101: Quit Trying to Save Everyone | Dr. Zoe Shaw

Grab a cup of tea or listen as you go, ladies. This is your hour with Dr. Zoe, your life and relationship coach. With encouragement, on-point insight, inspiring guests, health tips, and advice, Dr. Zoe helps busy women keep their mind in the game by redefining your superwoman. You're listening to the Dr. Zoe Show.

Hey there, welcome to the Dr. Zoe Show, Redefining Your Superwoman. I'm your host, Dr. Zoe. I'm a licensed psychotherapist, a motivational speaker. I'm a life and relationship coach, and I can work with you virtually to help you get unstuck. Connect with me by texting the word join to 38470, or just go to my website at drzoeshaw.com. Today's topic is Quit trying to save everyone. I don't know if that's you, but it's certainly been me at some points in my life. So we are going to dig into that in just a second, but first, Superwoman Win and Superwoman Fail. I am just riding on some kind of high right now with my business and life. I just got off the phone with 2 women who are going to be new clients of mine, and they are phenomenal, high-achieving, just amazing women. And of course they're struggling with something, which is why they're contacting me. And I am So looking forward to working with them. And I am just so very grateful. Sometimes I feel like I have to pinch myself because of the life that I have created, especially taking the step going into life coaching where now I can work with women all over the world as opposed to just traditional therapy, which I still do. And I love my work, you know, in traditional therapy as well. But, you know, I have crazy goals and I'm certainly not there yet. And sometimes it's easy to get caught up in where you aren't instead of looking at how far you've come and what kind of amazing life you've created. Empires are not built overnight, and it's so important to sit and enjoy your homestead even though, you know, you're trying to build an empire. So my win today is that I was present enough to be able to look around and go, hey, look at what an amazing life I've created. I did that, and it's only going to go up from here. And I hope that you are able to take a second and look. I know you might not be exactly where you want to in your life right now. That's okay. It doesn't matter. This present is all we have. And my guess is that for most of you, you're further than you were last year. You're further than you were 5 years ago. You're growing, and that's what matters. And if you're hearing this and you're thinking, well, wait, I'm not further. I feel stagnant. Well, you're not required to be the same person that you were 5 minutes ago. Which means that you can take action. It doesn't have to be big action. It can just be one baby step towards the direction that you want to go. And that little baby step makes you further than you were a step ago. So my fail, I'm still kind of trying to figure out what this, how this happened, what this is about. But last weekend I had a track meet. You guys who have been listening to me know that I compete as a sprinter for the USAA Masters division. And I had a meet last weekend and my whole family went. It was great. It was fun. I won my age division in 100-meter sprinting, injured my hamstring, not fun, but so we went. And then the next day, Monday, my daughter had a presentation in her class. Now we homeschool and this was a kind of like a co-op and she had a presentation. And so we were going to talk about what she did this weekend. One of the things, of course, was going to my track meet. And she all of a sudden just refused to talk about it. She told her tutor that she didn't have a presentation, which wasn't true. This is my 6-year-old daughter, and she didn't want to do it. So I kind of made her do it, and she got up and she talked about it, and she talked about the meet without ever mentioning that her mom was in the meet. And so afterwards, driving home, you know, I was trying to get to the bottom of what was going on and asking her, you know, why didn't you want to do your presentation? And eventually I asked her, are you embarrassed about my track meet? And she said, yes. And I said, why are you embarrassed? And she said, because you're a mom and moms don't do that. And it's weird that you compete. And I was floored. I couldn't believe that my 6-year-old daughter was embarrassed because her mom is a competitive athlete, albeit, you know, I'm old, I'm 44. But she was embarrassed because she had this idea that this isn't something that moms do. And yeah, we go to high school track meets. You know, she knows I ran in college, but I was just absolutely floored. And I was thinking, what have I done wrong that my daughter is not only not proud of me as I would have expected, but she's embarrassed that her mother is a strong competitive athlete. Now I'm all here about redefining your superwoman and my daughter's embarrassed. So. My husband and I have been really trying to talk to her about the importance of health and fitness, and that's a lifelong thing. And, you know, how competition is not just something for kids or high school students. And we, you know, showed her Serena Williams and other amazing athletes who are mothers, but it definitely felt like a fail to me cuz somewhere along the line I dropped the ball and my daughter did not get that message. Sometimes we think that we're communicating things to our kids and we aren't, but she's 6. I still have plenty of time to indoctrinate her about strong women. So onto the topic, quit trying to save everybody. This episode is for the woman who feels responsible for everyone else, or maybe it's just a certain person, or maybe just your family that you feel responsible for. How far is too far when it comes to caring? At what point does caring become enabling? And why is enabling not good for you? How does it impact yourself? So we're going to talk about all of that today. A friend confided in me a while ago that her 17-year-old daughter was pregnant, and my heart ached for her and her daughter. I remember being 15 and pregnant and how scary a time that was for me in my life and how it shaped me into who I am today. And so I can only imagine what it must have been like for my mom. And now I'm experiencing it a little via my friend. My friend's daughter is keeping the baby and will grow up way too quickly. My friend told me that she locked herself in her bedroom and she cried, feeling guilty and responsible, not only that her daughter was pregnant, but also that now she had another child to raise. She shared that another friend told her, you know, you're not 100% responsible for all the choices your daughter makes, nor are you 100% responsible. for taking care of the consequences either. And she's totally right. But it got me thinking, at what point are we responsible for our children's, our husbands', our friends', our parents', siblings' life, behavior, feelings, or their happiness? At what point does caring cross the line and actually become enabling? I've written before about how important it is to let your children fail. And the reality is that that's