Are you responsible for everyone's happiness?

(Hint: the only happiness you can control is your own)

The irony isn’t lost on me that I’m very late with this newsletter because I was so busy trying to make lots of other people happy, I am behind on everything. It’s August and I’m counting the days until school starts and everyone is back in their rightful daytime place. So this topic was as important for me to write about as it was for you hopefully to read! And it’s this:

Do you carry too much weight on your shoulders?

One of the hardest parts of being a woman is that often unseen, but much expected, burden we carry of feeling responsible for everyone’s happiness. 

If you were born with a uterus you were sent the memo as you left hospital: as a woman it’s your job to smile, and be kind and loving and generous, and practical, and patient and happy and many more of those ands. 

The biggest ‘and’ of all? And to be responsible for everyone’s happiness. 

It’s there in the small print. Along with knowledge of how to stack a dishwasher properly. 

Albeit you get a few years off - that sabbatical when you go through your teenage years as it’s hard enough trying to figure out how you fit into this world with all its messages and unseen structures that tell you how and who you should be. But as you traverse your way through life, accumulating partners, friends, colleagues and kids along the way, the small print glows in the dark recesses of your ever-overloading brain, and you take on more and more guilt and responsibility for everyone’s happiness. 

I’ve felt it myself, especially as a single parent to three teens. The lurch in my stomach the moment I hear a door slam, or the thump of teenage footsteps running heavy and ominous up the stairs, a bored sigh, a half-eaten meal that I’ve laboured over but hasn’t met the ambitious approval of those unable (or unwilling) to cook. Or supporting my 86 year old dad who let’s face it, has earned the right to grumble occasionally. Yet somehow it’s my responsibility to make sure everyone is happy and having a good time, regardless of how they actually feel or what they’re going through. Letting go of that feeling of responsibility took awareness, then practise and now intention and it’s like taking weights off your shoulders (and anything that makes a midlife woman feel lighter is a good thing!).

It comes up so much in my coaching too: this parental pressure, daughterly duty, friendly friction, partner propaganda, that you must contort and dance yourself into a spin like a court jester to make sure everyone in your family and life is happy and have all their needs met.  With my clients it can show up in the form of 

• Guilt

• Over-parenting

• Resentment of a partner 

• Burnout at work 

I had a client in her early 60’s who was on the verge of leaving her marriage and distance herself from her adult children and parents because she was at the absolute end of her tether, exhausted from being everything to them which conflicted consistently with being anything to herself. 

She was so busy fixing everyone’s lives, her spirit was breaking. 

She was so focussed on meeting all the external demands, she’d lost sight of her internal needs

She was so joyless from being a do-er, there was no joy in being with any of them.

I’m happy to report she is now laughing and loving in her marriage again, has deep, delightful relationships with her adult children, and has put up clear boundaries with her siblings to redistribute the care of their parents, and empower them more to help themselves. 

What it took was for her to realise her value was not dependent on what she did for others:

• That by doing everything for her kids she was disempowering them, and by letting them fix their own lives, she was empowering them.

• That she could be a kind and loving person AND have clear boundaries.

• That she could be a wife, mother and daughter AND invest in her own needs. 

The counter of those endless ands I mentioned above that women think they have to be, is the creativity in the ANDS that can release them from being responsible for everyone’s happiness. 

I can be a loving, generous, inspiring woman AND not be responsible for your happiness.  

I had to really learn not to be knocked off kilter by one of my daughter’s bad moods. It wasn’t my fault or responsibility. It was my job to simply let her experience life and be there to offer tea, chocolate and a hug if required.  That they will survive if I don’t say yes to every lift that is asked of me. That our relationship won’t rupture if I choose the movie occasionally and they don’t like it.

This is one that shows up the most. Because we love our kids, we think everything is our job… including their good moods, their appreciation of everything, their friendships, their love of your food, and did I mention moods?  But our job is to support and guide them through a wide range of experiences and emotions, including the hard and ugly ones.   Our job is to gradually stop taking responsibility for them.  

Yep. Raising children is only one aspect of parenting… making adults is the other. 

We often never stop to check in how the sands of time have shifted and where we once helped, now we disable. Where we once supported, now we disempower.

The most obvious place this happens is within families. I see so many women worry themselves into a crumpled mess, running around doing everything for everyone, especially holidays, and there is no joy. NO JOY!  I have to help them see they can be practical AND playful.   That they can shift the responsibility to others and guess what? The world doesn’t implode. 

Now sometimes in my coaching kindness, I have to point out they have built this straw that now breaks their back. They have to dismantle it.

I have a client who is in her mid forties with four kids. She has worked incredibly hard and has a really busy, ‘big’ job. Because she is such a high achiever, taking control over everything, organising everything and deciding everything comes easily. But it means she is now responsible for everything and it is stripping the joy from her life, and her family connections. 

When they go on holiday she organises everything, which means she gets all the moaning when people don’t love any or all aspects of it, from where to eat to the weather! On a recent short Irish holiday she dreaded the burden of every day figuring out what to do and where to go. So I asked her what would happen if she drew up a chart and on a six day holiday, everyone gets a day to choose the activity and where to eat. Not only might she learn more about each child (and her partner) by their choices, but they have to experience the joy of deciding what they want but also the pressure of accommodating other people’s opinions on that choice. (It allows them to realise what it feels like when people complain about their choices it doesn’t feel good. It was an eye-opener for them to face the tsunami of whingeing and moaning and an appreciation perhaps that next time they keep their moans to themselves.)

It was a simple shift but it allowed her the space for her to stop being responsible, and for everyone to start taking their share.  She was thrilled with the holiday and how she was able to show up more as herself on the days she wasn’t being consumed with being the practical parent. 

Another small thing she mentioned was that every time they arrived in a new restaurant or venue, her teenager daughter immediately asked her to get the wifi with that stressful urgency that only teens can bring to any situation. So amid figuring out menus and who wants what, she had the panic of finding the wifi so her teens didn’t implode from a whole six minutes without connection. 

I asked her why that too, was her responsibility?  It’s a simple thing, and half the time, yes possibly it’s easier for her to just go and get the wifi but two things happen if she doesn’t make that her daughter’s responsibility instead. Her daughter doesn’t learn and practise how to go and get information for herself, and she facilitates their lazy dependence on her.

What if, that became the daughter’s job? Her contribution. Every place they go to, her job is to find the wifi and then come back and share it with everyone else. We then went through each child and came up with an age-appropriate job that takes the burden off my client AND also increases their long-term sense of empowerment. 

Shifting the responsibility does two things:

• You are not responsible for everyone’s happiness. You can then just sit with them in their bad mood or uncomfortable feeling without absorbing it or having to fix it.

• You enable and empower others to build their confidence and belief in themselves.

You cannot control how your parents, your partner, your children, your friends or your work colleagues feel about everything in their life. You are not responsible for their happiness. But what I’ve learned from my own 53 years, and my 18 years of parenting is that when I take responsible for the only happiness I have any control over - my own - I’m a better daughter, partner, mum, friend and colleague. 

I’d love to know in the comments below if you feel over-burdened with everyone else’s happiness and if there are any little shifts you can make? 

If you’d like further details of my coaching, or my latest book Midlife, redefined: Better, Bolder, Brighter, please check out my website www.themidlifecoach.org.

You can also follow me on Instagram @midlifecoach