When Caretaking Becomes Compulsive: How to Break Free from the Urge to Help Everyone Except Yourself

Are you tired of holding it all together for everyone else?

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In this deeply personal episode, Dr. Alison explores the hidden ache of emotional caretaking—the quiet ways we overfunction, over-give, and overlook our own needs to keep the peace. Whether it started in childhood or has become a way of coping in adult relationships, many of us have learned to survive by tending to others while slowly disappearing ourselves.

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Alison shares what she’s learning about her own inner caretaker and gently invites you to reconnect with the parts of you that are tired, weary, and worthy of care. This isn’t about walking away from the people you love—it’s about learning to stay grounded in yourself as you care well for others.

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This episode explores:

• Why emotional caretaking can feel like love—but quietly wears you down
• How childhood dynamics shape your adult urge to fix, help, or rescue
• What most people get wrong about “self-care”
• The hidden cost of always tending to others while neglecting yourself
• A gentle practice to reconnect with your inner caretaker—and what she needs

This episode is a loving reminder: Your needs matter. Your soul deserves care. And you don’t have to carry it all alone.

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📥 Grab your 3 free Boundaries For Your Soul resources here: 

📥 Download Alison’s free printable with the five boundary tools when you sign up for her weekly email.

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Here are some other episodes you might like :

Episode 138: Breaking Free from Overfunctioning –– DIscover the Hidden Costs of Always Being the Responsible One

Episode 151: The Hidden Reason You Feel Overwhelmed –– Understanding the Mental Load with Dr. Morgan Cutlip

Episode 152: The Anxiety Beneath Perfectionism –– Why Trying Harder Won’t Set You Free

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📖 Find a full transcript and list of resources from this episode here

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💬 Got a question? Call 307-429-2525 and leave a message for a future episode.

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Editing by Giulia Hjort

Sound engineering by Kelly Kramarik

Music by Andy Luiten

While Dr. Cook is a counselor, the content of this podcast and any of the products provided by Dr. Cook are not specific counseling advice nor are they a substitute for individual counseling. The content and products provided on this podcast are for informational purposes only.‍

© 2025 Alison Cook. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Please do not copy or share the contents of this webpage or transcript without permission from the author.

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Transcript

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Hey everyone, and welcome back to this week's episode of the Best of You. I am so looking forward to this time together today. Today's episode was birthed out of a need in my own life. And as I thought about some of the things I've been struggling with and working on, it occurred to me that so many of you are likely dealing with the same inner dynamics as I am and that some of what I've been learning in my own life might be helpful to you.

Today's episode is especially for the caretakers and specifically I'm talking about emotional caretaking, where we work to meet the emotional needs of everyone around us. These are the parts of us that operate silently without us even realizing it. At times, you might be the steady one in your family, the person, everyone turns to the one who holds it all together.

Behind the scenes, you are the one who shows up. You give, you carry the emotional weight quietly, persistently, because that's what you've always done. Yet, maybe somewhere along the way you lost touch with yourself. This episode is for all of you who care deeply for others, but sometimes forget to care for your own soul.

It's for the part of you that will not stop trying to fix. What cannot be fixed, at least not by you all alone, the part of you that's tired of holding it all together. If you relate to any of this, I wanna offer you a gentle invitation today. Not to walk away from the people you love and care about, but instead to come home to yourself and to remember that tending to your own inner world isn't selfish.

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It's essential. It's where true love and true compassion for others begins. In today's episode, I'm gonna share a little bit of my own story, how emotional caretaking has shaped me from early on, and how I'm learning to return to that grounded place within. We'll explore what it means to find your voice again and how to stop carrying what was never yours to hold.

And at the end I'll guide you through a short spiritual reflection, a prayer you can return to anytime you feel overwhelmed. Or lost in the needs of others.

I have a repeated pattern that shows up in my life to this day. I've worked on it a lot, but it shows up with different iterations and basically it's like this. I'll find myself compulsively checking in on other people. It might be on my family members, on friends. 

I'll catch myself literally scrolling through text messages to see who might need something. Mentally tracking past conversations, maybe even conversations from months ago, wondering if someone, anyone is upset or needs support. Just the other day I was doing this again, mentally circling around other people's emotional states and perceived needs, even though literally my own body was shaky.

I hadn't eaten that day. I'd had a number of things happen in my own life that were really stressful and really hard, and I couldn't figure out how to manage them. I was clearly in need of a break in need of rest, and yet during that inner chaos, a part of me was mentally scanning for anyone out there in the universe, literally anyone I might know who might need something from me.

Maybe I could do this nice thing for this person. Maybe I should check on this person. Why haven't I followed up on that person? Right? I was going through my mental Rolodex of all the people I could check in on. Of all the people. I could do something nice for it. That can be a really helpful quality at times.

