The difference between a poison and a medicine?
The dose.
Even too much of something as innocent as water can be deadly (it’s called hyponatremia).
So while it’s fantastic, adaptive, so great that you’re good at getting things done…
…you might be overdoing it.
We live in a culture that lionizes More.
We get praised for our multitasking.
We feel worthy when we do it all.
We feel guilty if we say No without a “good excuse.”
Then we call this normal and make ourselves wrong for being exhausted or not keeping up.
At my last corporate job, staying until 2 or 3 a.m. was expected if the situation \”needed\” it.
Somehow, we “needed” that every month when shipping a magazine to the printer.
(Never mind that we’d known the deadline for a year.)
We never had quite enough employees. There was always more to do.
So I made it work.
I got up at 5:45 a.m. to bike to the pool before starting a 10-hour workday.
I prepped dinner in the crockpot so my husband and I could eat well after work.
I never made plans the week we shipped an issue.
I hoarded vacation days—then worked myself raw to avoid leaving anything behind when I took them.
I achieved, then achieved some more.
I tracked the cat’s vet appointments, my husband’s social life, our bills.
I was doing great at the obstacle course of life. And I was dying inside.
Quitting that job helped some. So did leaving that marriage, eventually.
But the overfunctioning was inside me, and it didn’t go away just by changing my external circumstances.
Eventually I crashed. I quit another job, took a sabbatical.
I lived on mostly savings for over a year, trying to learn how to rest.
I was still overfunctioning—taking too much responsibility for my new partner, his business, his wild dreams. Making sure everything went “right.”
But slowly, I changed.
It took years—of therapy, of vision quests, of medicine work, of retraining my brain—to start to let go of the toxic doing.
To say “none of my business.”
To set boundaries and relax around “imperfections.”
To value rest and space.
To risk disappointing people.
To trust that it’s not up to me to singlehandedly keep the world spinning.
Overfunctioning is a pervasive sickness of our era.
And it’s blocking the truth of your soul.
If this sounds like you, hear this: You won\’t find peace until you release the overfunctioning.
It’s here for a good reason—it helped you win the war of childhood survival.
But it won’t leave quietly.
It demands that you face your fear, grief, and anger.
That you feel them, instead of outrunning them.
Still—I believe in you.
I believe in all of us.
The drive towards wholeness is strong. The soul knows what it’s doing.
And it’s gosh-near miraculous what recognizing a pattern and getting curious about shifting it can do.
Especially with loving support.
So there it is: A name for the pressure you’re sizzling under.
And hope that it doesn’t have to stay that way.
To balance and true aliveness,
Rachel
PS – Your essence is the most powerful force in the world. It knows what you want and why you’re here. You just need to learn how to listen—again and again and again. If you’re ready to lead yourself toward sustainable greatness, get help. Let’s talk. Just hit reply and we’ll get started.
