5 Signs You’re ‘Emotionally Over-Functioning’

Do you sometimes feel like your feelings need to stay on the back burner while you attend to everyone else’s, or find yourself saying “Don’t worry about me!” far too often?

This, BACP member therapist Joanne Strong said, could be a sign of “emotional over-functioning”.

Emotional over-functioning is “is where one person takes on responsibility for
another person’s feelings, emotional processing and regulation,” she explained.

“This is usually a habit rooted in childhood and isn’t usually a conscious decision, more a way of being that the individual has learnt to inhabit.”

Here, HuffPost UK asked Strong how to spot the signs of emotional over-functioning, as well as how it can affect your relationship and what to do if you notice it.

“If one person is emotionally over-functioning in a relationship, they will be attempting to process the feelings of the other person, or to keep the other person emotionally regulated,” the therapist said.

That can take a lot of different forms, she added.

But some common manifestations may include:

1. Minimising, and feeling somewhat out of touch with, your own feelings,
2. Feeling that the experiences, emotions, and needs of the ‘recipient’ of the emotional over-functioning take up more space or ‘air time’,
3. Avoiding, redirecting, and/or shutting down some emotions, like anger,
4. Resentment on both sides “and a reduction in intimacy, as the dynamic can interfere with the natural flow of feelings and communication between partners,”
5. An emerging parent-child dynamic as responsibilities feel unequally shared.

Strong said the dynamic often creates distance and resentment between couples.

“For the person who is emotionally over-functioning, they might start to feel they are ‘doing all of the work’, that their feelings ‘don’t matter.’”

Loneliness may creep in for this person, who could be left to feel that they’re dealing with their emotions alone.

“For the recipient, there is often frustration, a feeling of being unheard, as their feelings are expressed or soothed by their partner without them getting the chance to explore and express what is going on in their internal world themselves,” she added.

“The parent-child dynamic inherent in this pattern can lead to a power imbalance which will often show up in other ways.”

Strong pointed out that many people who emotionally over-function learned the bahaviour as a child, when they may have felt the pressure to regulate others’ emotions to help control their environment.

“It is a pattern of looking after what is ‘on the outside’, so that what is
‘on the inside’ can feel some safety and security. What gets left out is the internal world of the child, and this persists into adulthood,” she said.

To address this, the therapist added, we need to turn our attention inwards – “To tend to, explore, express and regulate the feelings that belong to self rather than other.

“Anything that fosters internal awareness and connection can help: meditation, journaling, creativity, yoga, self-expression. Therapy can be incredibly helpful because the focus is on cultivating this self-contact and care,” she ended.