What happens when you’re so good at keeping everything together… that you forget to take care of yourself?
In this episode of The Total Health in Midlife Podcast, I’m joined by Master Certified Coach and people-pleasing expert Sara Fisk to explore a surprising culprit behind so many women’s exhaustion, resentment, and stalled health goals: high-functioning codependency.
We’re not talking about the kind of codependency tied to addiction. This is the polished, over-performing version that shows up in moms, partners, daughters, and leaders—the women who hold everything and everyone together… and quietly fall apart in the process.
Sara shares how people-pleasing, perfectionism, and control patterns drain your energy, chip away at your physical and emotional health, and keep you stuck in a cycle of doing for others while ignoring your own needs.
If you’ve ever found yourself running ragged fixing other people’s problems, this episode will help you come back to yourself—with honesty, compassion, and a few practical tools to help you start saying yes to you again.
About Sara Fisk
Sara Bybee Fisk is a Master Certified Coach and Instructor who teaches women how to tame the rampant people-pleasing, perfectionism, and codependency that is causing them so much frustration and resentment.
She is an anxious optimist and born-again feminist who listens to more books than she sits down to read. She loves a good hike, good dark chocolate, and good conversations.
Her big dreams include learning to sail and to sing and dance like JLo and helping thousands of women create the big, juicy lives they want to be living. She is a wife and mom of 5 and she enjoys those roles most of the time.
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What You’ll Learn from this Episode
- What high-functioning codependency looks like (and why most women don’t recognize it in themselves)
- How trying to “help” others can actually be a way to avoid our own discomfort
- Why over-controlling others can sabotage your health, relationships, and peace of mind—and how to shift the pattern
Listen to the Full Episode:
Featured on the Show:
- Too Much by Terri Cole
- The Dance of Anger by Harriet Lerner
- Sara Fisk’s Free Guide: How to Have a Difficult Conversation
- The Ex Good Girl Podcast with Sara Fisk
- Sara’s Stop People Pleasing Group Program
- Total Health in Midlife Podcast Episode 160: Ex-Good Girl with Sara Fisk
- Total Health in Midlife Podcast Episode 161: People Pleasing & Self-Care
- Total Health in Midlife Podcast Episode 127: Best Supporting Actress In Your Life
Full Episode Transcript:
243 – Sara Fisk
Sara: [00:00:00] But I think what you are talking about is the point in life that many women get to in midlife, especially where they’re resentful, where they are, frustrated, where they feel burned out. They feel like there’s just something wrong and they can’t quite put their finger on it, or they feel stuck. So that’s what leads them to take a closer look and begin the, the work of unwinding.
And the first step in unwinding, I think, is to begin to tell the truth. Even if the truth is just, you just say it to you and it’s just, I don’t like this, this doesn’t work for me anymore. I don’t wanna keep going on like this. Because especially for a high functioning, codependent, their life looks good on the outside.
They have it together. They’re often highly competent, highly successful in a [00:01:00] lot of areas, but there’s just one place, whether it’s their eating or their food or whether it’s their behavior and their people pleasing patterns
there’s this one place where it’s kind of leaking out, often multi, you know, often more than one, but. They have to tell the truth. I don’t like this. I don’t want this to go on. This doesn’t feel good. I don’t know who I really am separate and apart from all these things I do for other people, I feel a lack of like real authentic showing up in my life.
I don’t know myself.
Elizabeth: Welcome to the Total Health and Midlife Podcast, the podcast for women over 40 who want peace with food, ease in their habits, and a body that they don’t have to fight with.
Have you ever noticed how much time you spend thinking about other people’s problems, like your adult kid who keeps making the same mistakes, or your partner who [00:02:00] won’t go to the doctor, or your coworker who can’t manage her inbox, and now it’s stressing you out? So here’s the question I want you to sit with today.
What would your life feel like if you stopped managing everyone else’s? Welcome to the Total Health and Midlife Podcast. I am your host, Elizabeth Sherman, and in today’s episode, I am talking with my coach and friend Sarah Fisk, about something that we don’t often recognize in ourselves.
It’s called high functioning codependency. Now, before you tune out and say, oh, that’s not me, let me say this. Most of the women I coach don’t think of themselves as codependent, but they do spend a lot of time. Cleaning up other people’s messes and they’re exhausted, resentful, and running on empty.
Sarah’s work is all about helping women stop people pleasing, perfection, eating [00:03:00] and over-functioning for others so that they can get their own lives back. So today. If you listen to this episode, you are gonna walk away from this conversation with a better understanding of why you feel so responsible for everyone else’s wellbeing, the real cost of trying to control other people’s choices, especially a parent or a partner, and a few simple tools to start shifting that energy back into your own health and happiness.
Because when you’re in everyone else’s business, no one is in yours. And your body, your needs and your goals, they get lost in the chaos. So let’s fix that and let’s get started.
