The weight I always carried

I’ve never had a very good gauge of what’s reasonable to expect from myself.

At first that sounds like low self-esteem. But I don’t think that’s what it is.

It’s more like having a broken measuring stick.

For most of my life, I’ve assumed:

• If something goes wrong, I should probably carry the burden.
• If there’s conflict, I should smooth it over.
• If communication breaks down, I should figure out why.
• If someone is unhappy, I should look at what I’m doing.
• If a relationship is struggling, I should work harder.
• If there’s discomfort, I should absorb more of it.

I never decided this; it was just how life worked.

Or so I thought.

Growing up in a dysfunctional family teaches strange lessons. In that setting, a “hero child” like me learns that stability depends entirely on them. You keep the peace, manage the emotions, monitor the room, anticipate problems, absorb the shockwaves and take responsibility for things you shouldn’t.

It starts feeling so normal that you stop noticing it.

Then you grow up. But you don’t leave the role behind; you just trade your chaotic living room for a chaotic workplace, a stressful relationship or chronic burnout.

You’re hypervigilant, constantly bracing for conflicts that don’t even exist yet.

When I found out I was autistic, another piece of the puzzle dropped into place.

For decades, there were communication snafus I didn’t understand:

• Directness was interpreted as hostility.
• Thinking was interpreted as sulking.
• Pauses were interpreted as withholding.
• Folks thought I was being passive-aggressive when I was having a hard time communicating.

I figured other people were seeing something about me that I was blind to.

I took on that guilt.

What burden am I actually supposed to carry?

I honestly don’t know.

Most people seem to have some internal sense of this – a compass

I don’t have much confidence in mine.

For decades, my compass pointed toward more responsibility, more accommodation, more effort, more adaptation, more compliance, more appeasement.

And because that was my normal, anything less can feel selfish.

If you’ve spent years carrying 90% of the weight, then carrying 60% can feel irresponsible – not because it is, but because your sense of “normal” is off-kilter.

WHAT'S MY ADVICE?

Lately I’ve found myself asking a question I should probably have asked a long time ago:

What would I tell another man in my situation?

Suppose someone told me that he’d spent decades carrying childhood trauma, hypervigilance, masking, communication misunderstandings, guilt and responsibility for everyone else’s comfort.

Would I tell him to carry more? No, I’d probably look at him and think: That’s an awful lot for one person to carry.

Oddly enough, that’s the thought that has made me emotional recently.

I’ve been harder on myself than anyone else could be, accepted responsibility for things that were never fully mine and carried full burdens when I was only responsible for half.

The goal isn’t to carry nothing but to carry what’s actually mine.

For most of my life, I assumed my needs belonged at the bottom of the list.

But I’m a human being, and human beings get to have needs, too.

For the first time in my life, I’m starting to think that’s a reasonable thing to learn.