Over-Responsibility: Understanding and Meeting Your Unmet Childhood Needs

Discover why you may have developed a caretaker mentality and how to overcome it by identifying and fulfilling your unmet needs.

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Growing up with constantly unmet needs can have a severe negative effect on your life. When a child feels ignored, unheard, or unsupported, they may develop the tendency to become overly responsible for the people and environments around them as a way to cope. 

In today's article, I will explore why you may become overly responsible, the signs of over-responsibility, and the beliefs that tend to drive this behavior in you. You will also get self-reflection questions to explore your unmet childhood needs and learn how to identify and meet your unmet childhood needs now as an adult.

The Message You (Directly/Indirectly) Received in Childhood

As a child, if you constantly didn't feel seen, heard, or validated, you may have internalized the message that your needs were unimportant or abnormal. Instead of receiving love and support when you expressed your needs, you may have been criticized, shamed, ridiculed, or flat-out dismissed. This experience can cause you to push your needs aside and start prioritizing the needs of others instead.

You Take On The Role Of The Caretaker

To avoid the fear and pain of abandonment, you may have learned to play the caretaker role. You may cope with feeling ignored, unheard, or unsupported by focusing on the needs of others. This may have helped you feel closer to your parents and safer around them. Taking on the caretaker role often extends into adulthood and often causes you to take on responsibilities that aren't your own. This often causes a lot of extra stress and can lead to burnout as you prioritize to fulfill other people's responsibilities rather than your own. 

What happens When Your Emotional Needs Aren't Met

Often people-pleasers grew up in homes where emotional needs weren't seen as important as, for example, physical needs. This can cause long-term damage to your sense of self, self-esteem, and overall mental health. When your emotional needs are consistently not met as a child, you may have learned to keep your feelings and needs to yourself and hide them from others and sometimes even from yourself. This often leads to sacrificing yourself to gain acceptance, love, and validation from others, as those needs weren't sufficiently met growing up. 

As a result of constantly not having your emotional needs met, you may have developed a strong desire to feel close to your parents and tried to achieve that by taking care of their needs, as that made you feel more connected to them and helped you feel safer in their presents, especially if your parents were (emotionally) unpredictable.

It All Leads To Self-Sacrifice, Which Is When It Becomes Problematic

This pattern of sacrificing yourself by focusing on what others need while neglecting and suppressing your needs and feelings often continues into adulthood. Giving yourself up for others might make you feel a sense of worthiness and validation, something you didn't get to feel in childhood because your needs were constantly unmet. But neglecting yourself, your needs, feelings, and wants is unhealthy as it sooner or later leads to chronic feelings of exhaustion, burnout, and unworthiness and can breed resentment.

Are You Overly Responsible?

If you read this article and nod away, chances are that you are overly responsible. Common signs you may want to look out for in yourself:

Signs you're being overly responsible:

• Constantly taking on responsibilities of others

• Putting the needs of others before your own

• Feeling guilty when you have to say "no" to someone

• Struggling to set boundaries and speak up for yourself

• Often feeling overwhelmed and burnt out

Beliefs you may hold if you're overly responsible:

• "My needs don't matter."

• "If I care for others, they will love and accept me."

• "I am only worthy if I'm helping others."

• "If I don't do it, no one will, and someone has to."

• "It's my job to make sure everyone is happy."

• "It's my responsibility that everything works out."

Situations That Indicate You May Be Overly Responsible:

• Feeling obligated to take care of anyone sick, feeling guilty for taking time off

• Volunteering for projects at work, even if you don't have the capacity

• Feeling responsible for making others happy and "fixing" their moods

• Getting involved in other people's problems and arguments

• Taking on the burden of other people's mistakes or problems

• Feeling responsible for resolving and moderating conflicts between friends and family members

• Feeling responsible for the success or failure of a project or relationship

Self-Reflection Questions for the Overly Responsible

If you have identified that you have the tendency to be overly responsible for others, you may want to explore this tendency of yours. Here are some self-reflection questions to guide you through that:

• What are my unmet needs from childhood?

• How do I prioritize the needs of others over my own?

• How do I choose to fulfill my needs? Is this sustainable?

• What belief do I old that makes me take on too much responsibility?

• What is the impact of my over-responsibility on my mental, emotional, and physical well-being?

• How can I start prioritizing and meeting my unmet needs from childhood?

• How can I start setting boundaries and assert my own needs?

In the end, healing from your caretaker role and having constantly unmet needs means identifying your unmet childhood needs, learning to fulfill them yourself, and asking others to help now as an adult.

How to Identify and Meet Your Unmet Childhood Needs as an Adult

1. Awareness: You can't fix what you don't know. You need to become aware of your unmet needs from childhood. You can do so through the self-reflection questions above, journaling, or therapy/coaching.

2. Identify your Needs: Make a list of your basic needs, such as safety, love, validation, stability, and support, to hear to be heard and to see to be seen, for example. Ask yourself what needs were not met in your childhood and how that has been affecting you now as an adult.

3. Explore your Emotions: When you have identified your unmet needs, explore the emotions attached to them. For example, if you didn't feel seen as a child, how did that make you feel? Did you feel unsupported, ashamed, or insecure?

4. Make your Needs a Priority: Learn to set boundaries and say "no" to responsibilities that aren't yours. You need to do this to create enough time, energy, and space to fulfill your own needs. Make time for activities that nourish you and meet your needs.

Meeting your unmet needs from childhood is a process; it's not a destination. It takes time, effort, and patience. Remember to start small and allow yourself to make mistakes, and ask for help.

If you liked this article share with me in the comments below what you liked about it and how it has been helpful to you.