The word responsibility comes up a lot in my sessions with clients moving through burnout.
How much we carry others people responsibilities that doesn’t belong to us, but somehow we feel responsible for. How this weight becomes so normal we stop noticing it’s heavy. How we forget it was never ours to hold.
But we feel the impact in our exhaustion, our over-functioning, and our low self-worth. Our sense of responsibility is not something we’re born with. It’s shaped by our childhood.
Before we can release ourselves from taking on too much and give ourselves permission to say “no”, we have to look at where we first learned what it means to “be responsible.”
What is the deep meaning of responsible?
The word responsibility, when broken in two, sounds like response and ability. In other words the ability of response.
Put a different way, it’s our ability to respond in any given situation.
In childhood how our ability to respond develops into responsibility, depends vastly on the circumstances in the home or our surroundings.
How we first learn responsibility in childhood
Children by their very nature are incredible sensitive souls, even more so as infants and babies. Through this acute sensitivity, they pick up all the energies and vibrations from their environment which they absorb into their own sense of being. This sensitivity forms their foundation of security within themselves.
When you grow up in a safe, loving and nurturing environment, your sense of self is stable, centred, balanced. With proper guidance and trust, you take on chores and tasks that match your capacity. It’s this learning of age-appropriate responsibilities and positive behaviour that helps children grow into mature well adjusted adults, confident in their abilities and their sense of self-worth.
When responsibility is rooted in fear
In contrast, a child raised in a family structure that feels unsafe, their sense of responsibility is shaped by fear and insecurity instead of trust.
Without a stable, nurturing foundation, the child becomes hypersensitive to the environment and energies around them.
When tension, stress, aggression, emotional or mental instability is ongoing and their needs are not being met appropriately, their world becomes unpredictable. They have no sense of safety. Their ability to respond becomes distorted because their sympathic nervous system is always scanning for threat.
To feel safe they take on the responsibility of the parents. They do what they can to keep the already unstable environment calm. They monitor moods, avoid conflict, and try not to create any possible negative situation or outcome. The hyper vigilant child will take it on themselves to be responsible in making sure that everything is ok.If there are siblings, they will take on the care and wellbeing of their needs as well.
As adults this shows up as people pleasing, over compensating with no sense of self-worth or value and an inability to set proper boundaries.
How childhood responsibility shows up later in life
When you learn that keeping other people comfortable is how you can feel safe in your environment, your sense of identity becomes tied to meeting other people’s needs. It is only when you’ve taken care of everyone else first that you feel you’ve responded accordingly. Over time, your own needs start to disappear.
This, more often than not, leads to becoming co-dependent in relationships, wrapped up with being responsible for others with a need to feel safe.
You take on more and more responsibilities. You become the high achiever, believing that you can handle it all at work, at home, in friendships and relationships. Until one day, your ability to respond accordingly crashes. You burnout.
It’s a story a lot of my clients share. They have become over loaded, unable to take all these responsibilities they’ve carried for so long anymore.
And, underneath their exhaustion, unexplained physical symptoms and pain, depression, and anxiety is a small child carrying too much of what was never theirs to carry.
Steps towards releasing the responsibility for others
Recognising the root cause to all the symptoms is already a huge step forward in the healing process. But awareness is just the beginning. To truly release the responsibility you’ve carried for others, you need two things:
☑ self-compassion for the part of you that learned to survive this way,
☑ and the willingness to begin setting boundaries that honour your own needs.
Both take practice. Both take gentleness. Here’s how to start:
1. Practicing Self-Compassion
Carrying too much responsibility was a trauma response for survival that developed into a habit and pattern of behavior. It became a way of being. Allow yourself to feel compassion for that part of you that was created in order to feel safe with the world around you.
As a child you were never, ever, meant to be responsible for your parents, your care givers or your siblings.
Their responsibility was never yours to take on, therefor it is not yours to keep either.
2. Setting boundaries and taking ownership of your needs and wellbeing
Boundaries are clear guidelines of what your limits are and what you’re willing to accept or tolerate in any given situation. This might look like saying no to unwanted physical contact or saying no to unrealistic demands being put on your time.
Setting boundaries helps you identify your own needs and gives a clear indication on how you want to be treated and respected
Setting boundaries is an act of self-care and a healthy expression of self-love
Give yourself permision to gently create your own boundaries and put them in place, so you can feel safe in the world around you and free to just be your own person
If this is something you’re navigating, I’d be honoured to walk alongside you. Through embodiment coaching and emotional healing, we gently shift lifelong patterns—together.
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