Elizabeth: Alright everyone, welcome Sarah Fisk to the Total Health and Midlife Podcast. Sarah, I am so incredibly excited that you are a return guest on my [00:04:00] podcast.
so first let’s start with who you are, what you do, who you help, and all of that great stuff.
Sara: I am so excited to be here. You are truly one of my favorite people. and I love this as we’ve been designing, and talking about what we’re gonna talk about, it’s really given my brain a lot to think about.
So I’m thrilled to be here. I am a coach. I work with women to help them stop people pleasing and people pleasing for women is like the secret mud that we’re all wading through every day that we sometimes don’t even know ’cause we’re just so used to it. It is the thing I am most passionate about, literally gets me outta bed every morning.
I could talk about it all day, every day because for me it has been such a liberatory process to be able to not please people anymore, not arrange all of my time, energy, and effort and brain space around functioning and over-functioning for other people. I do that work through [00:05:00] a group coaching program called Stop People Pleasing, and I work with clients one-on-one as well.
Elizabeth: Yeah. And that’s how we actually know each other is, well, that’s not how we know each other, but I am in Sarah’s Stop people pleasing group. I am in it for a second time. not because the first time didn’t stick, but because like health, you just have to go deeper and deeper and deeper every single time.
And so, in this most recent, Group, we were talking about the book called Too Much by Terry Cole, which is a book about high functioning codependence. And in learning about it, I started reading it and I identified so many of my clients. So I invited Sarah onto the podcast today to talk about what a high functioning codependent is.
And if you do not identify with the word codependent, do not hang up right now. Do do not press dot, because [00:06:00] the way that Terry Cole talks about her flavor of high functioning codependency, it’s a little bit different than how we view the traditional sense of codependency. And so, Sarah, I know that you have a story about that, so let’s start there.
Sara: Yeah. I used to be a practicing Mormon, a very conservative religion.
And, when I got married, my husband was using pornography and viewing pornography. And, and that’s a big no-no in Mormon land, as you might imagine. And so the way that. We dealt with that was by being referred by our clergy to a 12 step program, essentially for addiction. And he went to his men’s group and I went to the women’s group.
And then one of the books that they had us read was a book that is famous, was really the first time that the word [00:07:00] codependent became part of the discussion by a brilliant woman named Melody Beatty. And it was in relation to the, the relationship between someone who is addicted to something and they’re either a partner, spouse, friend, you know, and it was really all around the idea that.
Codependence enable behaviors of addicts by not having any boundaries, by being, you know, the doormat, letting themselves be walked all over, not being able to, you know, enforce any kind of expectation or, desire for a different dynamic in the relationship. And so I would sit around in these meetings and all of the women just seemed so mushy.
And like they, they were the doormats and their, they couldn’t tell their spouses, husbands know about anything. They [00:08:00] couldn’t enforce any kind of boundaries. And, and I was on the opposite end of that scale where when his pornography use came out, i, I came down really hard on him with boundaries and policing and expectations and control. And so I, which by the way didn’t stop the behavior either, right? It just made him feel ashamed and embarrassed and pushed the behavior further underground.
And so I didn’t realize at the time that my codependency was just different, where theirs was in like begging and pleading with their husbands to stop and in doing a lot of that enabling behavior where they thought, if I’m just nicer to him, if I’m just kinder, if I just love him more, then he will stop.
I was on the other end where kind of the root was the same. I didn’t feel. Like, I [00:09:00] could be okay, or I could be, safe, or I could have what I wanted unless his behavior changed. I just went about it in a very type a way, which is control and policing and enforcement.
Elizabeth: Yeah. And so at what point did you realize that you were codependent?
Sara: When I realized that the, the core of the definition of codependency is I am not okay. Unless you are. Okay. Hmm. That really finally started to resonate with me because I saw, luckily at the time, you know, I, I do think that 12 step programs vary in their efficacy and level of success, and I think they’re problematic in some ways, but it was really.
Really important for me to do, in the 12 step. Step four is you do what’s called a searching [00:10:00] moral inventory, and you essentially look at all of your own behaviors and it’s owning your side of the dynamic sweeping up your side of the street in this relationship. And it was then when I saw how deeply I was terrified that his behavior was going to derail our lives in mostly a religious context at the time.
But I began to see that all of my controlling my, taking over responsibility for him the way I was exhausted, kind of thinking about him all the time and is he doing it or not? the way that I over-function to try and control his behavior. It was rooted in the same thing. It just looked different on the surface.
Elizabeth: Yeah. Well, and I think that for many women, we take on the emotional labor of [00:11:00] our partner. Yeah. And so when our partner, or whoever it is in our family is hurting, like we see this with parents and their children all the time. Right. That if their child doesn’t get into a certain school or has a breakup with a friend, that the parent then does things to try to alleviate that pain.
Right?
