Book Series Bonus #4: You’re Not Loving Them, You’re Managing Them
Are you reading this while doing three other things? Making dinner, answering texts, mentally planning tomorrow’s schedule? I see you.
Here’s the wild part: if I asked you to stop, to sit still for five minutes, you might start to panic. Because somewhere along the way you learned that your worth is in your productivity. That love looks like doing everything for everyone else. That rest is lazy. That stillness is dangerous.
This is what I call the Overfunctioning Trap.
What Overfunctioning Really Looks Like
You are the one who remembers everyone’s birthdays, plans the gatherings, manages all the logistics, and anticipates everyone’s needs. People praise you: “You’re amazing. What would we do without you?”
Part of you feels proud of that. But another part of you feels trapped. Because if you stop spinning the plates, what happens? If you don’t fix everything, if you stop being 47 steps ahead, will anyone still need you?
That voice inside whispers: If they don’t need me, they’ll leave me. And if they leave, I’ll be alone. And if I’m alone, I won’t survive. This isn’t love. This is emotional outsourcing. It is anxiety in a heart-shaped costume, convincing you that control equals care.
How It Shows Up
At home: You clean your teenager’s room, not because they asked, but because you can’t handle the anxiety of leaving it messy.
With family: You plan every gathering, not because you love it, but because no one else will.
With partners: You make choices for them without asking what they actually want.
It looks like love, but underneath, you are managing your own fear. Fear of being seen as a bad mom, a bad wife, a bad friend. Fear of not being needed. Fear that productivity is the only way to earn love.
The Hidden Cost of Overfunctioning
Here’s the devastating truth: overfunctioning sends the message I don’t trust you to handle your own life.
When you smooth over conflicts, rescue people from consequences, or anticipate needs they never voiced, you are not helping. You are training people to be helpless. And when they lean on you without gratitude or reciprocity, resentment builds until it boils over about something small like dishes in the sink.
Meanwhile, you are exhausted. Exhausted from doing a job nobody asked you to do. Exhausted from holding up a dynamic that leaves you angry, lonely, and unseen.
And here’s the kicker: the people benefiting from your overfunctioning may even start to see you as controlling. And in a way, you are, because you are managing their lives so that you can feel safe.
What Real Love Looks Like
- Real love is not managing someone’s life.
- Real love is trusting people to manage their own.
- Real love is asking, What do you need? instead of assuming you know.
- Real love lets people struggle sometimes, because struggle is how we grow.
- Real love does not demand you exhaust yourself.
When you overfunction, you rob people of their agency and rob yourself of true connection. Instead of relating to them, you relate to your own fear of not doing enough.
Why It’s So Hard to Stop
When you stop overfunctioning, things do fall apart for a while. Dust bunnies gather. Someone misses an appointment. People get mad. And your nervous system screams danger because you have equated everyone’s happiness with your survival.
But here’s the test: this is when you find out who your actual people are.
The ones who truly love you will want you to rest. They will want you to have needs, wants, and preferences. They will want to care for you too. The ones who only loved your service? They will push back. And that is painful, but it is also liberating, because now you know the truth.
The Way Forward
Overfunctioning is not love. It is fear dressed as care. And you deserve better.
That is exactly what I share in my book, End Emotional Outsourcing. Inside, I break down how to love without exhausting yourself, how to stop confusing care with control, and how to know if you are stuck in the self-abandonment cycle and what to do about it.
Preorder End Emotional Outsourcing now at beatrizalbina.com/book and get exclusive bonuses, including tools to help you stop earning love through exhaustion and start trusting that you can be loved just for being you.
Because you can.
You can be loved for who you are, not for what you do.
Tags: End Emotional Outsourcing, Overfunctioning, Codependency Recovery, People Pleasing, Perfectionism Recovery, Self Abandonment, Nervous System Healing, Somatic Healing, Self Trust,