Welcome to Wisdom & Sol! If you haven’t subscribed, join our community of 95,000 intelligent, curious folks who want to boost their emotional well-being by subscribing here.

Subscribe

For a moment, let’s pay attention to how we actually use the word “being responsible.” Half the time we mean good judgment, like a responsible decision, responsible leadership, and being responsible with money. And that’s on-point. But, the other half has nothing to do with judgment at all. For example, “she’s the responsible one” usually means she’s the one who takes care of everything mostly, stays late, and also says yes more than she should.

Sadly, the Internet glorifies responsibility by building narratives around it. There are many popular videos on social media like “eldest daughter syndrome” or “the default parent” or even “being the friend who plans everything”. The jokes feel cute. But somewhere, the definition about being responsible changed from having a sound judgment to being the one who is more depleted. And that’s the responsibility trap.

The bizarre thing is that this equation falls apart the second you look at people actually carrying the most responsibility. Like CEOs of big companies, or the President of a country holds far more responsibility than us, and they’re not the most drained people in the room. They manage to get sleep, and unapologetically say no to most things. Also, they delegate without justifying. Whatever fuel they’re running on—it isn’t guilt.

So, being responsible isn’t new. Every generation has had its version: duty, service, showing up, adulting. But something shifted when responsibility stopped meaning what you do and started meaning how much you carry. And that shift runs almost entirely on one word. And that word is “should.”

Guilt Is A Terrible Motivator

Notice what “should” does to a sentence. “I should answer this tonight.” “I should have called her back.” “I should be further along by now.” None of them tell you what to do. They tell you that you have already failed to do it.

In cognitive therapy, “should” thinking counts as a distortion, and it works like a rulebook. You set rules for how you and everyone else are supposed to behave. Then every rule you miss becomes proof that something is wrong with you.

The worst part is motivating yourself with “should” doesn’t work. Researchers who study this word find that it tends to produce apathy rather than action. The word feels like discipline. It behaves like a brake.

The Three Things You’re Carrying

Psychologists use a term for this: inflated responsibility. It describes feeling accountable for more stuff that is yours, and research has linked it to anxiety. It comes in three forms.

The first is feeling responsible for preventing harm, like believing the trip will fall apart unless you are the one checking every reservation.

The second is taking the blame when something goes sideways, even when the decision was never yours to make.

The third is feeling responsible for continuously thinking about a problem.

That third one is where the quiet exhaustion lives.

Because you’re not fixing the problem, and you’re not deciding anything about it. You’re literally just ruminating on it. Worse is sometimes, we think that it’s useful to do that. As, it feels like preparation.

But thinking about something is not the same as being responsible for it. The fourth hour of replaying a conversation doesn’t make you more accountable than the first hour.

What is Responsibility? For Real

So what is responsibility, if it isn’t weight, guilt, or rumination? The word tells itself. Inside “responsibility” is “response” + “ability” = your ability to respond. Not the obligation to carry everything, and not the duty to feel bad when you can’t.

That shortens the list fast. A friend’s bad mood you didn’t cause isn’t yours to fix. Somebody’s reaction to a boundary you were right to set isn’t yours either. Being reachable on PTO, just because you were reachable last year, was never a duty. What’s left is smaller, and harder: what you do next.

Three Ways Out

❝

1) Run the sentence again with “could.”

This isn’t about being gentler with yourself. There’s a hard line between doing something because you have to and doing it because you chose to, and the two produce completely different outcomes. The first predicts burnout and emotional exhaustion. The second predicts persistence, and better work on anything complicated. So take your “shoulds” and replace them with “coulds”. “I could call her back.” “I could stay another hour.” Now most of your sentences will go away because they were mental clutter, and only some of them will survive, because you actually want them.

❝

2) Work out which of the three you’re holding, because each one has a different exit.

Are you trying to keep something bad from happening? Ask what’s genuinely in your control here.
Are you taking the blame for how it turned out? You need to separate what you decided from what simply happened to you.
Are you still replaying it in your head? Give that a hard stop because that loop will not close on its own.

❝

3) Watch for the busy work that’s standing in for a conversation. There are two kinds of hard. The first one is physical such as cleaning, errands, clearing out the inbox. It has clear steps, and you can see when it’s finished. The second is emotional like saying the thing, making the call, telling somebody no. It has no steps, and it might go badly. So we reach for the first to put off the second, and from the outside that looks exactly like being responsible.

Next time you’re reorganizing the kitchen at midnight, ask what conversation you’re avoiding. There’s usually one sentence sitting underneath all that productivity, and saying it out loud takes about thirty seconds.

❝

Help us make this newsletter even better for you! Was this issue useful? What would you be excited to read about next? Reply to this email with your thoughts and suggestions. We read every response!