Sara: Absolutely. And so while my example is a little bit more of an extreme, example mm-hmm. I think you’re actually exactly right in the way that it shows up every single day. It’s a sense of worth that is tied to being needed to being competent. Oftentimes into feeling in, like you’re indispensable in the success of your parent-child relationship, a work relationship, your romantic relationship, your friendship, your [00:12:00] family relationships, being the good daughter being, I mean, my, sometimes I, I can remember my dad calling me and talking about how his back was in pain, and I was texting him, massage therapist that I thought would do a good job for him.
And then I said, have you tried taking this particular, turmeric with also this and this? And I just jump in to solve problems that nobody’s asked me to help solve. Because that’s where my sense of worth comes from. It’s, I’m the one who comes through, I’m the one who can get it done. I’m the one who has the good answers.
And so without even being asked to help, I just jump in to solve problems that aren’t even mine.
Elizabeth: And that, I think that that is so, so common, so common that we have all of the advice for everyone else. And if they would just do as we tell them to, then everything [00:13:00] would be okay. Yes. And then I could feel good, right?
Yes.
Sara: That, that’s exactly it. I mean, my husband fell on his mountain bike this last week and he bruised up his arm and he has not been sleeping very well. And so he wakes up every morning and just talks about how he hasn’t slept very well. And I notice myself getting like pissed about it. I went from annoyance to pissed.
’cause I’m like, if you would just take some Advil before you go to bed, if you would just prop your pillow up on your prop, your arm up on a pillow like I told you to. And then I was like, why am I getting so worked up about this adult man, And his choices. It’s because I don’t wanna hear him complain because then I feel responsible to help him or do something about it.
So it shows up in really, sneaky little ways. But once I saw it, I was just like, yeah, I’m sorry. You’re not sleeping well. Yeah. And the truth is he doesn’t want to do anything about it, or he would, ’cause [00:14:00] he’s a grown man and he can figure it out. And so it’s, it’s a really sneaky way that, that we continue to over prioritize other people sometimes so that we can feel better or at least not feel that tug of, ah, something’s wrong with him.
And I, I feel unsettled by that.
Elizabeth: Yeah. So let’s talk a little bit more about that dynamic right there, because I think that that’s something that people have a really difficult time recognizing is that. The reason that I feel agitated, and this is, this speaks directly to people pleasing, right? The reason that I feel agitated when my partner is complaining and I feel like I need to fix it.
So, common example, the, the kitchen is a mess, and your partner just says something like, geez, no one’s done the dishes around here. And so you feel like it’s your responsibility then to [00:15:00] clean the kitchen, right? They didn’t ask you to, they just made a comment. And so how is it that we deal with that?
And then also the other dynamic, which is when someone is in a bad mood, we feel like we need to get them out of the mood. So two questions there.
Sara: I think it’s really important to name that if you have been socialized as a woman in a western patriarchal society, you have been swimming in the programming for decades, that women do certain jobs and men do certain jobs, and that women are responsible to make the men happy.
That’s how we keep them, right? That’s how we ensure that they continue to love us. And even if it doesn’t feel like that on the surface, there’s just no way that you haven’t been steeped in, in those ideas. And so [00:16:00] there’s a very normal response to that of like a, an inner tug of oh, I should do that.
If he’s upset, I should fix it. And sometimes. It’s not the traditional gender dynamics that maybe you are living with your spouse or significant other, but it’s what you saw your parents do. It’s what you saw people on TV do. It’s what you saw other, you know, couples do. And so I always like to start with the programming because that is subconscious and that is not something that we are, it’s not our fault that we were programmed that way.
And I think a lot of women have an extra layer of self-judgment and self-criticism that really isn’t theirs. It belongs to the programming. And so if you are noticing that inner tug of like, I should fix that, I should do that, that’s totally normal. That makes so much sense. And you don’t need to judge yourself or be critical of, of that dynamic.
But I think what you [00:17:00] need is a moment to pause. What programming does when you are programmed to think you are valuable for what you do for other people, it’s tough to pause because the minute I do and I launch into action, the sooner I get my reward of the dopamine or the thanks, or at least the internal satisfaction of like, I’m the one who did that.
And so to pause and just sit with it for a second and ask yourself a couple of questions like, huh, that’s so interesting. What is the expectation here? Oh, it’s that I do the dishes. Where’s that expectation coming from? Well, it’s for sure coming from me. Do I want to do the dishes? What is our arrangement around dishes?
Is this something that I feel is important to explore for any reason? To giving yourself a [00:18:00] moment to pause. Before jumping into action is so essential because it’s the only way that you can kind of break that habitual loop of jumping into action whenever anybody says they need something from you.
Elizabeth: Yeah.
