Have you felt that prickling on your face as your cheeks get warm with a feeling of seething not-quite-anger?
It’s that feeling after you prepared every single meal for your large family for four months straight, with no breaks, but received plenty of criticism. That feeling when you spend hours each day keeping up with the 24 loads of laundry per week only to find clothes all over the floor. The put-upon feeling when you are overwhelmed with fundraisers and someone asks you to commit to even more volunteer hours and you feel too guilty to say no.
That grinding irritation when you cook and clean for 10 people every day while working, running errands, sports practices, attending to appointments, working out, sewing, mending, mopping, tending animals, farm duties, volunteerism, classroom hours, and then someone asks for more, more, more.
The negative feeling simmering beneath the surface is resentment. And it is really easy to build resentment when you spread yourself too thin.
How often do you over-commit and then end up driving yourself crazy over it? Do you decide to accommodate everyone who asks you for your service, only to start resenting them when you get overwhelmed? I answer yes to these questions and I’m guessing a lot of women do. I don’t know why, but in our culture it seems difficult to say no as a woman. We live in an era and culture of spreading ourselves too thin. Women are especially prone to this. We get to work jobs while somehow also managing the entire household, raising the children, keeping fit, hauling all that water softener salt with our pinky fingers, and being grateful for it all without any help. No matter how much we ask. And you better also be a scout den mother, classroom mom for preschool, Sunday school educator, sport mom volunteer, and make costumes for the school play. There’s a reason why the strung out super mom is a cliched archetype.
We commit. We strive. We do. We thrive. We grow weary. We get tired. We feel insecure. We feel guilty.
We become miserable. And resentful.
I have learned that I have what is basically Nice Girl Syndrome. I bend over backwards to help and accommodate everyone else and then get resentful that no one reciprocates. It’s a lousy way to go through life and I’ve been doing the work to change that.
What to do? Get more help? Find more bodies? Make more calls?
No.
Asking for more help does not work. Trust me. I’ve been part of this rodeo of life for a while now. People pretend that all you need to do is ask, but when push comes to shove, people rarely step up and keep that promise to actually think outside of themselves. Even my lovely husband is very guilty of this.
Your resentment will grow even larger and stronger when you ask for help, only to be let down time and time again.
The real answer to this problem is to say NO.
You don’t say yes, and then later ask for some (anyone) to help pick up some slack. That is a fool’s errand. You pick items to axe, and you say no.
Recently I managed to turn myself into an angry ball of resentful near-rage. I am already the one who handles 97% of child care, cleaning, cooking, laundry, appointments, and house maintenance. Now, if that was ALL I did, it might not be an issue. However, I need more in my life besides spending 16 hours a day up to my elbows in chores and poopy diapers. So I also have a small business to bring in income, a hardcore gym habit, and a sports league requiring a hefty commitment. And this is where I get into trouble. Due to the size of our family, I can easily spend 65 hours per week just on managing and caring for the kids. Between conferences, doctor appointments and extra curriculars, it is not unheard of for me to have 15 or more appointments/meetings in a week just in regards to the children. Luckily not every week is like that.
Likewise, due to having a large household with lots of mess-makers and a working farm, I could easily spend another 65 hours a week on just house and farm chores and maintenance. If I did, my house would be much cleaner. And my chicken coops would be less smelly. Unfortunately, there is not enough time in the day.
I could also easily spend an additional 65 hours per week on my business. In fact, I’m pretty sure this is the only way I will see significant growth in my work and income. But again, time constriction.
I would love to have an additional gym day each week.
I became a full member of my sport league and was appointed a full time position in the nonprofit. In a larger league, this would likely not be too big of a commitment since there are many bodies for spreading the work around. In a small league, this is a problem. We have just as many work hours, fundraising hours, and volunteering hours as a large league. However, instead of spreading that work across 100 people, we had to spread it across six people. Suddenly the league needed 65 hours per week from me as well.
If you have been following the math so far, we are up to 260 hours per week of work, not including gym time. And I felt unable to say no to most of it. You can see where this is going!
A dark and grey artistic expression of resentment, aha.
Recently I fell back into old habits when my sports league was asking for a ton of volunteering hours at various events. Trying to be a good team player, I over-committed. All of these commitments were over an hour away and required considerable time in addition to the 10 hours per week I already committed to practices. I also had all the various appointments for the kids and was trying to launch a new section of a website I was working on. I have a large family and a lot of responsibility in my business and on our farm, so needless to say, I became overwhelmed and things fell apart. I became irrationally angry. Which was ridiculous. I had to step back and think logically and learn something from my mini freak out.
