“Care is no cure, but rather corrosive, for things that are not to be remedied”—William Shakespeare “It’s a quarter after one, I’m all alone, and I need you now,” Lady Antebellum sang, “And I don’t know how I can do without. I just need you now.” These beautiful lyrics illustrate how desperation of needing someone can lead to a careaholic relationship. The word, “careaholic” might sound odd. And you might even ask, “How can you care too much?” But there’s a difference between healthy caring and corrosive careaholism.
By
Bryan Robinson, Ph.D.
What Is A Careaholic?
A careaholic is someone who has a strong need to be needed and uses caring and helping in the same way alcoholics use booze to self-medicate pain or cope with stress. They overload themselves with other people’s problems as a distraction from their own worries and stresses. Caring is counterproductive when helping others becomes a means to avoid or self-medicate your own pain. If you’re focused on taking care of someone else, you don’t have to think about your own burdens. And if you have unfinished business of your own, you’re not likely to let someone else struggle with theirs.
Could you be hurting yourself or someone else more than you’re helping?
Our need to feel loved and cared for and to give love and care to others seems to be an innate human quality programmed into our DNA. Feeling loved and cared for gives us a feeling of security and self-worth. Caring for someone else gives us a sense of wholeness — it’s an extension of our love. As good as it feels to care for someone or something, for many people it can also become a source of stress and emotional chaos that leaves them feeling mentally and emotionally drained. Which arises the question, is it possible to care too much? In most dictionaries the first definition of care is a burdened state of mind; worry; concern. It takes several lines before some dictionaries get around to defining care as “to feel love for, to look after, provide for, attend to.” Many people feel that if they’re not worrying or obsessing over things it must mean that they’re not caring enough. This need to worry or obsess is an “emotional habit” that operates under the seemingly healthy guise of attention, sentiment and sympathy toward people or situations, but often can end up causing disharmony, depression and a spiral of destructive stress.
A Case of a Friend and Bookstore Owner
After a friend and bookstore owner broke his leg, a customer insisted on taking him to a doctor’s appointment. He thanked the Good Samaritan with assurance that he could manage although he hobbled around on cast and crutches. When she persisted, he reluctantly gave in to her requests in his words “to get her off my back.”
On the appointment day, the bookstore owner had to bend double to squeeze into the Good Samaritan’s tiny compact car, grimacing after banging his leg against the door frame. Before he was fully inside the vehicle, the woman accidentally slammed the door on his cast, whereupon he screamed in excruciating pain. Crutches stuck out the window, the small car puttered down the road—the Good Samaritan wearing a warm glow in her heart, beaming smile on her face and the bookstore owner, sweat pouring from his brow, agony tattooed on his face.
This true story illustrates how helping can do more harm than good when performed from a need to be needed or when the helper benefits more than the recipient. Much has been written about the commendable actions of caring, spirituality, and acts of kindness. Helping others can make life worthwhile and give us a sense of purpose. Studies show that compassionate people have more vitality, calmer dispositions, and longer lives than non-helpers.
But there’s a big difference between compassionate caring and careaholism—the craving to be needed at any cost, even if it means that things go wrong rather than run smoothly in order to self-medicate unmet needs. Careaholics overload themselves with other people’s problems as an escape from their own worries and stresses often to the point of experiencing what is commonly known as the helper’s high.
The Case Of Stephanie
When Stephanie took her first-ever vacation from her husband, kids, and job to visit her sister, she made sure everyone would be taken care of in her absence. She cooked, labeled and froze meals for each day she would be gone. She washed their clothes, cleaned the house and arranged for her children’s car pool. At work where she was a staff supervisor, she delegated her responsibilities and assigned tasks to be completed while she was gone. Natural actions of a loving mother and caring colleague, right? Hold on. There’s more to the story. During her “vacation,” Stephanie worried that her family and coworkers couldn’t manage without her. She found it hard to relax and enjoy her sister’s company because she felt guilty for being away. Upon her return, much to her chagrin, she discovered that everyone had done quite well in her absence. She felt badly that they hadn’t needed her more and felt guilty for feeling that way. On a deeper level, she recognized that a part of her would have rather things go wrong than run smoothly so the people in her life would lean on her, satisfying her need to feel important.
Compassion Burnout
As this case illustrates, the inability to focus on yourself eventually works against the care you give. If you feel emotionally depleted when you give to others, ask yourself if you’ve taken time to give to yourself first. Your inability to say no and put yourself last takes its toll. And, if you’re a careaholic, when you don’t have anyone needing you, you start to feel empty and lack purpose. As the stress cycle kicks in, the relief (over-caring) eventually becomes the problem. Careaholics hit bottom from compassion burnout which shows up in a variety of ways: depletion of emotional energy and physical fatigue, gastrointestinal irritations, insomnia, despair, hypertension, lack of purpose, or depression.
Don’t get me wrong. Helping others is a wonderful thing that makes the world-go-round. But there’s a difference between stressful care-taking and compassionate caring. If you take pride in anticipating the needs of others and meeting them before they ask, or if you insist on helping someone—even if they don’t want, ask for, or need your help—you might be taking more than you’re giving. You might be feeding your own needs instead of practicing selfless compassion. You know you’re genuinely caring when you have an unselfish desire to give without making others overly dependent on you or taking away their ability to care for themselves. You give only as much help as is needed. And sometimes you even let people fall down without rescuing them because success is built on failure.