Well, and as you were talking, I was thinking about, we didn’t talk about whether we’re gonna mention this book or not, but the Dance of Anger by Harriett Lerner.
no one: Yes. And
Elizabeth: how she talks about over-functioning and under-functioning and what I think that, that kind of leads to this idea of the high functioning codependent because , what we are doing as women, as we are going around and we are fixing everything for everyone else and allowing other people to not have to do anything.
And so we’re the ones that fix it, right? Yes.
Sara: Yeah. And. I mean, it’s, it’s a very complex thing that’s happening under the surface [00:19:00] because I might be pushed to over-function because I think I’ve gotta handle it for everybody. I’ve gotta make sure nobody is upset. I’ve gotta make sure that everybody’s feelings are, are handled so that we can get back to assemblance of peace or safety or connection.
But another person might be pushed to under function because they’re like, I don’t want it to be my fault. I don’t wanna be blamed for bad decisions. I don’t want any of this to come back on me as somebody getting even angrier because I did or chose the wrong theme. And so, either way, what I want people listening to this to understand is that it is not your fault that you were programmed the way that you were.
That what your system is always trying to achieve for you is safety and connection and dignity. And so it doesn’t even [00:20:00] really matter the outcome if you’re over-functioning or under-functioning, to really be gentle and tender with the fact that our nervous systems and our parts are just trying to get us somewhere that feels good again, that’s what they want.
And so if we can pause, we can actually do some of that work for ourselves first. We can put our hands on our body and say, oh, I feel that. Yeah, you’re worried that you’re gonna get blamed. You’re worried that it’s gonna be your fault. You’re worried that you are, you know, you don’t know the right thing to do here.
And so anything you choose is going to be bad. I hear you. Or if you’re over-functioning, gosh, I see you wanting to jump into action. that’s so familiar. I know. I know that’s really hard and we’re just gonna sit here for a second, and I am gonna be with you, and I don’t know the answer to everything, but I’m here and I’m listening and we’re gonna figure it out together.
That pause is really the thing that [00:21:00] revolutionizes our ability to first take care of ourselves and then be able to respond to other people in a different way.
Elizabeth: So I remember the first time that I realized I was over functioning and understanding in my dynamic with my partner, what was mine to carry and what wasn’t.
Can you walk us through how someone tangles or detangles that in their relationship, either with their partner, their parent, their kid, their coworker?
Sara: I think it’s important to remember, especially for high functioning codependence, is that they just. Automatically take responsibility for everything. It’s really an automatic, you accommodate everybody without being asked make room for other people.
You know, you just are constantly rearranging in this way that you think is good, that you think is virtuous and that you have been praised and rewarded for doing. [00:22:00] I mean, I can’t count the times that people said to me, Sarah, what would we do without you? You are so easy to work with. Right? And so all of that praise and reward really meant something to me.
But I think what you are talking about is the point in life that many women get to in midlife, especially where they’re resentful, where they are, frustrated, where they feel burned out. They feel like there’s just something wrong and they can’t quite put their finger on it, or they feel stuck. So that’s what leads them to take a closer look and begin the, the work of unwinding.
And the first step in unwinding, I think, is to begin to tell the truth. Even if the truth is just, you just say it to you and it’s just, I don’t like this, this doesn’t work for me anymore. I don’t wanna keep going on like this. Because especially [00:23:00] for a high functioning, codependent, their life looks good on the outside.
They have it together. They’re often highly competent, highly successful in a lot of areas, but there’s just one place, whether it’s their eating or their food and that they come and work with you, or whether it’s their behavior and their people pleasing patterns and they come and work with me.
There’s this one place where it’s kind of leaking out, often multi, you know, often more than one, but. They have to tell the truth. I don’t like this. I don’t want this to go on. This doesn’t feel good. I don’t know who I really am separate and apart from all these things I do for other people, I feel a lack of like real authentic showing up in my life.
I don’t know myself. Those are, those are all of the sentences that I tend to hear from women. I don’t even know who I [00:24:00] am and that it’s, it’s often truth telling that is accompanied with a lot of frustration and sorrow, but it’s so essential because we have been so busy doing so much for everyone else that we haven’t seen that truth.
And until you see it and until you’re willing to put it into words, you can’t do much about it.
Elizabeth: Yeah, I was thinking one of the things. That she’s probably thinking is I feel like I am accommodating everyone else and no one’s accommodating me.
Sara: Yes. Yes. One of the things that I was thinking about this morning as I was on my walk and just had our conversation in mind is I can actually now feel an energetic flow in my body.
I can feel energy flowing out and energy flowing in, and I can feel the difference of when too much energy has flowed out and not enough has flown in. whether that’s [00:25:00] by, you know, me taking care of my, my actual health by working out and eating well, whether it’s fulfilling conversations that I’ve had with other people, I can feel that difference.
And when you are disembodied. You, you just have no idea how much you’re actually doing for others and how all your energy and time and brain space and resources are just flowing out all the time. And you’re just used to a depleted state all the time. It’s, it’s crazy.
