How do I stop needing to be needed?

When I was a kid I worked out that if I built the best hut in the schoolyard, nobody ever had to be asked for anything. Nobody had to ask me for a spot in it or a turn in it. I'd built it, so there was nothing to ask for and nothing anyone could say no to.

Thirty years on it's events, offers, resources, a studio. Ask me for something and I've probably already built it.

I want to say this part first, because a lot of what gets written about this gets it backwards. It worked. That's why I've never fired it.

Being needed is the job, not the favour

You stopped asking for stuff a long time ago, and being the one who handles it grew up in the gap that left. And it pays. It pays in standing, in being the first call, in knowing exactly where you sit with people. You're never the one who owes anything.

Somebody said this in a group and it's the cleanest version of it I've heard. My need became the need to be needed.

That's a job description. And when people write about this they write about it as a wound, aimed at somebody who is falling apart. You're not falling apart. You're the one everybody calls when they are. So the articles slide off, because the thing they're describing isn't the thing you're doing.

What you're doing is a position, you're good at it, and giving it up costs you something real. Worth being blunt about that, because being told it's just people-pleasing is going to make you close the tab.

So why doesn't giving less work

Because giving less is a volume change on something that was never about volume.

You can do fewer favours this month and the reflex sits exactly where it was. Somebody mentions a problem and you're three steps into solving it before you've decided to. That part runs on its own, and it doesn't slow down because you had a think about your capacity on Sunday.

Someone in one of these groups put it better than I can. How do I fix the need of fixing. She heard the loop in it herself while she was saying it.

And the loop is real. Every tool you own is for holding things, processing things, managing things. Which means the only tool available for the problem of holding too much is more holding.

What happens when there's nothing to fix

This is the tell, and it's uncomfortable.

Somebody close to you gets hit with something you can do nothing about. The kind with no solution in it. And underneath the worry there's a thought you'd rather not have had. You catch yourself wanting the old problem back, the one you could do something about.

That's what happens when being useful is the way you know how to be close to someone. Take the usefulness away and you're standing there with empty hands in front of somebody you love, and it's unbearable.

I watched someone share something genuinely bad that had happened to her that week, ask the group for nothing at all, and then give everybody three exercises. Excellent exercises. Also the exit.

Then nobody gets to give you anything

The bill on this one comes in on the other side, and it takes years to show up.

You get there first. Most times, and faster than anybody else would have. So the people around you stop offering, because the offer kept arriving after the thing was already done. They're not holding out on you. There's nothing left to hand over.

And then the evidence stacks up on your side. Nothing gets offered, so it must be true that you're the only one who does this around here. Which is the conclusion the whole arrangement was built to produce.

The thing a lot of these women want, when you get underneath it, is the one thing that needs another person to show up and do something. No amount of your own excellence produces that one. You can't get there first on it.

So what do we do instead

Two things, and they're both small and both awful.

One. Let one thing stay undone in front of somebody. One. Something a person near you could handle, that you'd normally have finished by now. Leave it. Say nothing about leaving it. Then watch what they do, and let it be done the way they do it rather than the way you'd have done it.

The whole thing is in that second part. Receiving something in the form you'd have chosen is just ordering.

Two. Ask for something in the place where you're the least capable person there. Saying yes is easy where you're already good. Somebody hands you a challenge in your own field and of course you'll take it, you've got this, you know it. The one that costs you is where you're the least confident and the least capable in the group, and where you're doing it for you rather than for somebody else.

That's where the asking sits too. The kind of request you couldn't have covered yourself.

I'm still working this one. Mine goes like this:

I don't ask for what it is that I want because I want to caretake their emotions that I'm perceiving they're going to have. But that's not my responsibility. And so then I don't ask for it.

Daniel Lawson

I get in front of somebody's feelings before they've had them, decide it'd be a burden on them, and then handle it myself. Very considerate. Also a way of never finding out.

Common questions

Isn't wanting to be needed a good thing?

Being useful is a good thing and it's a lot of why people trust you. What's worth looking at is whether it's the only door you've got. If being needed is the way you know how to be close to someone, then every relationship you're in has to keep producing problems for you to solve.

How do I know if I'm doing it?

Watch the speed. Somebody mentions something and you're solving it before they've finished the sentence, that's the one. The other tell is getting asked what you need and coming up with nothing, while you can name what everyone else in your life needs without pausing.

Where does it come from?

Often from a house where feelings didn't get much airtime, so you became the one who handled it instead. That's worth knowing and it won't change anything by itself. Knowing where it started and interrupting it are two different skills.

What if they really do depend on me?

They probably do, and that's real. The question is whether there's one thing in there that could be somebody else's, and what you notice in yourself while you're trying to hand it over.

How do I catch it in the moment rather than afterwards?

Somebody put this to me as: is this my part, is this my responsibility right now, or am I going overboard with the giving again. Asking it while your hands are already moving is the practice. Most people get there three hours late for a while, and that still counts.

If this is you

The hard part is that you can't do this in the places where you're the capable one. Everybody there needs you to keep being that, and not one of them is going to stop you, because why would they.

Someone told me straight what she wanted was to be in a place where she didn't have to be the capable one. And she said it in a group where somebody else was running the thing, which is most of the reason it got said at all.

That's what the group is for. Somebody else is running it, so for that time you're not the one who has to. And then you get to find out what's underneath the job, which is usually a want you put down so long ago you forgot it was ever yours.

The Reconnected Woman.