Overfunctioning: the high but destructive side of an interpersonal seesaw

I like to use this seesaw metaphor with my clients in order to highlight the damaging effect
the pattern of overfunctioning can have on close others. Sometimes I struggle to make the
cost of this pattern obvious to them. The fact that it is especially strongly socially rewarded
and more often than not ego-syntonic makes it even more challenging. Those are the people
that are pillars of their own families and communities, and they feel very good about
themselves because of that. They get a lot of pats on the back, but of course at a costly price.
Usually it is burn out, feeling depleted, being exploited, and wide range of psychosomatic
ailments. 

The literature that I most often recommend on this topic is Harriet Lerner’s The Dance of
Intimacy. She found the way to explain Bowen’s concepts in the way that is warm, humane,
humorous and easy to understand, and as a major plus her writing has a strong feminist
perspective. I find this important since these topics are strongly gender-related – I can
perhaps count one self-sacrificing male client to tens of females. 

There is some similarity with the concepts from different psychotherapy approaches. For
example, "overfunctioning" seems somewhat similar to “self-sacrifice schema” from schema
therapy. They overlap in area of weak boundaries and inappropriate responsibility for lives of
others. They both carry the introject aimed at others: “you are incompetent, weak and needy”
and aimed at oneselves: “I know what is best for you, let me advise you and/or do it instead
of you”. They differ in a way that overfunctioning relates more with control over others and
can be more problem-solving oriented, and self-sacrifice is perhaps more connected with
nurturing and emotional care. 

For challenging self-sacrifice schema, to my clients I recommend reading the chapter

in Reinventing Your Life, by Jeffrey E. Young and Janet S. Klosko, and for therapists
corresponding chapter in Schema Therapy: A Practitioner’s Guide by Jeffrey E. Young. I
found both very clearly written with good practical suggestions.

In similar fashion, concerning psychodynamic concepts, overfunctioning can be connected

mainly with obsessive-compulsive personalities. To people close to them they can be moraly
rigid and self-righteously domineering. (In Polish research on schemas and personality
disorders this connection is corroborated – schemas of Unrelenting Standards and Self-
Sacrifice are correlated with obsessive-compulsive personalities).  Of course, this characters
are notoriously hard to change, making the therapist feel like they are Sisyphus pushing a
boulder. Some systemic therapists agree that in similar way, overfunctioners can be more
anxious and therefore more resistant to change than underfunctioners. The second connection
can be made with are more self-denyingly giving “masochistic” traits. Valuable insight for
me was that by psychoanalyst Nancy McWilliams in the book Psychoanalytic Diagnosis:
Understanding Personality Structure in the Clinical Process. She points out that it is
important to explain to clients how useless and potentially harmful is their pattern for the
other people on the receiving end of their sacrificing and how it deepens their aggressive and
destructive behaviour. Strong motivation to stop masochistic behaviour can be the benefit for
others (encouraging them to be „good“) rather than pointing out the more obvious self-
interest.

While talking to clients I prefer to use concepts from systemic family therapy, since they are
definitely less judgmental sounding and less pathologizing. They also relate to pattern rather
than whole personality, which lends more hope for change. And of course the main point of
concept of the “systems” is that clients can understand and observe the influence that their
behaviour (even the most well intended one, such as this) can have on their significant others
and vice versa. 

Very detailed description of overfunctioning behaviours is given in this Psychology Today

article by Kathleen Smith and I send it sometimes to my clients in order to make it easier for
them to recognize and operationalize understanding of this pattern:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/everything-isnt-terrible/201910/are-you-
overfunctioner