Elizabeth: Yeah. And one of the reasons that I wanted to have you on the show today is to talk about how when we are in other people’s business all of the time, when we are thinking about everyone else and all of these problems that aren’t ours to solve, , that takes away our mental energy and our ability to manage our own health.
Because the last thing that you wanna do [00:26:00] when you are overwhelmed is eat a salad.
Sara: You just want something that tastes good and that makes all of that resentment fade into the background a little bit more. Yeah. My foods of choice were brownies and chips. I wanted something crunchy and salty.
no one: Yeah.
Sara: And I wanted something chocolatey and baked, right?
no one: Mm-hmm.
Sara: And so I really identify with using food in particular to numb some of those emotions with not having the energy to go to the gym because, you know, everybody, I wouldn’t go to the gym ’cause I felt obligated to walk my dog. Right. Like with people pleaing, my dog. Dog pleasing. Yes. because I just, everybody else mattered more than me.
And so one of the things I think is so just astounding when you look into the research on just autoimmune. Disease of every hundred cases of [00:27:00] autoimmune diagnoses, 80 of them are women, 80 of them are women. And autoimmune is this kind of category of disease that we don’t really know why it starts, but it’s the body turning on itself, creating inflammation and pain and eczema and, and fatigue and all of these, symptoms that are so debilitating.
And if you pay attention to who is more often diagnosed with this, it’s overwhelmingly women. And I love the work of Gabor Mate here who just talks so much about the chronic stress and pain and how. That shows up from the inside out in women and chronic illness. He says it’s basically the [00:28:00] body’s protest.
It’s the body’s way of revolting against people pleasing behaviors against all those years of self abandonment. And it, it’s just so relevant. I know a lot of the women and myself included, when we start unraveling this as you were talking about, we actually can feel worse for a little while.
Symptoms start to come up. I, I recently went to, an osteopathic doctor, and he was helping me get some mobility back in my hips. And as he started to kind of work with that sacral area, he said, gosh, it’s just so tight. And I had to go into my own mind and body, and I had to tell that part of my body, it’s okay, it’s okay to release because I just brace there so much.
And that bracing or that like, [00:29:00] protecting against everybody else’s, you know, demands. It’s almost like I gotta hold it together internally so that I can continue to show up for other people. And when I relax that it actually feels more painful at first because I’m not using any self-protection anymore
I am not using stress and tension on the inside to hold myself together. So that I can continue to show up for other people and what they need and when I when I relax that it actually might feel worse in the beginning. And getting into my body feels like there’s a lot going on in there. There’s pain, there’s sadness, there’s grief, there’s anger, there’s rage that I’ve just done such a good job of shoving down and that needs to come out and be addressed.
And so there’s, I mean, the health consequences for women when we’re always trying to be good and always trying to be giving and always trying to show up is the, the one who cares, the [00:30:00] one who can solve it, that is a real, that just sets you up for chronic illness.
Elizabeth: Yeah. You know, it’s so interesting. I have been talking more and more and more about stress management in my practice with my clients as well as on the show.
And you know, one thing that I keep hearing from clients. And people who follow me is they say, I don’t feel stressed, Elizabeth. And I feel like for women in midlife, it’s kind of like the frog in their, boiling pot analogy that as younger women, we just kept adding more and more and more to our plate.
And as women in midlife, as we move out of our reproductive years, we become more sensitive to insulin and more reactive distress. And so one of the most important things for women to do in midlife is manage their stress. And so as you were talking about Gabor Mate and the [00:31:00] role of stress in our bodies and in our lives, yeah.
What just kept playing in the back of my head was my clients who say, but Elizabeth, I don’t feel stressed because they’re able to hold all of those balls in the air.
Sara: It’s the real marker of a highly successful woman to be busy, right?
no one: Yeah.
Sara: To have a lot of things going. It wants to have a lot of people who depend on her.
I a hundred percent would have said the same thing. Right? That, no, I’m not stressed, I’m just busy. I’m just doing a lot for a lot of people. And without talking to someone individually, you’re just not gonna know what the real answer is. But my guess, and I’m sure you’ve had a similar experience after the, you know, hundreds, thousands of women we’ve now worked with, is that, that is a sign of dissociation, right?
Mm-hmm. That’s a sign that you are not actually in your body because there is an emotional, a mental, a physical [00:32:00] load of showing up as a high functioning codependent. There just is, and there’s no one who. Lives, years and years and decades like that, who doesn’t pay that price? They’re just so disconnected from it that they don’t know they’re paying it.
Elizabeth: Hmm. Okay. So what’s the first step? Like where do they go from here?
Sara: Well, I really liked your question. before, and we had started to answer like, how do you unravel this? Yeah. And you unravel it in your relationships because that’s where all of this shows up, whether it’s a relationship with food or a relationship with a person.
