For those of you who grapple with the challenge of Caretaking or People Pleasing in all its myriad forms – energy work can help you break the cycle of jumping in, overgiving and burning out.

This is the first article in a multi-part series on a topic that is close to heart. If you tend to caretake or people please, your energy dynamics have enormous influence over your choices and behaviors.

In this post I address what your energy is doing when you find yourself locked in the caretaking spin. In Part 2 I explore what your energy can do differently. 

The tendency to caretake others even to the point of your own detriment – is a very real thing. 

With very real and motivated energy patterns as the driving force. 

And the emotional experiences that further fuel them.

Patterns Become Entrenched 

These patterns are generally established during childhood, or as a result of challenging or emotional life circumstances. In response, your energy body creates a way of coping, and a habitual pattern emerges. 

Just as your nervous system can become stuck in a repetitive response cycle, so can your energy. Hypervigilance, excessive tuning into others, doing on their behalf, and repression of emotions can become the norm, and the (automatic) baseline through which you respond to life.

Caretaking: A Seductive Companion

When stuck in the excessive fixing or rescuing loop, consider why your level of devotion to or fixation on others results in you moving your balance and well-being to the back of the line…over and over again. 

Caretaking offers built-in benefits or perceived ‘rewards.’ My teacher, Jill Leigh, calls these ‘cookies’ or “the sweet little treats that keep you enrolled” in your energy pattern. 

When you reach for a cookie you satiate an impulse, temporarily. Eventually the craving will return. You may even become hooked on the cookies.  

The rewards in caretaking, in high level terms:

• Recognition, validation, positive feedback or demonstrations of gratitude from others
• Having lived up to an internalized sense of responsibility for others
• Feelings of relief, security or safety; easing of stress, and other difficult emotions
• Avoidance of your own problems, issues and needs due to lack of worth and self-love

You may be approaching burnout, or perhaps a health condition. Yet when you take a quiet moment for a cup of tea …and the phone rings…well, you already know how the story goes. 

Simply put, the emotional needs of others have an extraordinary pull that somehow seems stronger than your own.

The Energy of Caretaking

Below are some common outcomes when you have a tendency to engage in caretaking. Each one can be directly correlated with dysregulation in your energy system.

You can be:

• Flooded with other people’s emotions and energy
• Unaware of your emotions, body sensations and cues 
• Lacking presence, grounding or embodiment
• Exercising poor boundaries, causing you to disregard your needs and desires
• Driven to complete tasks for others while ignoring your tasks and needs 
• Unable to connect with your personal truth and inner knowing
• Disempowered, stuck in a cycle of fixing, pleasing or overgiving
• Overwhelmed with feeling unworthy and lack compassion for yourself 
• Unable to access or release your emotions
• Struggling with a chronic holding of tension and stress
• Feeling depleted, fatigued, pained and burned out

When you are energetically consumed with the needs and emotions of others, there is limited room for You in your own life. 

Giving and Doing For is vital to your well being and to mine. From deep love to compassionate service – it is one of the most beautiful and important parts of being human. 

This can come from a gentle place of easeful and boundaried choice vs. a space of tension-filled worry and sacrifice of personal health and stability.

Becoming acquainted with your energy is one stellar way to learn to feel the difference. 

Photo by Jessica Christian on Unsplash