If you are spending a significant amount of your available attention tracking someone you love, thinking about their decisions, worrying about what might happen to them, replaying what they said, what they think, what they feel, wondering if they’re okay, or mentally trying to solve their life, your brain has effectively incorporated that person into its threat-monitoring system.
In other words, their choices are a part of your safety data. That means that if they’re doing well today, your nervous system gets evidence of safety and thinks, “Ahh, we’re okay.”
But, if they’re struggling in life, making choices you disagree with, or heading somewhere you don’t want them to, your brain thinks, “Something is wrong with us.” And that “us” is the problem.
Did you know that your brain doesn’t represent people you are deeply attached to as completely unrelated objects in your environment? Close relationships have substantial overlaps between self and others. Your brain predicts their behavior, monitors their emotional states, and responds to threats against the people you love. It’s a part of very important attachment and social cognition.
Unfortunately, when their life is your life, their bad choices mess up your good life. This overprotection goes something like this:
“I need to know what they’re doing because what they do affects whether I can relax.”
“I need them to make good decisions because their bad decisions are dangerous for me too.”
“I need to figure this out because I don’t like not knowing what is going to happen.”
“I can’t fully enjoy or even manage my own life while theirs is unresolved in my eyes.”
The truth is that the human brain dislikes helplessness. When something important feels unresolved, but you have no direct control over the outcome, your protective system looks for something it can do.
And thinking feels like something it can do.
So you think. And think some more. You replay the conversation, Google the problem, plan what you’ll say next time, and wonder what they’re doing right now. Your protective system finally has a job! Exciting! The trouble is, thinking about someone can start to feel a lot like doing something for them.
But if you aren’t careful, love can turn into a surveillance state where you’re like Big Brother, putting cameras all over their life, tracking their comings and goings, asking questions, analyzing their choices, watching for evidence that things are getting better or worse.
And the problem isn’t that all this worrying feels terrible; it’s that you’re using one of your most limited resources, your attention, to manage a life that isn’t even yours to manage.
And you only have so much attention to give. If you’re spending a big chunk of it keeping tabs on someone else’s life, there’s less left for your own work, relationships, creativity, enjoyment, or even just being present in the life that’s actually happening around you.
And let it be said, none of that attention actually gives you the control your brain is trying to achieve.
You’re sitting in your cubicle doing your job while mentally climbing over the divider and trying to do theirs too. No wonder you’re exhausted. You’re doing two jobs, and you only have the authority to do one of them.
And sometimes that’s the part we don’t want to accept. We would rather exhaust ourselves trying than admit that someone we love is free to make a choice that may hurt them.
And this is where things get miserable because your ability to be okay has become dependent on another adult behaving the way you need them to behave.
So, the problem isn’t that you love them too much; it’s that somewhere along the way, love became responsibility for an outcome you can’t produce.
So what’s the answer? It isn’t to care less about them. That is the north pole to your south pole. No, the answer is more nuanced. You don’t stop caring, you just stop requiring their life to be okay before yours is allowed to be okay.
Their pain can matter, but it should not become your emergency. And even their stupid decisions should not be your danger signals.
Instead, you can return your attention to the life that is actually yours to live.
So, the next time you catch yourself mentally climbing into someone else’s cubicle, don’t argue with yourself about whether you should be worried. Ask, “Is there something that is actually mine to do right now?”
If there is, do it.
If there isn’t, bring your attention back to your own cubicle. Look at what is physically in front of you. Finish the email. Taste your coffee. Talk to the person sitting beside you. Go outside. Make dinner. Work on the thing you were working on before their life hijacked your attention.
That matters because now you aren’t just telling yourself, “Their life isn’t mine.” You’re giving your brain an experience of their life being unresolved while you are present and okay in your own. And the new evidence of safety for your overprotective brain is not that their problem went away, it’s that their problem remained unresolved, and you got back to your own life anyway.