And so you tell the truth and then you have to learn new skills. That’s why coaching is so incredibly valuable, is that it offers a set of skills. A coach who can guide you through the practicing and the acquisition of those skills. When you try a skill and it doesn’t work or you don’t get what you thought you were gonna get, or it [00:33:00] doesn’t go well, you need support to be able to know what to try again.
But you have to learn new skills because what we’ve done in the past of accommodating and jump into problem solve and jump into over function, those were skills. They’re just not working anymore. So we need new skills. You have to learn. the most important skill we can learn is how to manage our nervous systems and how to do the things that we were never taught to do.
Say no, have difficult conversations, go into conflict in an honest, productive way. How to trust yourself, how to know. What your intuition or your emotions are telling you how to have your own back. Like I was never taught those things, and so that’s why stop people pleasing is just so skills based.
We’re working on skills and nervous system skills and nervous system all the time because when you [00:34:00] have those two components, then you can move on to the next thing, which is making small changes in lower stakes relationships or situations first. And that’s what you do over and over again. You learn skills, you practice ’em, you regulate your nervous system.
You start with lower stakes, and then you work up to higher stakes conversations and relationships because you now have better success rate with your skills. You are more confident you know what the landscape looks like a little bit more. And so that’s, that’s what I would say is the way out of these high functioning, codependent relationships that we don’t wanna be a part of anymore.
Elizabeth: Yeah. I think that one of the biggest things that someone can do who’s listening right now is really evaluate like, what is mine to carry? Right? Yes. In this relationship, like, what is my [00:35:00] responsibility and what isn’t? Like I’m thinking about, in the book, Terry Cole talks about her relationship with her sister and how she’s constantly giving her sister advice and her sister is constantly not taking it.
And that was really difficult for her. But that might just be a clue for you that if you’re constantly telling someone what to do, just like you said with your husband, and they’re not doing it, maybe it’s not yours to carry anymore.
Sara: Yeah. Now some of our programming is gonna show up here. Right. And we just, I think we have to be aware that I was programmed to believe that my husband’s comfort was mine to carry.
Mm-hmm. And so having that in mind, like what was I taught was my job, but what do I actually want to carry? And was I gonna say this and can I actually make a difference when I carry that thing? Because I think [00:36:00] those are two separate questions. Do I want to be the one who suggests helpful sleeping accommodations for my husband?
Sure. I don’t mind being that person, but it makes no difference because he doesn’t want to take my advice. And so I can be the one spouting that advice, but it doesn’t make any difference. And all it does is use up my time and energy in a way. That, that isn’t helpful for anybody. And so I love that. Well, and
Elizabeth: it, it messes up with your, your relationship dynamic too, because then you are becoming the parent in that relationship and he’s becoming the child.
Yeah. And that’s not what we want in a romantic relationship, in a partnership. Right, right,
no one: right.
Sara: it just, reinforces this high functioning, codependency dynamic where I’m the one who solves it. You know, you are the one who brings me a problem. I’m the one who [00:37:00] solves it. And so, I don’t know why I’m getting vanilla ice in the background of my mind with that statement, but there you go.
That’s when I was born. and so it’s, it just reinforces, like you said, a a, a dynamic that doesn’t work, that’s not truly loving, and that keeps everybody locked in these roles.
Elizabeth: And I think that that right there is probably the key to knowing, am I a high functioning codependent? Do you feel like you need to control everyone else’s life?
Do you feel like everyone is coming to you with their problems? Not in a, Hey, what do you think about this kind of way, but in a, I can’t do this. I need you to solve it way, like, right. Yeah. Like that’s how we know if we are one of these high functioning codependents.
Sara: Yeah. And I recently had, I have three adult children and two children who still live at home.
And I recently had a conversation with my son [00:38:00] who’s 22, and he said, mom, I feel like you coddled me a lot, as, as I was growing up. And I said, oh, that’s interesting. Tell me, tell me more about that. And he said, yeah, I just feel like there were things that you should have let me fail more.
You should have let me, you know, try. Harder things. And I said, you know, I, I really get that. And I think a lot of people in our generation felt very unsupported as children. I know I felt that way, like my, my parents were there and they were dependable and reliable, but I couldn’t talk about hard things with them.
I couldn’t, really share my inner emotional life and I couldn’t share the problems that I had with them. And so I think in our relationships, we often tried to solve for the problem that we felt growing up. We can’t help but do that. So other people who grew [00:39:00] up in much more emotionally volatile or physically volatile relationships, we often try to go to the other side of the scale for especially our children and sometimes in our friendships and, and working relationships where we don’t want the people we’re in those relationships with to feel the same pain that we did.
And so I didn’t feel any guilt or really in even any regret when he told me that because what I could see is that of course I did that. I became a high functioning codependent for him because I felt so unsupported and. I could acknowledge it and I could just decide to do something different because this son, even when he calls me about this problem or this issue, like they were, he lives with his brother and a cousin and they were trying to find [00:40:00] a new place to live and I was just itching to get online and send him some good, rental apartments or houses.
