  The more he drank, the more he would lambast his wife for the messy house, the unruly kids, the burnt dinner. 

Her mother was a well intentioned, but uneducated woman—“emotionally weak,” from Marcy’s point of view, and totally unable to stand up to her husband’s diatribes.

Both parents confided to Marcy about their misery, and that left her absolutely desperate to fix the situation—an impossible job for a little girl.  So she spent her childhood feeling woefully inadequate—and grew up to feel “not good enough” in relationships, in work or in life.

Like all of us, without realizing it, Marcy lives in the feelings of childhood, which are endlessly evoked in day-to-day living.  So she looks at an impossibly high stack of work to be done, and when she can’t do a week’s worth of work in a day, feels the impotent desperation of a child who can’t fix the pain of her parents.

In therapy, Marcy was able to begin to realize that this feeling of helpless desperation belonged to the child in her memory; that the feeling itself was a kind of memory (called implicit memory) of what it felt like to grow up in such a dysfunctional family.  She learned to bring mindful attention to those desperate feelings when they would appear in her body—when her heart would start pounding, and her stomach would be in knots—and to comfort that frightened child in memory:  “I know it was terrifying for you back then—It should never have been your job to fix the problems of mom and dad—Other people should have done that.  You were just a kid—But you’re okay now.  We’re okay now.”

As Marcy began to heal from that part of her history, she got much better at being able to identify impossible demands at work without panic.  This awareness made it possible for her to leave work at a reasonable hour, knowing that she doesn’t have to do the impossible to be “good enough” to make an important contribution to the organization for which she works.

Sometimes the compulsive need to do too much shows up as an impulse to rescue people. This was the case for Diane, a middle-aged woman, with a complex history and a generous heart.  Diane is a successful, self-employed business consultant who constantly felt compelled to go “beyond the call of duty” for her clients—taking calls at 3:00 am; putting in “all-nighters” for people who called her last minute for help—then feeling angry when her boundless work was not appreciated.

She also would hire people—dog walkers, personal assistants, house cleaners—who were in dire straits, then desperately try to rehabilitate their lives.  Inevitably she would end up feeling frustrated and hurt when they ignored her advice and failed to experience the transformation that she was trying to offer.

When we explored the cause of this life pattern the answer was in her history (as is always the case).  Diane grew up with parents who had a very contentious relationship.  Her mother was always frustrated with her father, who would avoid contact with his wife as much as possible.  Instead, he turned to Diane to meet his need for companionship and love, and was sexually inappropriate with her when she was still a young child.

In the midst of exploring this issue Diane remembered a recurring dream from childhood.  “I used to dream that I lived on Venus—actually I was the Queen of Venus.  My father lived on Mars, and my mother and two younger sisters lived on Earth.  I wore a cape—like a superhero—and would spend my days desperately flying around and around trying to help everybody—my father, my mother and my sisters.  Then I would be so exhausted that I couldn’t move, and I would be crying and all alone, and there was nobody there to help me—nobody at all.”

At this point, in addition to her weekly therapy sessions, Diane had begun a daily meditation practice.  In the course of one of her meditations the meaning of the above dream became crystal clear.  As she was recounting the moment in therapy, her eyes filled with tears:  "Oh my god, my whole life—I can see that from the time I was a little girl I tried to rescue everybody—my childhood dream told me the story of my whole life—and I’m only realizing it now!"

From that moment, Diane, who has a number of medical challenges, made the commitment to take better care of herself, to be mindful of the difference between a conscious choice to be generous, and the compulsive need to rescue others that came out of her troubled history.

Any of us who have a history of family dysfunction—in which parents and siblings are not getting their needs met by the appropriate people--run the risk of “overdoing” like Marcy and Diane; of compulsively trying to meet the needs of others, while finding that our own needs go sadly unmet.

The good news is that you don’t have to stay stuck in that kind of a negative pattern.  Even if you have had a very difficult history, you can learn new ways of being in and responding to the world, of connecting with others and creating relationships that are based not on negative reenactments of history, but positive, mutually satisfying connections in your present life.  It is the goal of psychotherapy to help you realize this rich potential. 

For more information on one approach to transcending the negative memories of the past go to www.integrativepsychotherapy-nyc.com and click on “Healing Early Trauma.”

Portia Franklin is a New York City based psychotherapist with more than 20 years experience helping people move beyond depression, anxiety, trauma and relationship challenges to lead more satisfying and fulfilling lives.  She can be reached through her web site: http://www.integrativepsychotherapy-nyc.com.