But in this moment, I just became so aware of the disparity. My own body was literally shaking. Because I hadn't eaten yet that day because I was so overwhelmed with some of these stressful situations, both in my personal life and at work that had come to my attention, and I just began to realize, this is weird.

Why is my default to scan all the ways I could care for others while I was so clearly the one in need of care? I just had to stop and notice what was happening here. I was scanning vigilantly to try to figure out ways to help other people while I was so clearly in that moment, the one in need of care.

It's such an old and familiar impulse. If I can just make sure everyone around me is okay, then maybe I can finally rest. It never works because the reality is trying to survive my own needs through losing myself in other people's problems, keeps me on a hamster wheel. This part of me keeps running and running and running, trying to fix what cannot be fixed in the world around me, trying to carry what was never mine to carry, and it's a never ending loop of exhaustion.

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And it's tricky to navigate because here's the thing, you can always find someone in need of care. And sometimes we even hear people say, listen, if you're struggling, do something nice for others. And that's a valuable principle, and I get that, but

For those of us with extreme caretaking impulses who tend to manage the pain of others.

Instead of our own needs, it can be very challenging to know how to step off that hamster wheel of compulsive caretaking, and finally attune to our own needs, to our own inner cry for care. This is what I mean by the ache of the caretaker. There's something sacred about showing up for others. We know this to be true, but when we lose touch with our own center, even our care becomes distorted. We stop listening inward, we override our own needs, and we begin to try to fix what was never ours to fix.

So where does this compulsive. overactive caretaking impulse come from? 

It can come from what psychologists call parentification. This is when as a child, maybe you're asked to step into an adult responsibility before you're developmentally ready. This can happen emotionally, logistically, or both. It can happen. If you had a parent who struggled with their emotions, who maybe confided in you or leaned on you, or even became emotionally unpredictable, and at a very young age, you learn to kick it into high gear to become the steady one, or maybe you became the emotional buffer in your family.

You sensed conflict between your parents or maybe between a parent and a sibling, or between other siblings, and maybe nobody said it out loud, but your nervous system. Picked up on it and without realizing it, you became that buffer for everybody that peacemaker the mood stabilizer. You learned to kind of stay small to shapeshift, to stay agreeable, to stay attuned, to keep the system from falling apart.

Maybe you were the secret keeper, the one everybody confided in, or even just the one who kind of held all of the emotional tensions in your own body. Sometimes it was even more direct. 

Maybe you literally had to care for an adult who was physically ill or emotionally unwell, unable to work, or maybe just chronically unavailable. Maybe you had to cook the meals, you had to help with siblings. You learned how to read the needs of others before you could read a book. I'm not laying any blame here. This happens even in the most well-intentioned of families, but regardless, a part of you learn to take on the role of an adult far too young.

Lastly, sometimes these caretaking parts are formed in a more subtle way through a slow layering of our God-given temperament and personality, and even gifting our emotional sensitivity, our empathy combined with the family dynamics and the cultural dynamics around us. Some of us were simply born with very tender, intuitive nervous systems.

You might have always been the kind of child who felt things deeply who could walk into a room and immediately sense. The emotional temperature and that kind of empathy is really beautiful. But when it's left unsupported or misunderstood, if no one ever taught you the boundaries of that and how to differentiate and step back from all of that empathic knowing, especially when you're taking in data that isn't actually yours to process, it can turn into a sense of over responsibility.

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And I mention this because I still remember even now, the names and faces of kids in my. Elementary school classrooms from as early as second grade, third grade, fourth grade, fifth grade, who I knew intuitively were struggling, who I knew maybe weren't being cared for at home, who maybe the other kids were mean to.

There was a part of me that took in all of that data that just kind of intuitively understood human pain and human suffering way earlier than I knew what to do with it. And so even apart from our family dynamics, sometimes we just have that temperament and if we didn't have anybody kind of come alongside of us and help us understand, Hey, I love your sensitive heart. I love that you see the pain in others, and I wanna help you learn to honor that as I also wanna help you learn how to let it go when it's not yours to fix. When it's not yours to heal, when it's not yours to mend. That's a pretty nuanced skill even for those of us as adults. So if you had that kind of temperament as a kid, no wonder it's hard for you to learn how to turn that off.

Regardless of whether this part of you developed in your family of origin or whether it developed as part of your God-given design, and probably in most cases it's a combination of both. This caretaking part of you is highly attuned to the emotional states of other people. It might be to your own kids.

It might be to your own spouse, to other family members, to friends. To people in your community, to strangers in the grocery store, right? The list can go on and on, but this part of you tracks everyone else often without you even realizing it. It notices who's upset, who's withdrawing. Who's even hinting at a need, and it doesn't just notice it.