And I really had to just tame that in myself because what feels like love to me, felt like coddling or felt to him like, you don’t trust me. Mm-hmm. To solve this problem on my own.
Elizabeth: Yeah. Yeah. ’cause when, as a parent, I would have to imagine that that is like so difficult because you don’t want your kids to hurt.
But at the same time, we want to raise our children to be. Capable and functioning adults. And like any skill that we learn, whether it’s playing the piano, learning Spanish, or stopping people pleasing, you’re going to get a little bruised in the process because everything that we start as a skill, we’re not gonna be good at the first time.
Sara: That’s a hundred [00:41:00] percent. And parenting especially, is an interesting dynamic because in the beginning years of their life, it is very appropriate that you keep them from pain, right? It’s, they need the oversight, they need the protection, they need, an adult to step in and help them handle circumstances that they’re not equipped to handle.
And the handoff isn’t, isn’t very clear because you’re just winging it. You’ve never had kids before. I never got the manual, like, none of my parent friends did either. And so. The handoff to where you start letting them experience more pain, more consequences, more, outcomes of their decisions, more of just what happens as a part of normal human life.
It can be difficult. I had a different experience with another adult child who was experiencing some real pain in their romantic relationship, and I don’t know what it was, but for some reason I could sit there with [00:42:00] them and watch them, in a lot of pain and just say, I am so sorry this is happening.
And you know what? I think you’re handling it beautifully and internally. I was even saying to myself, gosh, I can’t wait for what this is gonna teach them and how this is, offering them an opportunity to become a different person and learn things from them. And so parenting is tough because the handoff is not clear and.
It’s done differently for every child, but I think I finally got it when he said to me, mom, it just feels like you don’t trust me, to make some of these decisions. And I was like, okay, that’s it. Because I want him to feel like I am a hundred percent confident that he can handle it. And even if he makes a choice that doesn’t turn out the way he wants, he’ll handle that.
He’ll figure that out too. Yeah.
Elizabeth: And so to the listener right now, as you’re thinking about this [00:43:00] and you’re thinking, but yeah, what, what does this have to do with my health? I just wanna offer like how much more space would you have in your attention span? How much more? Just ability to focus and take care of yourself.
Would you have, if you weren’t taking care of all of these other people, that might be really scary.
Sara: Yeah. Yeah, it’s, I mean, I’ll go back to the dog example. You know, my boys have to get up at about 6:30 AM for school. They have school starts, I don’t know, seven 15 or something, and I was walking the dog, which meant that I didn’t have enough time to walk the dog, go to the gym and make a breakfast that was actually good and healthy for me.
And so I struggled for a long time to turn over walking the dog to them. ’cause I felt guilty that they would have to get up earlier.
no one: Mm.
Sara: I was getting up earlier, I, I didn’t have a problem with myself getting up earlier. And [00:44:00] so it really, it seeps into all these little different ways. But finally.
I was like, guys, you are the one who wanted the dog. You’re the one who said you would take care of and walk the dog and do all the things for the dog. And I’m actually, I need to hold you to that now because I’m not having enough time to take care of myself before my workday starts. And to a woman who’s been programmed in, traditional patriarchy, it feels very selfish.
And it feels almost like there’s a lot of guilt that comes with taking up more space than you’ve taken up in the past. But it was all true. They had wanted the dog and they had promised up and down that they would walk the dog. And then I was the one walking the dog. And for any dog people out there, exactly what I’m talking about.
When kids, do this because a dog is a lot of work, but holding them to do the walking in the morning meant they had to get up early and they’ve done it. And now I have time to take care of myself in the [00:45:00] morning as well.
Elizabeth: Amazing. What else do we need to talk about? Sarah?
Sara: So what I love about our conversations, I feel like we’ve, we’ve covered a lot of great things and if anyone listening is having the crap, this is me, oh my gosh, I do this, where do I start?
We’ve mentioned a couple things, but I always like to make it really, really practical. So telling the truth, asking what is mine to carry? What actually makes a difference when I carry it? I think that’s a really, really great place to start because what you’re going to notice there is that that will automatically lead you to, okay, what do I need to learn to do this differently?
Most of the time when I talk to women. They’re skill deficient, not because it has, it has anything to do with who they are. We were [00:46:00] so overly programmed to be the good girls to accommodate, to give, to show up, to come through, to overwork, to over give.
And so it really is a matter of learning how to regulate your nervous system and do it differently. That’s really what it boils down to in its most simple terms. And so if that feels daunting or overwhelming, I think they need to hit you up for some coaching or me up for some coaching because the overwhelm is just another sneaky way of not taking action.