The resentment began simmering in late summer. By Late November it nearly boiled over, but then the league went into a short “off season”. At this same time we decided to not re-enroll kids into the swim school which was 30 minutes away. Suddenly life became bearable for six whole weeks. With room to breath and prioritize, I was able to gain some clarity and become more productive. Turns out, you can be more productive when you don’t hate everything.
As the holidays started intensifying and the “on season” meetings started heating up, I started feeling anxious. I began feeling put-upon again before it even happened. It became clear that in order to maintain my sanity (and my marriage) I needed to say no.
I resented my spouse. My kids. My team mates. My family. My kids’ teachers.
I was starting to resent everyone.
I resented my spouse. My kids. My team mates. My family. My kids’ teachers.
I was starting to resent everyone.
It became clear the only way I could get a hold of the resentment was to cut off the source: Overextending myself. I did it to myself, I can undo it.
I can just say no. Without explanations or excuses. No is a complete sentence.
It wasn’t so much that my plate was TOO full, it was more that it was filled with things that I didn’t always choose and were not emotionally fulfilling. All of these commitments were expectations foisted upon me and I didn’t respect my own boundaries and say no. Then I felt drained and put upon even when events were several days away. Just the idea that I over-committed and felt out of control of my life stressed me out.
-So it wasn’t too many things. It was too many things I didn’t want to do or felt obligated to do. Too many expectations. And those expectations are my own fault. If a particular day and time is open on my calendar, I have a hard time saying no even when I should. Quite frankly, I need to *x* out large stretches on my calendar for personal time and self care. Even If that self care ends up being housework and client emails.
Self Care is sometimes in my studio.
This seems to be a cultural phenomena since we not only over-schedule ourselves, but also our children. Are we afraid of not running around like crazy people? Or are we simply unable to say no? Are we a nation of Nice Guys a la Robert Glover? Is that why Americans are not very happy? (We sure fake it though.)
I was not raised by people who allowed me to say no, no matter how damaging it was to me physically, mentally, and emotionally, so I was pretty bad at this skill. It is an area of emotional immaturity for me. Just the idea of saying no to people fills me with anxiety. I feel like a failure. It creates an epic amount of stress. And that is on me! I am not a child and I’m fully responsible for managing my emotions and anxieties. Learning the power of NO is fabulous. It feels strong and brave. Which also is kind of laughable because I know I am not alone in this feeling. How have we become a society where it feels brave to say no to ridiculous requests?
And this grand skill of saying NO is how to kill resentment.
I resigned from my league and signed up for a much smaller commitment with a larger league.
NO to all those hours.
I automated some aspects of my business and also stopped being so hard on myself about my lower income. Some of my work was being made obsolete due to industry shifts so I decided to let some things coast for a few months.
No to busting my butt Without progress.
Without sport league duties I have time for that extra day in the gym, which feels great.
And I have a feeling I will start liking my sport again if I’m not so stressed from it.
Saying no to my spouse and kids is also helpful. Quite frankly, I have to do less for them in order for them to appreciate what I do. This was a hard lesson for me as a resentful “nice girl”.
Saying no to my spouse and kids is also helpful. Quite frankly, I have to do less for them in order for them to appreciate what I do.
Every time I go through a phase of over-committing to things I don’t care for, I get soooooo resentful. BUT, I have learned to recognize this and reel it in. I don’t get to be resentful over commitments because I DO in fact have the power to say no and uphold personal boundaries in regards to my time and emotional well-being. I really do! We all do. NONE of us really has to do that eight hour volunteer shift, or bake that perfect cake for the bake sale, or have the perfect house, or take all those superfluous classes everyone is always pushing.
I can say no. You can say no.
Sure, someone might be irritated with our “no”. However, THEIR expectations don’t really affect our lives all that much. Not as much as we think anyway. The expectations that make us miserable are our own. And we have the power to control our own expectations. This power is so freeing and invigorating, once you truly take advantage of it. And once you begin respecting and upholding your own boundaries, so much resentment eventually melts away. There are, of course, possible emotional vampires in your life you need to limit your exposure to, but that too is part of your boundaries.
once you begin respecting and upholding your own boundaries, so much resentment eventually melts away
So yeah. No more Overextending. No more Over-scheduling. No more being pushed around. No more over-committing.
Instead of asking for what you want, STATE what you want and how you plan to get it. Say NO to things holding you back. DON’T commit to things you aren’t excited about. And call people out of they guilt you about it. But really, saying no will cover most of the problems. It is amazing how much resentment melts away after a while when you start finally doing what you want instead of trying to make everyone else happy.
Any funny enough, all those people who wouldn’t help me when I asked? Well now that I said No, they have to pick up their own slack in life.
By over-committing and overextending myself, and being able to pause and CONSCIOUSLY THINK about what I was feeling and why, I was finally able to do the work to start down the path toward emotional maturity. And It’s a nice place to be.