It jumps in sometimes with support, sometimes with solutions, sometimes by simply silencing your own voice or your own needs because you do not want to impinge on the needs of someone else. Often this part of you jumps before you have a chance to pause and ask yourself. Am I the one called to step in here?

Do I have the capacity to meet this need? Is this my responsibility or is some part of me acting out impulsively and compulsively to meet needs that are not mine? In fact, to meet. If you've ever found yourself waking up with jaw tension, a dull headache, or tightness around your face, you're not alone.

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Typically this part of you, this internal caretaker gets extreme because it started to form beliefs about what makes you valuable in relationships. These parts of us tend to believe things like this. My value lies in being needed. My piece depends on everyone else being okay. If I stop showing up for others, I'll lose my place in the system, in the family, in the friend group, in the community. This is how I stay connected. This is how I stay. Loved to abandon myself and show up constantly for the needs of others. And so this part of us keeps working. She stays ahead of everybody else's needs. She fuses connection with responsibility.

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And before you know it, caretaking becomes a way of life, a default. The only way you know how to show up. In your relationships, maybe you recognize some of these indicators of a caretaking part in yourself. Maybe you're the one who always remembers all the milestones, the holidays, the events, the anniversaries, regardless if anyone else remembers yours, maybe you're the one who always sends the check-in texts, who's always sending the encouraging word.

Maybe you're the one who senses tension before anyone even speaks a word. Or maybe you're the one, always one step ahead. Emotionally, logistically, relationally, always on guard, making sure everything's working. But all the while you are the one running on empty. You are the one in need of care. Because here's the hard part.

Other people rarely notice the toll that all this caretaking takes on you. 'cause you're really good at hiding it. That's part of the survival. You've built your identity around being the one who can hold it all. And so other people don't notice when you need care. But inside, there's often a younger part of you just aching for someone to notice her, to care for her, to tell her it's okay to stop, to rest, to receive care, even for just one moment. 

When I actually connect to this part of me who's so busy taking care of everybody else, and I kind of find that place in my soul that's doing that, she doesn't show up to me as that competent, capable adult that I feel like when I'm blended with her, she actually surfaces as more of a neglected orphan, she sort of has scraggly hair and she seems malnourished and she seems emotionally unkempt and kind of confused and like, what would it even be like for someone to pay attention to me? And as I've gotten to know this sort of inner neglected part of me, I realize so much more clearly that she doesn't even know what it feels like to receive love or care, how would she know how to ask for it from someone else when she doesn't even know what she needs? 

She only really knows how to give it. So it's sort of a foreign idea to her. And the first step is really just learning that. About this part of myself that this is going to be a process. It's not as simple as just taking a day off or as going to a spa or some of these superficial ways that we talk about self-care in our culture.

This is a deeply embedded part of the soul who has to learn what it's like to trust that there's an adult present who wants to give care to her. It's a process of rebuilding trust because here's the deeper truth. This part of you doesn't have a full understanding yet of true belonging. She doesn't yet know that you are loved, not because of what you do for others, but because of who you are.

You are worthy of love and belonging, not because of all that you do for other people, but because you are made in the image of a loving God who longs to come alongside you with emotional attunement, with rest, with reassurances, with all of that love and devotion and encouragement and wisdom that you are so good at pouring out for others.

The caretaking part of you does indeed have a beautiful gift to offer. She's sensitive, she's empathetic, she's emotionally attuned, but first and foremost, what this part of you has to learn is that she also is worthy of love. Giving care to others when it's rooted in a sense of your own inner belovedness is a beautiful thing.

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It's a gift when you are grounded in the truth that you are already loved. Your care flows from a place of abundance. You become a wellspring of compassion, not because you're trying to earn love or connectedness or belonging, but because you know love. You become a healer because you've been healed, a lover of other souls because you've experienced love in your own soul.

But on the other hand, when you're care for others is rooted in survival, it gets distorted. You may still show up with kindness, but underneath there's fear. Fear that if you stop caring, you'll lose connection. Fear that if you name your needs, you'll be seen as too much fear that if you bring your full voice, you'll blow the whole thing up, that you'll lose all that stability that you've worked so hard to hold together.

This is where something sacred, your gift of compassion becomes compulsive. You get back on that hamster wheel. You start to over-function in relationships driven by fear more than you're driven by love. You give more than is sustainable. You say yes when your body is saying no, you anticipate others' needs.

Before they even name them, and you begin to disappear in the process, instead of mutuality, the relationship becomes lopsided. You might unintentionally begin to enable. Other people who aren't taking responsibility for themselves, you may enable dysfunctional relationships around you because you can't bear to let the other people around you fight it out amongst themselves.

