I thought I'd share some clarity I've had lately around an old pattern, one I'm apparently not done working on.
The past month or so has been a lot on a personal level. I found myself needing what I spend so much of my time helping others find: a place where I could exhale, let my guard down, and be the one who didn't have to hold it all together.
So I did what I know helps bring me back to myself. I went to nature.
Traveling to wild places, breathing fresh air, exploring, walking for miles, and letting nature do what it does so well: remind me that I'm part of something much bigger than whatever is happening in my head.
Along the way, I got another reminder. One I wasn't necessarily looking for.
I noticed how quickly I take action for other people's energy.
When someone is upset, I notice. When someone is struggling, I feel it. When the energy in a room shifts, a part of me immediately starts figuring out what needs to happen to make things better.
What do they need? Can I help? How can we get through this?
And before I know it, I'm managing something that wasn’t mine to manage.
Recently, I found myself doing exactly that. When someone was having a difficult time, I could understand that their reactions came from the tools they had, or perhaps the tools they hadn't yet developed. I didn't need to make them the bad guy. I had compassion for what they were experiencing.
But I also noticed how quickly my attention shifted away from my own experience and toward their emotional state. Instead of staying connected to what I needed, I found myself slipping into the familiar role: the fixer. I know this role well.
But it really struck me: I had gone to nature because I needed to be held, and I still found myself trying to hold everyone else.
There’s a difference between compassion and responsibility. I can understand someone’s struggle without making it my job to resolve it. (Unless I’m at work, where helping people work through their struggles is, in fact, my actual job.)
And I can recognize that someone is doing the best they can and still acknowledge the impact their behavior has on me.
Understanding someone doesn’t mean taking responsibility for them.
But it can be tricky.
You can know that someone else's emotions aren't your responsibility. And yet, it's also a thing to be confined in a car with them for several hundred miles while those emotions fill every square inch of the space. Or to sit next to them at dinner. Or to be standing in one of the most beautiful places on the planet and still feel the heaviness of what's happening beside you.
You can remind yourself that it's not your energy. You can refuse to manage it. But you're still in the car. You're still sitting at the table. And their energy is still taking up space.
Not taking responsibility for someone else's energy doesn't mean you won't be affected by it. So can we acknowledge: Sometimes it just sucks.
But in all seriousness, this experience had some old questions resurfacing around codependency:
How much of my life have I spent monitoring the emotional temperature of the people around me? How often have I mistaken my ability to sense what someone else is feeling for a responsibility to do something about it?
Or how often have I put my own needs aside because someone else seemed to need more? Ooph, that last one.
I suspect that, for some of us, being the helper becomes so familiar that we don't even recognize when we've slipped into the role. It’s automatic, we anticipate and accommodate. We offer others the understanding and care we know they need, oftentimes while overriding our own needs.
Now I'm not interested in becoming less compassionate. I don't want to stop showing up for people I love. But I am interested in softening the part where someone else's discomfort automatically becomes my focus.
I also needed the reminder that I'm also allowed to protect my own peace, choose the company I keep, and make decisions that support my well-being. Sometimes that means setting a boundary or stepping away. And sometimes it means taking the next trip by myself. There's a reason I like traveling solo! 😂
I'm still figuring out how to be around someone else's emotional storm without getting at least a little caught in the weather. If you've mastered that one, please share your secrets. I'm all ears.