And it’s a decision. It’s not a great decision to stay stuck and overwhelm, but it is a decision and. That just ensures that this problem keeps going. And all that means is it’s another year before you really start taking your own health seriously. It’s another [00:47:00] year before you start addressing the maybe chronic illness symptoms that you’re feeling.
The way your hips hurt, the way your neck hurts, the way you, you know, haven’t gotten in to see the doctor for that thing that you know that you should, but you just don’t have the time. All of those things just compound over time, and I, I don’t think that’s a good plan.
Elizabeth: Yeah.
and so I think that, you know, so many women say, I know what to do. I’m just not doing it. When it comes to your health. The reason that we don’t do what we know that we should do generally doesn’t have to do with we don’t want to do it, or that we’re lazy or we lack willpower or any of those things.
It’s because we don’t have enough time. We’re feeling overwhelmed. We feel obligated to do these other things. And so, yeah, I work with a lot of my clients in untangling some of the people pleasing stuff, but [00:48:00] Sarah’s program is phenomenal because, well, obviously I’m in it, so it’s stuff that I’m still learning and , if you, if you identify as a people pleaser, you definitely need to go see Sarah.
Sara: Well, thank you. It is honestly the. The honor of my life, and I don’t say that lately. To see women begin to unravel their people pleasing behaviors because behind it or underneath it, there is a woman who doesn’t, people please. And her life is totally different. She can speak up and say what needs to be said.
She can find security and relationships that she didn’t think she would ever have before. It is truly one of the most magical and beautiful transformations, and that I get to witness and, and play a small part in is just really a joy for me.
Elizabeth: Amazing. And you’re terrific at it.
Sara: Thank you. [00:49:00]
Elizabeth: So where can people find you if they want to explore working with you or hear more about your brilliance?
Sara: I have a podcast, it’s called the X Good Girl Podcast, and it’s where I kind of develop and talk about a lot of the ideas that I have and the philosophy and the skills that kind of run my coaching practice. I have a free Facebook group Stop, people Pleasing, where I show up weekly for coaching and for celebrating.
I’m on all social media platforms, and that’s a good place to connect with me. I really love, I absolutely love to hear from people. So if anything from this episode has resonated with you, if you’re like, that’s me. If you’re like, I hated that part, I would actually love to hear from you and you can DM me through any social media platform.
Elizabeth: Amazing. Thank you for being here, Sarah. And yeah, I wanna hear from the listeners [00:50:00] like, did this resonate? And do you think it’ll help? And check out Terry Cole’s book for sure.
Elizabeth: Thank you so much for spending this time with me and Sarah today. I hope this conversation helped you to see a little more clearly how being in other people’s business, whether it’s your kids, your partner, your friends, can quietly pull you away from your own. It’s not your fault. We’ve all been taught that being a good woman means being responsible for everyone else.
But what we often miss is that when we’re managing everyone around us, there’s no energy left for our own body, our own peace of mind, or our long-term health. If you know someone who’s constantly overdoing overgiving and overwhelmed as a result, and who really wants to reclaim her health so that it doesn’t get in the way of the things that she wants to do in the future, [00:51:00] please share this episode with her, and if you’re realizing that you want to get your health under control, whether it’s eating better, moving more, getting stronger, or finally feeling good in your skin. I would love to help.
You can reach out to me directly to learn more about how coaching works and whether it’s the right next step for you. You don’t have to do this alone, and you don’t have to keep putting yourself last. Alright, that’s all I have for you today. Have an amazing week and I’ll talk to you next time. Bye-bye.
Elizabeth New: Hey, so if you’ve been nodding along and thinking, okay, I know what to do, Elizabeth, I’m just not doing it. I have got something for you. It’s my free podcast listener’s guide. It’s a curated roadmap to help you get started with the most helpful episodes based on exactly what you need right now. Go to elizabethsherman.com/roadmap and take the guesswork out of where to begin with the Total Health and [00:52:00] Midlife podcast.
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Elizabeth is a Master Certified Life and Health Coach with over 18 years of experience, dedicated to helping women in midlife thrive through holistic health and wellness. Her personal journey began with a desire to reduce her own breast cancer risk, which evolved into a mission to guide women through the complexities of midlife health, from hormonal changes to mental clarity and emotional resilience.
Elizabeth holds certifications from prestigious institutions such as The Life Coach School, Precision Nutrition, and the American Council on Exercise, as well as specialized training in Feminist Coaching and Women’s Hormonal Health. Her approach is deeply empathetic, blending her extensive knowledge with real-life experience to empower women in their 50s and 60s to build sustainable health habits that last a lifetime.
Recognized as a top voice in women’s health, Elizabeth speaks regularly on stages, podcasts, and webinars, inspiring women to embrace midlife with energy, confidence, and joy. Her passion is helping women regain control of their health, so they can fully engage in the things that matter most to them—whether that’s pursuing new passions, maintaining strong relationships, or simply feeling great in their own skin.