The Hidden Cost of Carrying Other People’s Chaos — Part 2

How This Pattern Started

Most people didn’t choose to absorb other people’s emotional mess.
They were trained into it. (Late-diagnosed neurodivergent, anyone?)

Not through words, but through repetition.

Maybe a parent was volatile.
Maybe the church demanded “sweetness.”
Maybe someone else’s crisis or mess always took center stage.

You learned early that the safest place was the one where you could anticipate the storm before it broke.
So you became the forecaster.
The smoother.
The one who could sense when someone was about to come unglued.

You're probably expert at it.

This wasn’t intuition for pleasure.
It was intuition for survival.

Here’s the part we were never told:

Hypervigilance isn’t a personality trait.
It’s a job.
And it has payroll.
You’re the one footing it.

You pay with your creativity.
Your focus.
Your timing.
Your access to your own brilliance.

Because every time you scan the room or regulate a fully grown human...
you abandon your own life force.

And that’s where we get confused.

We think our next delicious chapter—the one where we’re making the art, the money, the meaning we know we’re capable of—
hasn’t arrived because we’re not doing enough.

No.

It’s time to dissolve the old job description.
To reclaim that energy and move forward into the life that’s been calling your name.

It hasn’t arrived because you’ve been busy.

Running an unpaid emotional labor department.

It’s time to dissolve the old job description.

Let's get rid of all that and start moving forward into the life of your dreams.

Because it's calling.

— Lori