My Approach

You’re the person everyone can count on. You’re also getting increasingly irritated that everyone counts on you.

At work, you notice the problem before it becomes one. At home, you remember what everyone else forgot. When someone asks whether you can handle something, “Of course” comes out before you’ve considered whether you actually have room.

Later, you wonder why nobody seems to notice how much you’re carrying.

Then someone offers to take something off your plate, and you hear yourself explaining why it’s easier if you do it.

Before we talk about boundaries, I want to understand what being that person means to you. Does being relied on feel like evidence that you matter? When someone says, “We’ve got this—you don’t need to come,” do you feel relieved, or a little left out?

Your responsibilities may genuinely be unreasonable. The people around you may need to do more. I’m also curious about what happens inside you when there’s an opportunity to step back.

You can be exhausted by being needed and unsettled by the possibility of being needed less. Knowing how to say no doesn’t necessarily resolve that tension.

You’re an executive with ADHD, a good reputation, and a presentation you’ve known about for eleven days. So far, the document contains a title.

You’ve handled other things. Important things. Yet this one follows you around. At dinner, on the drive home, while you’re trying to relax: I should be working on that. Why haven’t I started? I know better.

The night before, the pressure finally gets you moving. You work late and deliver something excellent. Everyone’s impressed.

You’re exhausted.

And not only because you stayed up late. You’ve spent days dreading the task, criticizing yourself, and feeling guilty whenever you weren’t doing it. The time you spent putting it off wasn’t exactly time off.

Now you’re mentally worn out, physically tired, and short on patience for people you actually like. Meanwhile, the finished product gives you another reason to dismiss the process: It got done. It was good. This is just how I work.

That’s where I get curious. How much of getting yourself into action depends on first feeling guilty, ashamed, or afraid of disappointing someone? How much of your week goes toward building up enough pressure to act, then recovering afterward?

You’ve already shown that you can do excellent work. You don’t have to wait for your performance to suffer before we take your exhaustion seriously.

You’ve had conversations all day. Your calendar would suggest you have plenty of company.

People bring you problems, questions, and decisions that affect their livelihoods. You care about getting those decisions right. Sometimes hundreds of people will live with the consequences, and you’re the person expected to have an answer.

Later, someone asks how you’re doing.

You leave some things out because they’re confidential. Others because you don’t want to worry anyone. Still others because explaining why a decision is difficult would require more context than you have the energy to give.

“It’s been a lot,” you say. Then you ask about their day.

Even when someone wants to support you, the conversation can become another place where you explain, reassure, and make things easier for the other person. You were hoping to feel less alone. Somehow, you’re taking care of someone again.

I’d want to understand what you routinely leave out. Where can you be uncertain without also having to manage everyone else’s reaction to your uncertainty?

I’m also curious whether this loneliness began with leadership—or whether you learned to give people the easier-to-understand version of yourself long before you had the title.

The trash is full. You’ve mentioned it twice.

“You just have to remind me,” your partner says.

Which is, inconveniently, part of what you’re upset about.

You try to explain that you don’t want to be responsible for noticing, remembering, and following up. Your partner starts explaining how much they already do and how discouraging it feels to hear that they’ve let you down again.

Before long, you’re reassuring them that you do appreciate them. You know they’re trying. You weren’t saying they’re a terrible partner.

The conversation ends more gently. The responsibility hasn’t moved.

I pay attention to that turn: when asking for something becomes taking care of the other person’s feelings about being asked. Their feelings may be genuine. Your original request still needs an answer.

I want to understand what each of you hears in these moments, and I’m going to ask who actually notices, remembers, and follows through. Understanding the emotional meaning doesn’t make the practical responsibility disappear.

An apology can help you reconnect. So can knowing you won’t have to have this exact conversation again tomorrow.