true for everyone in our lives, not just our children. Researchers know that women generally feel more guilty than men about pretty much everything. Women even feel guilty for feeling guilty. And even worse, we tend to feel more guilty as we get older. Come on, that's not fair. And I wish I knew why, but maybe it's just that we have more life experiences to mull over. So to some extent, we do know that this guilt thing is built into our DNA. And if we're feeling guilty, it's not a big jump to understand that we're also feeling responsible. And no one wants to feel guilty. So in order to assuage our guilt for anything negative, we amp up our level of responsibility. See, there's that belief that if we can take care of it, then we don't have to feel guilty. If we can somehow control it all, we can mitigate our guilt over feeling responsible. But I'm here today to tell you to quit trying to save everyone and quit feeling so darn responsible. Okay, so I know that's easier said than done, but we've got to start somewhere. Yes, of course we have responsibility for our family, but there is a threshold beyond which we are hurting everyone if we take on all of that responsibility. We as women, if we're caregivers, have a responsibility to nurture, provide, teach, and discipline our children to the best of our ability. We as women have a responsibility to our friends and our family to be reciprocal in our relationships, to be good friends, daughters, and family members. But we can never be responsible for anyone else's actions. That is where we cross the line. And I think it's important to differentiate between good helping and bad helping. So let's do that. We women tend to be caring people. It's why women are disproportionately represented in caring-type professions like nurses, therapists, childcare workers. This is a gift that we have, and we should appreciate it as such. We are nurturers. But when is enough enough? One good rule of thumb is that if you are doing something For someone that they can do for themselves, then it's too much. Now I have to admit, I struggle with this myself, although this is a core truth. I often overanalyze that statement and I'll think, well, technically all the people in my house could cook their own food, do their own laundry, take care of themselves. And I do make them do some of that, but what I have to recognize is that it's bigger than just that. Because what they can't do, is bring our family together in the way that I do when I cook and serve meals. Now here's the thing though, I can provide services to the people that I love out of my love for them, like cooking for them, like maybe doing some laundry for them, although that's not guaranteed, you know, running an errand for them, doing things for the people that I love. I can provide services to the people that I love, maybe even dressing my 6-year-old daughter who can perfectly dress herself. But when I do, I remind my people that I'm doing it in love, that I am well aware that they can do this on their own, but that I'm doing it out of love. But that's actually not what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about helping or doing for reasons that aren't about acts of service, which are great. We all deserve to have people in our lives who love us enough to serve us. So that's a good thing, but I'm talking about behaviors that are really about assuaging your own guilt. Behaviors that are because you may need to feel needed. You feel like you need to solve a problem that's not yours, or solving it makes you feel good. I'm talking about those behaviors. That's what we've got to stop. So why should you quit? Because you're not realizing how much it's hurting you and those around you. So what exactly is the expense for all this responsibility we carry? We get less of the behavior that we want, not more, from the people in our lives. When we take over responsibility for others, we actually train them to do less, and we train ourselves to not need others in our lives, which is actually unhealthy for you, and you damage relationships with burnout, resentment, and anger. So the lesson is never do for someone else what they can do for themselves. I've been the victim of this in my marriage, my parenting, my friendships. The no, I can do it mentality eventually makes others go, okay, go ahead. And then what do we feel? Resentful, anxious, stressed, and it's our own doing. Believe me, I get that you might feel that you don't have a choice. So you either keep helping or taking care of business or it won't get done. This is the biggest lie that keeps fixers and enablers in the unprofitable, damaging business of helping. But sometimes this actually is the truth, and that's still no good reason to help when you shouldn't. It requires dealing with the undone until someone steps up, which is tough, especially when we're talking about something like taking out the trash. So wait, I'm telling you to not take out the trash when it's somebody else's job and just let it pile up? Yup. See, that's just an example, but sometimes we convince ourselves that things aren't going to get done that will eventually get done. Now, granted, maybe not on your timeline, but we are hurting ourselves and other people if we take care of things because we're so stuck to our timeline. Now, I get that this is a difficult concept. I have struggled with this so many times in my life. And honestly, there are times when you do have to take care of things, but that's when it's dire. Not when it's convenient. So not stepping in requires setting healthy boundaries and facing your fears that you won't be needed or liked, or that the people you love will get hurt. It requires stopping the lies that you're responsible for others' mistakes if they choose to make them. It also requires loving the people in your life for exactly who they are. Not who you wish they would be, which means they don't require fixing. Now I get I'm stepping all over everybody's toes today, even mine, but the bottom line is that you need to quit trying to save everyone else and focus on being your best you. Those are the words for the wise woman. You've got this. If you need a little more help with establishing healthy boundaries, check out my last episode. The Freedom of Opting Out, or check out episode 95, Strong Women and Codependency, because saying no and stepping back can actually free yourself and those you love. So thank you for listening to the Dr. Zoe Show. New shows go up on Tuesdays. Subscribe so you don't miss an episode and feel free to contact me by texting the word join to 38470 or Just check out my website at drzoeshaw.com. I look forward to connecting with you over social media throughout the week. Have a super week.

You've been listening to the Dr. Zoe Show, Redefining Your Superwoman, with your host, Dr. Zoe Shaw. Don't forget to sign up for her monthly newsletters to get encouragement, tips, and skills for keeping your mind in the Superwoman Connect with her now at www.drzoeshaw.com. Tell your friends and subscribe to her podcast on iTunes. Join us next time for another edition of the Dr. Zoe Show.