Psychologist Deborah Rozman, co-author of Transforming Anxiety: The HeartMath Solution for Overcoming Fear and Worry and Creating Serenity, says, “Emotional habits keep people locked into a loop of anxiety and even depression. One of the habits most of us can relate to is called ‘overcare.’ Overcare is a common emotional habit that causes us anxiety, worry and stress.” The term “overcare” was coined by Doc Childre, founder of the HeartMath® system and co-author of numerous books, including Transforming Stress, Transforming Anxiety, Transforming Anger, and Transforming Depression. Doc describes overcare as that which happens when the mind and emotions cross the line of balanced care and get too attached to and bogged down with whomever or whatever you’re caring about. Once you become too entangled in another’s web and realize your energy is drained from overcare and overattachment, it’s easy to be seduced into blaming and resenting the people or issues you care about. Examples of overcare:
- A mother who equates love with constant worry and fret about her children.
- A citizen concerned about those affected by a natural disaster becomes inflamed and judgmental towards government or public agencies’ actions.
- A spouse who wants to reassure their partner that they love them ends up stifling their partner with attention.
- An employee fearful of possible layoffs feeds his anxiety with constant negative projections and assumptions about the future.
- A son’s concern for his elderly father leads to continuous arguments with his siblings about how to best care for their father.
In all of these examples, what starts out as a genuine and balanced intention to care gets muddled with overattachment and over-identity and leads to overcare for the person or situation. The original caring intentions instead become emotionally draining to all parties and often can create a negative effect. Examples of the effects of overcare:
- The mother’s children feel suffocated and distance themselves from her.
- The concerned citizen drains personal energy by harboring these judgments, and her resentment toward the system prevents her from taking a proactive approach to helping the people affected.
- The smothered spouse craves personal space and the couple separates or even divorces.
- The employee’s constant anxiety prevents him from sleeping and jacks up his blood pressure, while his assumptions fuel rumors among colleagues, creating a toxic environment of angst and stress.
- The family’s arguments put even more strain on them, making it more difficult to come to a family consensus, and causes the father to feel that he has become a burden.
Examples like these are all too common and happen more than we realize. It’s not that we care too much, but more that we don’t know how to manage our care. We think that somehow if we anguish over something enough we’ll get a creative solution or we’ll somehow conjure up the productive motivation we need to take action and resolve something. Worry and anxiety do not solve problems. It is when we finally release the worry, decide to sleep on it, or talk with a friend who helps us let the worry go that the answers finally come to us. Dr. Rozman says, “Balanced care is not some placid state that lacks drive and passion. It’s quite the opposite, actually. Balanced care is dynamic, it is a place in your heart that allows you to flex through stress and stay resilient under pressure.”
Wendy Warner, MD, Founder and Medical Director of Medicine in Balance, LLC and President of the American Board of Integrative Holistic Medicine, says: “Overcare is often disguised as angst, worry, concern, sympathy, or even sentiment, and can lead to stress-related health issues such as headaches, backaches, high blood pressure, digestive issues, and hormonal imbalances. Although both men and women can experience overcare and related physical complaints, our society tends to ‘train’ and expect women to be caregivers, so they tend to be more prone to overcaring about people or situations.” As we learn to recognize when we’re starting to get over-identified, over-attached, over-expectant or overzealous, we become more sensitive to our own inner signals. This sensitivity allows us to make internal adjustments and get back to that balanced place inside where the original care started. Personal Evaluation Dr. Rozman suggests trying this personal evaluation: “Listen to and watch your feelings as you consider these questions. Notice any changes in your feelings as you answer the questions.”
- In what areas is care adding to your energy and reducing your stress? Why?
- In what areas is care draining your energy and giving you stress? What do you overcare about in the situation?
- Are you over-identified with someone or some issue?
- Are you over-attached to a particular outcome?
- Which of the common masks of overcare – sentiment, attachment, expectation, or sympathy – best describe what you experience?
6 Steps For Healthy On-The-Job Caring
- Be realistic about what is humanly possible for you to do. Remind yourself you cannot save the world and make sure you save yourself first before trying to help coworkers. When you’re already overloaded and need time for yourself, let that be a sign that you’re not in a position to take on more emotional commitments. Every time you say “yes” when you want to say “no,” you do colleagues and yourself an injustice.
- Examine your motivation for helping. Do you believe fixing others will fulfill a greater need in you than in them? If the answer is yes, you could be taking more than you’re giving. Sometimes the best way to care is notto get involved with someone’s problems and not to help them if it robs them of learning and standing on their own two feet.
- Respect another employee’s refusal for your help. It ‘s important to let a coworker know you would like to help. If they say no, it’s important to honor their request instead of pressuring them because you see something that needs fixing.
- If you end up helping someone, make sure you’re in the habit of showing them how to fish instead of feeding them fish. In other words, if the help you give makes a colleague or friend dependent on you, you could be holding them back when they might be ready to fly.
- Set emotional boundaries. Encourage colleagues and love ones to become emotionally independent. Avoid over-identifying with their feelings and don’t take other people’s problems home with you. By leaving problems with their rightful owners, you allow them to grow by finding their own solutions. Some of our best lessons come from learning from our mistakes.
- Practice what you preach. Before you embark on a helping campaign, help yourself first. Let others benefit from cleaning up their side of the street while you tend to the potholes in your own neglected side. Examine unmet needs in your life that you might’ve avoided. Take time out for yourself in the same ways you tell others to care for themselves: positive self-talk, meditate, bathe in nature, and learn to enjoy your own company.
Remain blessed as you help someone today but help with sense.
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