The overlooked consequences of overgiving, emotional withdrawal, and the double standards we sometimes create in the name of protecting our peace.
There is a conversation I think we need to have within the spiritual community about healing, overgiving, and the ways in which our attempts to protect ourselves can sometimes affect the people we encounter along the way.
We talk a lot about overgiving. We talk about how some of us have learned to give from empty places, how we exhaust ourselves trying to be everything to everybody, and how we extend ourselves beyond our capacity because we want to feel appreciated, accepted, needed, or loved.
We talk about boundaries. We talk about protecting our energy, recognizing our triggers, healing our attachment wounds, and learning not to abandon ourselves for the sake of maintaining relationships.
And rightfully so.
But I wonder if, somewhere along the way, we’ve become so focused on learning how to stop overgiving that we’ve overlooked another part of the conversation.
What happens when the person who once overgave becomes someone whose behavior leaves another person questioning their worth, desirability, or place in a connection?
This isn’t an accusation. It’s an invitation to examine something we might not always recognize in ourselves.
Because healing doesn’t happen in isolation. We don’t heal in a vacuum. We heal while interacting with other human beings, and those interactions have consequences.
The Version of Us That Gives Too Much
For many of us, overgiving is more complicated than simply being generous.
Sometimes, we give because we enjoy making people happy. Sometimes, being needed makes us feel valuable. Sometimes, we’ve learned that being accommodating, available, and useful makes it easier to feel accepted.
And sometimes, we genuinely enjoy giving.
We enjoy showing up. We enjoy spending time with someone. We enjoy making room for another person in our lives. We enjoy the excitement of a new connection and the opportunity to experience something that feels refreshing.
We become enthusiastic. We become available. We indulge in the experience.
We put on our Sunday’s best.
And there’s nothing inherently wrong with that.
The problem isn’t that we enjoy someone or that we express our interest enthusiastically. The problem arises when we begin extending ourselves beyond what we can realistically sustain.
Eventually, some of us recognize that we’ve been giving more than we have available. We become exhausted. We feel depleted. We recognize patterns that remind us of previous relationships where we gave too much and received too little.
And then comes the healing.
We learn to moderate our giving. We learn that we don’t have to be constantly available. We learn that we can enjoy people without making ourselves responsible for their needs.
Those are valuable lessons.
But what happens when we take those lessons into our next connection without considering how our own participation has helped establish the emotional experience of that relationship?
When Protecting Our Energy Changes the Experience for Someone Else
Imagine genuinely enjoying someone’s company.
You look forward to talking to them. You make time for them. You’re enthusiastic about spending time together. You initiate conversations, make plans, offer affection, and participate in the connection with an enthusiasm that is difficult to misunderstand.
You’re not necessarily thinking about how much you’re giving. You’re enjoying yourself.
You’re excited. You’re interested. You’re present.
But eventually, you recognize that you’re extending yourself beyond your capacity.
So you begin to pull back.
You become less available. You initiate less. You stop showing up with the same enthusiasm. You begin moderating your participation.
From your perspective, this may feel like growth.
You’re finally establishing boundaries. You’re no longer overextending yourself. You’re learning not to give away more than you have.
But there is another person experiencing that transition.
Someone who experienced your initial enthusiasm. Someone who may have interpreted your actions as a genuine indication of how much you enjoyed their presence. Someone who now has to reconcile the difference between the connection they initially experienced and the connection they’re experiencing today.
And I think this is where we need to become more conscious.
Your decision to stop overextending yourself is valid. But the emotional experience of the person who became connected to you while you were showing up differently is valid, too.
Both experiences deserve consideration.
The Overgiver and the Love Bomber: A Conversation About Impact
We have become increasingly familiar with the concept of love bombing and the ways excessive attention, affection, availability, and generosity can accelerate emotional attachment.
We recognize that someone can create an intense experience at the beginning of a connection and later withdraw that same level of attention once the other person has become emotionally invested.
But when we discuss the overgiver, the conversation often takes a different direction.
We become sympathetic.
They’re protecting their energy. They’re healing their attachment wounds. They’ve learned not to give so much. They’re no longer abandoning themselves for other people.
And perhaps all of those things are true.
But I think we need to be willing to examine the similarities without automatically assuming that good intentions eliminate the consequences.
An overgiver may have absolutely no intention of manipulating another person. They may genuinely enjoy the connection, genuinely appreciate the person, and genuinely believe they’re simply showing up in a way that feels natural to them.
They may eventually recognize that they’ve extended themselves beyond their capacity and need to make adjustments.
That doesn’t automatically make them a love bomber.
However, the emotional experience of the person on the receiving end may still resemble some of the consequences associated with love bombing.
They experienced extraordinary attention, affection, and availability. They became emotionally invested. And then they experienced a significant withdrawal.
The motivations may be entirely different, but the contrast can still be confusing and painful.
You don’t have to intentionally love bomb someone to leave them trying to reconcile the emotional contrast between who you were at the beginning and how you participate in the relationship now.
I think that’s a distinction worth exploring, particularly among those of us who identify as overgivers.
The Double Standard We Might Not Recognize
We spend a considerable amount of time discussing what overgivers need from other people.
