But I like to help out

It feels really good to do things for other people. It’s charitable and generous and friendly and supportive and all other things that can make life a much nicer place to be. And, if we’re honest, it is quite nice when people go above and beyond for us – it makes us feel loved and special.

For these reasons, among many others, we do good things and often go over and above the call of duty and can end up taking on way too much. Generally we like to be loyal and true to our own values, usually because they are a strong part of our identity, but if we are not careful we can end up putting someone else’s values, priorities or workload above the importance of our own and doing way too much as a result.

For example, you may not think it is right to see someone struggling with something that you could help them with straightforwardly enough and make their lives much easier – this might be helping a person at the train station carry a pushchair up the stairs or it might be helping someone at work to suss out how to solve a problem for which you can clearly see the solution. These things are fine until you become the go-to person all of the time and end up putting your own things at the bottom of the priority pile, and having your time invaded to the point where you end up working all sorts of ridiculous hours to make up for the time you spent helping someone else.

If you end up pushing your own tasks down in order to serve someone else then all too quickly you can end up doing way too much and feeling pretty resentful about it. This can cause those over-assertive explosions, such as tears or anger, because we cannot understand why the other person can’t see that they are pushing a button in us.

But why would they? They can only see our external behaviour as an indication and usually that involves smiling, nodding or other placating behaviour. Then, when we explode it comes over as irrational, unpredictable and ‘out-of-the-blue’, when actually it has been brewing within you for ages. But saying ‘no’ can feel just too unhelpful. So instead we tend to default to the ‘yes’ word.

Saying yes

Fundamentally, saying yes to someone is positive. It is a great relief to hear the word ‘yes’ as a response when you’re asking for some much-needed help. It generates a warm glow for the person doing the relieving because they are creating support for someone else. This is all fantastic stuff.

Saying yes helps to build and maintain professional and personal relationships. It is sympathetic to others who may be new to a situation, overloaded, going through a tough time due to all sorts of possible reasons, or may just need a second opinion or some alternative thoughts.

There are many reasons why we do helpful things for people. We might have had a similar experience ‘back in the day’ and feel that we can shed some light for them in order to help them move forwards. Or we can offer understanding to someone going through a situation that resonates with our own personal experiences.

So what’s the difference between not doing enough, doing what is appropriate and doing too much? It’s all about how we experience it internally, and these feelings can often be quite buried or subtle.

We forget that there are other choices around what we say or do. Our brain tends to trick us into thinking that if we don’t say yes then we have to say no. We forget that there is compromise, or that we could partly help out. We forget that if it feels like someone is taking advantage there are options other than saying nothing or saying everything in a big out-of-control explosion. We could have a conversation about things, we could use humour, and all sorts of other options to address the issue without creating conflict.

Doing too much

• Isn’t enjoyable.
• Takes time or effort away from your own priorities and needs.
• Is born out of a thought around what you think you ‘should’ do rather than want to do.
• Feels unfair, there is an awareness of what you are not getting back by giving.
• Feels unjust and often breeds resentment.

Add some more of your own thoughts or feelings about when you do too much for people:

	Half of the troubles of this life can be traced to saying yes too quickly and not saying no soon enough.
	Josh Billings, American humorist

1. Take the time to think about a situation where you are currently doing or giving a lot for/to somebody. Outline it below:
   
   
   
   
2. Consider all of the benefits to that person. Make a list:
   
   
   
   
3. Now think about if there are any drawbacks by giving too much to them. Again, you may find it useful to write these down:
   
   
   
   
4. Weigh up the pros and cons for this particular situation:
   
   
5. Now what about you? What would be the benefits for you if you were to push back a little and not say yes so quickly in this situation?
   
   
   
   
6. Would there be any drawbacks for you if you pushed back?
   
   
   
   
7. Consider what you are being given back in this situation:
   
   
   
   
8. Are you happy with what you are actually being given back or is there something else you would like?
   
   
   
   
9. How could you manage the situation for yourself? What might you say or do that accommodates you best? (This might be saying you can’t help at all, or it may be that you still do help but vocally express what you have going on too, and that you can only spend x amount of time helping them.)
   
   
   
   

By thinking about the above, you are likely to be starting to get a raised awareness about how you are really feeling concerning certain situations or behaviours. You may also be starting to get an insight into whether or not your responses are really communicating what you’d like them to, in order to keep yourself happier and treated with the respect you deserve.

Using your growing self-awareness

Once you become more aware of your own habits, it’s important to notice how you respond to different people and situations. Many of us have a tendency to give ourselves a hard time if we realise we haven’t done or said the thing we would have liked to have done or said. Don’t do this. Put down the metaphorical stick with which you are beating yourself. Life is hard enough!

Put more positively, think of it as gaining further self-awareness so that you can move forward with a stronger, firmer and more confident stride. Remember that starting to become more assertive doesn’t happen overnight and it needs to occur in tiny shifts, even if those shifts are simply a change of perception. A change of perception is still a good shift. Metaphorically pat yourself on the back instead of using that stick.

Rachel felt she was somehow giving too much to her boyfriend. She couldn’t put her finger on quite what it was, but she felt unsettled most of the time and seemed to get unreasonably upset in the relationship if he rescheduled or changed plans at the last minute.

She made a list of all of the reasons why she ‘gave’ in the relationship, be it making a meal or simply listening and trying to be supportive when he moaned about his work situation, his friends or his family. It was part of the recipe for a good relationship wasn’t it? And she’d want him to do the same for her.

She really wanted this relationship to work. She wanted to please him and have him think she was the best girlfriend he could possibly have. And being supportive and unselfishly loving made her feel good about herself.

Then she considered the drawbacks: he expected more and more from her, but at the same time he let her down more and more. He didn’t realise that this ‘giving’ took effort from Rachel, he just presumed that it was his due, and if she pushed back he thought it odd.

