Some years ago, I was talking to my husband on the phone. He sounded annoyed about something to do with his work, but I noticed an intense emotional reaction in myself. Immediately, my heart contracted and my stomach lurched. I could feel a runaway train of emotions activate within me. My whole body was awash with nausea, and I felt so very uncomfortable.
Overgiving can be defined as a relationship that has become so unhealthily enmeshed that people lose their individual strength and autonomy. Typically, a person with these types of traits feels overly responsible for others and picks up the slack in relationships and at work. They want everyone to be happy, so they go overboard and become people pleasers and peacemakers in their relationships. They have difficulty asserting their own needs for fear of rejection or disapproval.
I'd look for something new to take on: a class, a language, a project, a degree. Once, in the span of a single week, I signed up for language classes, researched getting certified in something I didn't actually want to do, and convinced myself I needed to start training for a 10K. Because if I was doing something productive, I wouldn't have to sit with what I was feeling. That was the pattern: uncomfortable emotion → frantic pursuit of something "more."
