Noticing the Bullsh&tery of Over-working, Over-functioning, and Imposterism

reflection

Apr 13

So over-working is one issue that came up in March’s Grow Boldly that we will be talking about next Wednesday April 20th as we continue. [Sign up if you haven’t already: https://www.tamarayakaboski.com/grow-boldly ]

The behavior of over-ing elicited some good convo and ah-ha’s around….your overworking is less about your passion or desire to change things and more about the fears that support perfectionism, over functioning, not being enough, or super-hero behavior.

A couple years ago when the pandemic and lock down started I listened a couple times to this Brene Brown podcast on the role of anxiety in if we over function or under function.

Well, hello, my name is Tamara and I am a chronic over-er or should I say, recovering over functioner - super common with high-achieving folks, probably like yourself. I am a work in progress as I heal from old patterns and environments so let’s dive into the connections between overing, over functioning, and imposterism….

Terms. Here’s a great summary from that podcast:

Overfunctioners tend to move quickly to give advice, rescue, takeover, micromanage, get in other people’s business rather than looking inward.
Underfunctioners tend to get less competent under stress. They invite others to take over and often become the focus of family gossip, concern, worry. They can get labeled as irresponsible, or the fragile ones, the ones who can’t take the pressure.

In BB words, those are both performances to protect or armor up. And overworking and imposterism are all about protecting from a place based in fears. Hopefully you’re seeing here this negative feedback loop that got me stuck in a rut of some shitty-ass behaviors that lead to chronic breakdowns and burnout.

Imposterism experiences cause anxiety and anxiety can cause us to overfunction leading into over-working. Ergo…..Overworking is both as a byproduct of imposterism and an expectation of a toxic [higher ed] work culture. [read more from last week’s blog]

As a recovering academic, I’ve spent lots of time noticing my tendencies for overworking. Sometimes I’ve called it being a Capricorn or just someone who likes to get shit done in this lifetime, but more than anything it is this pattern of overing.

Part of this overing happens as childhood patterns - read more about attachment styles and how those set us up for stress behaviors. Anxious attached tend to over function as a method of securing approval and acceptance. Overfunctioning as an attachment behavior shows up as over involvement in other’s lives and under functioning in choice and control of your own. Feel that ouch?

Reflection pause:

Anyone reading this see how often this happens in higher ed when we are over attached to the choices we want students, colleagues, and supervisors/supervisees to make and yet we avoid showing up for our own work - be that therapy - coaching - wellbeing? Shows up as blame, external finger pointing, excuses of why you can’t focus on you, knowing best for others but Not knowing for yourself….if so let’s talk. I’m well familiar with this pattern.

And then, socialized as a girl/woman, overing became a badge of ‘do it all with a smile’ in a culture where it was the norm to exhibit caring behaviors outward rather than inward. Smile work and mom-work are two well documented experiences in male-dominated cultures as strategies to fitting in to the professoriate both of which require overing as these are emotionally and time taxing. [For more on this read Tierney & Bensimon (En)gender(ing) Socialization - email me for a pdf copy I have from an 1990’s book]

Last but not least to this conversation is how academics and salaried professionals are socialized to spend evenings, weekends and vacation time catching up on writing and projects because workdays were spent with teaching and service and in non-stop meetings and 1:1’s. That set up overing under this umbrella of imposterism - the idea of not being good enough or worthy enough to have limits. The idea that boundaries of no or delete, delegate, do later are not acceptable to be spoken so must keep piling on more.

It also comes out as valuing ‘superwoman’ behaviors. Feeling good receiving compliments of ‘how do you do it all’ which I used to pride myself on my toddler on my hip, new journal article submitted, manicured garden, clean house, with homemade jams and nothing store bought but cute enough for Pinterest. Holy fucking breakdown.

We see this everywhere in higher ed from:

justifying overing with the rhetoric of ‘passion’ or ‘for the students’,
committee volun-told work,
reassigning other’s work to those who have overworking tendencies,
not refilling positions while not removing projects/expectations, and
the generic ‘service’ work for field like anything labeled ‘peer-reviewed’.

It is just generally doing more than what can reasonably be done within a flexible work week. Higher ed has produced this high stress and anxiety producing environment constantly as the norm rather than exception. And now add on top the fears of losing a job to layoffs and other budget justifying reasons that keep folks on edge and in overworking.

I’d love to hear how this resonates for you through some more reflection prompts:

What are your experiences with overfunctioning?
How do you overwork to avoid feelings of imposterism or from fear of workplace judgement?
Where do you see this pattern being used or exploited in your workplace?
How can you shift out of overing and into balance?