We talk about how people need to respect their boundaries, recognize their limitations, stop taking advantage of their generosity, and understand that they cannot continue giving beyond their capacity.
But how often do we turn that same awareness inward?
How often do we consider the expectations our own behavior may have established?
How often do we acknowledge that someone else may have become emotionally invested in the way we initially participated?
And how often do we assume that because our withdrawal is rooted in self-preservation, the other person should automatically understand it?
This is where I think we sometimes create a double standard.
We want people to understand our limitations, but we may not always extend the same consideration to the emotional experience of the people affected by those limitations.
We want our boundaries respected, but we may not recognize the importance of communicating when those boundaries change the nature of a connection.
We want people to understand that our healing requires adjustments, but we may overlook the fact that those adjustments can be experienced as rejection, disinterest, or emotional withdrawal.
And perhaps the question isn’t whether we’re allowed to make those adjustments.
Of course we are.
The question is whether we can make them while remaining conscious of the people with whom we’re sharing our lives.
Healing Should Make Us More Conscious, Not Less Accountable
One of the things I think we sometimes overlook in our healing journeys is that self-awareness should expand our understanding of our behavior, not simply provide us with better explanations for it.
Learning to establish boundaries is important.
Learning to recognize when we’re overextending ourselves is important.
Learning to stop abandoning ourselves in relationships is important.
But those lessons should also encourage us to become more intentional about how we participate in relationships moving forward.
There is a difference between changing your capacity and disappearing from a connection without acknowledging the change.
There is a difference between establishing boundaries and expecting someone else to intuitively understand why your behavior has changed.
There is a difference between no longer overgiving and becoming emotionally unavailable.
And there is a difference between protecting your peace and assuming that everyone else should simply adjust to whatever version of your participation remains.
We can communicate that we need to slow down. We can acknowledge that we’ve recognized an unhealthy pattern. We can explain that we enjoy someone’s company but need to become more mindful of how we allocate our time and energy.
We can do those things without making someone else feel as though they imagined the connection we were once actively participating in.
We can honor our healing without disregarding someone else’s experience.
Someone Else’s Diminishing Capacity Is Not a Reflection of Your Worth
There is another side of this conversation that deserves just as much attention.
When someone’s enthusiasm changes, when their availability decreases, or when the attention that once came naturally becomes something you rarely experience, it can be difficult not to internalize that shift.
You remember how things were.
You remember the conversations, the excitement, the anticipation, and the feeling of being genuinely wanted.
And when those things become less apparent, you may begin questioning yourself.
Did I do something wrong? Did I become too available? Am I asking for too much? Did something about me change?
This is where we have to be careful.
Because someone’s diminishing capacity or willingness to engage is not an accurate measurement of your value.
You can acknowledge that someone has limitations without adopting those limitations as a reflection of yourself.
You can respect someone’s healing journey without making their healing your responsibility.
You can understand why someone needs to change how they participate in relationships without convincing yourself that what you desire is unreasonable.
There is a difference between expecting someone to overextend themselves and wanting someone to genuinely enjoy your presence.
There is a difference between demanding constant attention and wanting consistent communication.
There is a difference between expecting someone to abandon their boundaries and wanting to feel that they actually desire a place in your life.
Sometimes, you simply miss the enthusiasm.
You miss the anticipation. You miss knowing that someone wanted to spend time with you without having to question it.
And there is nothing inherently unhealthy about wanting to experience that.
Wanting to feel wanted is not the same as demanding that someone abandon themselves to make you feel that way.
The Sovereign Shift: We Have to Become Conscious of What We Leave Behind
Perhaps the next stage of our healing requires us to examine more than what we are no longer willing to accept from other people.
Perhaps it also requires us to examine what other people may experience as a result of our own growth, our decisions, and our changing capacity.
We cannot expect others to understand our boundaries if we’re unwilling to communicate them.
We cannot celebrate our ability to stop overgiving while remaining unaware of how our previous behavior may have shaped another person’s expectations.
And we cannot allow our wounds to become permanent explanations for behavior that deserves honest examination.
You do not have to return to overgiving to be considerate.
You do not have to abandon your boundaries to communicate honestly.
You do not have to sacrifice your emotional well-being to acknowledge that someone else’s experience has changed because of your decisions.
The goal is not to become someone who gives everything away.
The goal is to become someone who understands what they’re offering, why they’re offering it, what they can realistically sustain, and what responsibility comes with the expectations they establish.
Because other people are not disposable characters in the story of our healing.
They have feelings. They develop attachments. They experience disappointment. They have their own expectations, vulnerabilities, and histories.
And just as we deserve consideration while we’re learning how to protect our hearts, so do the people who encounter us along the way.
We cannot keep asking the world to be gentle with the parts of us we’re healing while refusing to be conscious of the parts of other people our behavior may touch.
The Sovereign Shift isn’t simply learning how to stop abandoning yourself. It’s learning how to honor yourself without abandoning your awareness of others.
No more playing small. No more abandoning ourselves. But also, no more confusing self-preservation with the absence of responsibility.
That, too, is part of the work.