Blog Post 22: Carrying the Burdens of Other People
A very, very common trait of Type C people is to take responsibility for other people’s problems. For example, a friend confides in you that they are struggling with a health problem. A typical Type C response is to feel strongly that you must do everything in your power to help your friend. You start to do research, you worry, you try to think of different solutions to help. This keeps you up at night. You feel a strong responsibility to be there for your friend and do something. And if things turn out poorly for her, you may even blame yourself in some way - you feel you could have done more.
Another example is in the workplace. One of your colleagues comes to you with a question on how to handle part of a project, and instead of counseling your colleague based on your knowledge and experience, you end up offering to help and take on part of the work. Of course, your colleague says yes, because who doesn’t want to share the workload? But now, you’ve added even more to your to-do list, which impacts your own productivity.
Where does this trait come from? It’s likely from a rule in our minds, something to the tune of “if someone is upset, I need to do something about it.” It’s important to become aware of this rule and start to question it. Does this person really need your help? Could they solve the issue without it? Could you simply be a good listener and offer a suggestion or two? After all, most people don’t want to be told what to do. We might feel that helping = fixing - but actually listening and supporting are often greatly appreciated. Notice how the person responds when you offer this instead of trying to fix it for them. Also, you may feel resentful in a situation where you spend a lot of time thinking and doing for someone else, and they do not reciprocate.
Another important element to consider here is what is carrying someone else’s problem taking you away from? As we talked about in our self care posts, it’s so important to evaluate how we are spending our time. While we want to be generous with other people, there have to be limits - especially if this is taking away from family, sleep, or self care time.