She also realised that by constantly behaving in this manner she was standing in the way of him moving forward with his own life, his own relationships with others and his own realisations because she constantly picked up the responsibility for things going well and not going well. And the pattern became that he blamed her for these too. Quite an imbalance in responsibility and energy!

Rachel was unintentionally putting unrealistically sustainable behaviours into the relationship. Not only that, she resented playing what seemed like a mother role and felt she was being taken advantage of as he took more and more of her energy and gave less and less of his respect.

Rachel then started giving herself a hard time about the relationship and blamed herself for things not going as well as they could have, because she now believed her lack of assertiveness was to blame.

What needed to happen was a shift in behaviour. The problem was that this shift in behaviour might have meant the end of the relationship because Rachel’s boundaries would have had to become stronger. This was Rachel’s strongest fear. However, through not taking care of herself first and foremost in the relationship, the destructive domino effect on her was huge.

What’s actually going on?

The example above is a common one in relationships. One partner can often feel they are giving too much and the other taking too much. The fear might be around losing the partnership and being alone. Or it might be something else completely.

What is at the core is that the person who often plays the ‘giving’ role is prioritising someone else over themselves, which, in the long term, tends to lead to resentment. And this resentment will always come out at some stage.

The same is true in any business relationship. And of course the fears around that can be even greater: loss of job and therefore income, particularly in times of economic downturn; not getting on with people at work; or not creating opportunities for career growth or promotion. Often this comes at the expense of health if it goes on too long – stress, illness, injury, depression, anxiety, substance dependencies. In these instances the work comes before the self and the destructive effects can be enormous.

By pushing ourselves down in importance on our own list of priorities, often without realising that we are even doing it, those small feelings of injustice or disagreement get pushed down too, and the more we take on the more buried they become.

Think of it like filling a sock drawer. The more socks you have to squeeze into the drawer in order to shut it, whatever the struggle, the more likely the sock drawer is to give way (either the bottom falls out, or the sides or front come apart, or the drawer gets jammed – hopefully this is not just my sock drawer?!).

Human beings are really not much different. Feelings can only get pushed down for so long before they resurface or push back. Feelings and thoughts have to be acknowledged somehow before it gets to explosion point and they fly out uncontrollably because we can’t hold them in any more. Our emotional drawer is way too full.

What is it that is really going on then, to make us put ourselves bottom of our own lists? To make ourselves pack down our negative feelings, which happen to let us know that all is not well? It is probably fair to say that people are rarely very conscious of doing it, but long-term patterns can root themselves deep and can quickly have us and others believe that our behaviour and habits are ‘just the way we are’, or that it’s ‘just in our nature.’

In fact, neither of those things ring true, and you do have a choice to behave differently in order to be more in charge and not so taken advantage of. But this unknown landscape of choice can be scary territory to venture into when we haven’t been aware of it before.

	I’ve realised that being happy is a choice. You never want to rub anybody up the wrong way or not be fun to be around, but you have to be happy. When I get logical and I don’t trust my instincts – that’s when I get in trouble.
	Angelina Jolie, actress

Thought statements

Check the list below and tick the thought statements that apply to you:

I want everything to go perfectly.

I want to be a success story.

If I don’t do it then nobody else will.

I’ve ‘messed up’ in the past and don’t want to do it again so I make a conscious effort to do things right.

I worry about being rejected.

I like being popular.

I feel good when I receive praise and compliments for my achievements (and I get hurt or angry when I don’t).

I treat others as I would like to be treated.

It feels good to impress people with what I can do well.

I want people to talk about me and my achievements.

Add any other thought statements that you are aware go through your mind:

Challenging thought patterns

By becoming aware of our own internal thought patterns then we can begin to tackle the internal resistance we have around being assertive, which may not be serving us so well.

Take each thought and challenge how true it is on a percentage scale. For example:

‘If I don’t do it then nobody else will.’ How true does this feel?

Initially this might feel like it is 99 per cent true but is it really?

‘Well, someone else might do it . . . if they had to. But they are used to me doing it. And anyway I like doing it.’ Aha!

So now we are in the realms of choice. You can choose to do something because you like doing it or you can choose not to because you don’t want to or you would like someone else to do it for once. Either way, there is still a shift from how it feels to say to yourself ‘If I don’t do it nobody else will’ to saying ‘I enjoy doing it so I’d like to do it’ or ‘I know I usually do this, but this time I would like someone else to do it.’

After considering these options, how true on a percentage scale does that original statement feel? About 55 per cent? Less? The presence of choice has an amazing effect on we human beings, particularly when we start to recognise how much choice we have in everything we do and say.

If you are faced with a question or a difficult situation, where possible buy yourself time so as to break the pattern of your usual response. Start to use expressions like, ‘Let me get back to you shortly’, ‘Give me two minutes’ and ‘I will be right with you’, just to allow yourself the headspace to weigh things up in your mind and consider your options before you give your response on the assertive spectrum.

Just remember that it is completely fine to do things for people, so long as you genuinely want to do them. If there are any begrudging feelings raising their little heads then pay attention to what these are about sooner rather than later. Learn to listen to what your instincts are saying to you. Once you have some clarity about what is really going on for you then you can find an appropriate way to communicate your feelings to people, or find a slightly different way of responding behaviourally.

• The next time someone asks you to do something, notice how quickly you might say yes, or indeed how difficult it is to say no
• Consider other options you may have, other than saying yes or no
• What else might you be able to say instead that still feels okay for you but lets the other person know that you are going above the call of duty for them?
• Is there anything else you could say around not helping, or doing less than usual?
• Take note of your thought patterns and challenge if they really are fact, or if you have unconsciously limited your own thinking around the possible outcomes of a situation or relationship