You may find yourself attracting other people who are emotionally unavailable or draining because you've trained them that you will carry the emotional weight. And in that process, an incredibly vital thing gets lost. You are God given voice, the voice inside of you that carries much needed truth and wisdom and power.

Even if the truth in this moment is I can't do this right now. I'm the one in need and I need to be able to speak up for myself without fear of losing everyone around me. When caretaking becomes compulsive, it stops being holy and it starts becoming harmful. Harmful to you, harmful to the other person who isn't doing the work that God has given them to do, and harmful to the possibility of true mutually beneficial connection.

Because real love includes boundaries. Real love includes mutuality. Real love always also includes you. Your voice, even your needs. It's unsustainable and exhausting when you consistently override your own needs and it becomes disorienting when your voice is always tangled up in someone else's expectations.

Over time, you begin to lose your sense of what you think, what you want, what you feel, what you need. Your nervous system gets trained to read everyone else's emotional landscape while your own inner soul remains unexplored and untended, and even as other people might be praising you for being so thoughtful or so dependable or so helpful, you can feel the toll in your body, in your relationships, in your sense of self.

You may feel anxious, but you're not sure why. You may feel resentment, but you don't feel permission to express it. You may feel invisible and yet terrified of taking up space. That's the distortion, that compulsive caretaking part. You were made to love and care for others. Yes, but you were never made to lose yourself in the process.

If any of this resonates with you, I want you to take a deep breath with me as you're listening. Maybe place your hand over your heart as you take that deep breath and send some love to that hard working caretaking part of you. We are not here to lay blame or to shame. We are here to get curious about her and to let her know she is no longer alone.

She is not broken. She's just tired and for just a few more minutes today, we're gonna take a moment and finally pay attention to her if it's safe to do so. 

If you're not driving in a car, maybe even close your eyes and place a hand on your heart. Take a slow deep breath in and a long, steady breath out.

Let your body soften. Let your mind settle. Let your spirit open for just a few moments and I'm gonna ask you some questions for you to consider. Again, if your hands are free, you can take notes or journal while you're listening or just mentally join with me and reflect as I walk you through some of these questions.

What part of you is tired today? See if you can notice her not as a thought, but as a sensation in your body. Maybe she's in your chest, your shoulders, your stomach. Maybe she's hunched over from carrying too much, or maybe she's frozen, curled up in the corner, unsure. How to ask for help. Can you simply acknowledge her presence?

This part of you who works so hard, you don't need to fix her. Just be with her. Let her know she's not alone. If it feels like it's helpful, you might try to picture this younger part of you, the one who learned to care for others. Before herself, what does she look like? What is she doing? Can you see this younger version of yourself who always stayed quiet to keep the peace who cared for others to feel safe? Who believed her worth came from being needed? As you notice this part of you in your body, in your mind's eye, just see if you can sit with this part of yourself in the quiet and let this part of you know you've done so well, you've helped so many, and you don't have to keep going alone.

And if you're able to tap into this part of you that lives in your body, check in to see what would help her rest and feel loved just a little bit today, what would she wanna do with even just five minutes to her herself? What music would she like to listen to? What words of kindness would she like to hear from you or from God. 

See if you can listen for her voice, something she love to receive in this moment from you or from God. Even now, let her hear you say you're not just here to help everybody else. You are worthy of care of love. Take some deep breaths in and out and just notice what that feels like to connect with the part of you who really only ever knew how to pour out and notice what it might be like to commit to this part of you to spend just a few minutes each day checking in on what she might need from you or from God.

If that was helpful to you, you can save this episode and go back and play it again. You can replay that section each morning until you have a better sense of what it feels like to tap into that part of you who also needs care. You are already an amazing caretaker of others. What might it be like to take all of that caretaking and turn even just a portion of it back toward yourself?

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For many of us, learning how to tune in to our own needs is a process tending to that part of you who learned to care for others before she ever learned how to receive. This is sacred ground. This is how you build this inner sanctuary where love can truly grow, where your voice is also heard, where your needs are also brought to the surface, and where God wants to meet you, not so that you can do more for others, but because God longs to lavish love on this part.

Of you. Jesus said, love others as yourself. God never asked us to disappear in our love for others. You'll become a much better lover of others as you take consistent. Time each day to also love this part of you. 

Thank you for joining me for this week's episode of the Best of You. It would mean. So much. If you take a moment to subscribe, you can go to Apple, Spotify, Amazon music, or wherever you listen to podcasts, and click the plus or follow button that will ensure you don't miss an episode, and it helps get the word out to others while you're there.

I'd love it if you'd leave your five star review. I look forward to seeing you back here next Thursday. And remember, as you become the best of who you are, you honor God, you heal others. And you stay true to your God given self.

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