Is “Overcare” Hurting You?

Have you have ever felt so distraught over someone else’s circumstances that your own health (and your life) started to unwind? Maybe you’ve seen this in people who are helping care for a sick friend or an elderly parent. Or perhaps you’ve seen it in people doing charity work in impoverished countries? The phrase for this is called “overcare.”

When we feel guilt and distress over not being able to do enough for others, and we start ignoring our own needs, we lose touch with the true and healthy love we intend to give.

Does that mean it’s possible to love too much? No, the amount of love you give isn’t the issue. The better question is, is your love getting distorted?

In my book Love for No Reason, I tell the story of  Sheva Carr’s “recovery” from overcare. In the 1980′s, after living with and helping impoverished children in Nicaragua, Sheva had to leave the country for her own safety. Her feelings of guilt over abandoning those children and her worry about their continued plight manifested in extreme physical pain that she experienced for years. No amount of elaborate medical tests found a cause. It was only when Sheva learned some simple, but powerful techniques (from the Institute of Heartmath), that she was she able to let go of her guilt and live in appreciation and love — and when that happened, her physical symptoms reversed.

Many of us will never experience the type of circumstances that Sheva did in Nicaragua, but we may still be prone to give all of our emotional energy to taking care of others, and lose ourselves and our own health in the process. Here are three ways to keep you from falling into the trap of overcare:

1. Let go of being attached to a specific result: When you’re not attached to a particular outcome, you give freely and it’s more enjoyable and energizing. Whenever I give, I remind myself of a helpful formula I once learned: “High intention, low attachment.” Give with enthusiasm and trust the universe to take care of the results.

2. Don’t expect anything in return: When I interviewed Dr. Stephen Post, an expert in the field of altruism and compassion, he told me he learned a valuable lesson from the champions of compassion he’s interviewed over the years. “We can get hung up on keeping score of reciprocal responses, and that really limits us. It keeps us from being free to love in a way that is uncalculating. We just need to do what a mother I once interviewed tells her son to do, ‘Love, and forget about it.’”

3. Make sure that your giving doesn’t stress, drain, or weaken you: Healthy giving makes you feel good. Unhealthy giving, when you’re giving too much to others, will push you out of heart rhythm coherence and, over time, will take you from overcare to no care. The symptoms of no care, according to the Institute of HeartMath, are burnout, depression, resignation, or cynicism. Paying attention to the signals your body is sending will help you to recognize and reverse these symptoms before they take their toll on you.

Kindness, care and compassion are great expressions of love. Just make sure to take care of yourself in the process of giving to others, so that your good intentions keep you in the healthy giving zone.

With love for no reason and every reason,

Marci

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photo from flickr