The Weight of Over-Carrying: Finding An Equitable Balance and Learning To Count On Others

Welcome to Mindful Management, a podcast by Chefalo Consulting, where we share the knowledge, stories and resources you need to create a trauma informed culture that supports wellness, growth and resilience. I'm your host, Shenandoah Scheffalo. Welcome everyone. So glad to be here with you today.

You know, for the last couple of weeks, maybe 10 or 12 days, or could be even longer, I've really been struggling to kind of sit down and get the task in front of me out. I also have been watching a lot of really great documentaries and it got my brain thinking, why am I so burnt out? And then that got me thinking about all the things and the myths around burnout. Mostly we're not burned out because we're weak or lazy, but often we're burned out because we've been carrying things that were never ours to carry in the first place.

And that is what I really want to sit with for a second with you. Because if you're the person who always shows up, the one people rely on, call when there's a crisis, you're the one who holds it together. When everything else feels like it's falling apart, then there's a good chance you're not just tired, it's that you're over carrying. If you're the calm one in every room, if you're the one who's expected to be regulated, then you might be the one who's most overwhelmed.

If you're the reliable one, that does not mean you're supported. And today that's what I want to talk about. Not burnout as we usually talk about it. Not take a day off burnout.

Not drink more water and go for a walk burnout. I want to talk about the kind of burnout that comes from holding too much for too long in systems that frankly were never designed to support us. We've been taught to think about burnout as a workload problem. We have too many emails, too many meetings, too many responsibilities.

And yes, sometimes that's true. Yes, and. But I'm just going to tell you right now, I don't have any of those things and I'm still feeling exhausted. In my work with leaders, with organizations, with systems across the country, what I see over and over and over is this burnout is not just about doing too much.

It's about holding too much. Holding tension, holding emotion, holding responsibility that was never clearly defined. Holding other people's stress, fear, grief and urgency and not even making space for our own. And frankly, we're also doing it quietly.

I see this especially in the people who are the most committed, the most capable, the ones who really care the most, they're not disengaged. They're just overextended in ways that no one is naming. And I'll say something that might feel uncomfortable but is super important to me. Sometimes what we're calling burnout is actually misplaced responsibility.

And so for me, this is not just theoretical, this is personal, right? Not only because I grew up in the foster care system. And when you grow up in environments where things are unpredictable, where safety is inconsistent, where you have to read the room constantly to just know what's coming next, you learn something really quickly. You learn how to carry things that aren't yours.

You learn how to manage other people's emotions. You learn how to anticipate problems before they happen. You learn how to be the one who holds it together for everyone else because it not only feels safer, it actually makes you safer. And this is what's important.

This is the realization I've had over the last couple of weeks. Those skills don't disappear. They follow you into relationships, into work, into leadership. And suddenly what made you successful in survival mode becomes the thing that's exhausting you in your professional life.

And so as I was thinking about this, what really happened is that I thought there's kind of three types of over carrying. And that's what I thought we could break down. Because I think this when we can recognize this in ourselves. And by the way, I see all of these in myself all the time.

The first one is emotional caring. That's when you're holding the emotional weight of the team, of the group, the organization, the system. You're the one people come to, you're the one who listens. You're the one who absorbs the tension and tries to smooth it out.

And on the surface it can look like strength, but underneath it's heavy because you're not just doing your job, you're also managing everyone else's experience. And here's the question that I've been asking myself a lot lately. If everyone comes to you because you're safe, who do you go to? What does that look like for you?

Then there's this other type of caring. It's decision caring. And this shows up oftentimes when there's something that's unclear. We don't have clarity in a situation.

So when expectations are vague, let's do more. When leadership is inconsistent, when priorities are shifting constantly, and then what happens? Well, the most capable people step up and say, how can I Help fill the gaps. We make the decisions, we hold the responsibility.

And not because we're asked to, but because someone has to. And over time, that becomes exhausting. I often say, you know, my husband, who does lots of the cooking in our house, will say, what do you want for dinner? And sometimes I just look at him and say, I don't care as long as you make the decision.

I started realizing that that was showing up for me more and more. I just didn't want to make one more decision because my brain just feels completely taxed. And the third one, and perhaps maybe the deepest one, is identity carrying. This is when your identity becomes tied to being the strong one, the dependable one, the fixer, the one who has all the answers or who can handle anything.

And it gets reinforced because people praise you for it. They rely on you for it. They expect it from you. But what they don't see is the cost.

Because when your identity is built around carrying everything, we often stop asking for help. We stop setting limits, and we stop noticing when it's too much, because it can never be too, too much. We can't allow it to be too much. And it takes its toll on us.

So I'm thinking about all of this, and I thought, well, let me just jump on and let's talk about it here. But what do we do about it? And I think most of you who know me or who have known me for a long time know, okay, we can name it, we can identify it, but what are we going to do about it? So I put together these kind of short little scripts that I've been thinking about, and frankly, they've just been written on little pieces of paper around my house because we know that awareness is important, but language is what changes behavior.

So I wanted to come up with these things that I could begin saying to myself to help pull me out of this and to stop some of these patterns that I found myself in. So when someone brings you everything, one of the things I've been thinking about in my language is I want to support you, and I also want to make sure we're building capacity. What's the first thing you could do? You know, it's this idea, because as a consultant, clients come to me, and yes, I want to help them solve their problems.

That's the whole value in an outside consultant. But also, if I can't help them sustain it internally, it's going to fail. So, yes, I want to help you with that. But what's your commitment in this work as well?

When I'M at capacity. I'm thinking about, great. I can't do that right now without something else shifting. So let's prioritize what's most important, right?

Like, I just can't do one more thing. So what is our game plan? What can we do right now? And this came up for me and just talking with my daughter, who was in the midst of writing a thesis and working on finals and was like, okay, let's talk about what's first.

What can we do right now? What's the most important thing to take off the plate? And then when I'm holding too much emotionally, right, I'm noticing I'm holding a lot, I need to pause. Can I have 24 hours?

Can I have five minutes so I can really respond accurately to this? And then when I need to reset team dynamics, I've realized I've been stepping in too quickly. I want to shift how we solve problems together, right? I'm thinking about these little things.

I hear that. Let's look at what's actually on our plate and decide what can move. Because I think this isn't just about individual issues. It's not just about leadership issues.

What we know is that because systems either distribute weight or they concentrate it. And if the strongest people are burnt out, it's not a people problem. It's a design problem. And as leaders, we're responsible for creating environments where expectations are clear, emotional labor is not invisible, and boundaries are respected while responsibility is shared.

And that's whether you work at a team, whether you're a parent in your own family, like, whatever's happening. Because if we don't design for that, then the best people compensate for it until, frankly, they can't. I've been reading a lot of articles about how people are just cutting off family, even. And you know something?

That. That always resonates with me because, of course, of the way that I grew up. And I just think, well, what happens if we set expectations, if boundaries were respected? Like, where are the conversations about this and all the.

The, you know, crannies of our lives and all the dark closets that we have? So as I'm just thinking about all of this, I wanted to leave you with this. You do not have to carry everything to be valuable. You don't have to be the strong one all the time to be respected.

And you don't have to prove your worth by how much you can hold. Leadership is not about holding it all. It's about holding it well. And frankly, sometimes the most powerful thing we can do is putting something down, and that might mean canceling that meeting that's been on your schedule for a while.

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