You Can’t Do Enough Work So They Don’t Have to

We live in a culture obsessed with self-help, with the idea that if we just do enough therapy, journaling, somatic practice, or spiritual work, our relationships will magically heal.

The message is subtle but pervasive: If you were really healed, your partner wouldn’t trigger you. If you just worked harder on yourself, your family dynamic would feel easy.

Here’s the truth: there’s no amount of work you can do that makes someone else’s work unnecessary.

Family Systems: Relationships as Ecosystems

Murray Bowen’s family systems theory reminds us that every person in a family (or any close relationship system) is part of a living ecosystem. One person’s anxiety ripples through the group. One person’s silence shapes the climate. One person’s growth shifts dynamics, but does not erase the realities of others’ choices, wounds, or behaviors.

In this view, you can work on differentiation (staying grounded in yourself while staying connected). You can regulate your nervous system. You can step out of repeating patterns. But the other person still carries their part.

Just as a forest needs every tree and root to function, a relationship needs each member to take responsibility for their own healing. Your growth may create more oxygen, but it doesn’t replace their roots.

The Nervous System Reality

Neuroscience affirms this: our nervous systems co-regulate. When you bring calm, others may soften. But if they are carrying trauma or entrenched patterns, your calm cannot “fix” their dysregulation.

Trying to do so leads to what psychology names codependency: organizing your being around managing the feelings, reactions, and wounds of others. It’s a survival strategy, not love.

The Spiritual Perspective

From a spiritual lens, each soul has its own curriculum. No amount of work on your part can erase the lessons another being is here to encounter. When you over-function, you interfere with their path, and exhaust your own.

The Medicine

Your work is yours. Their work is theirs. Relationships transform when both are willing to engage. And sometimes, the most loving act is stepping back from over-functioning, so the other can actually meet their own work. This is not abandonment. It is integrity.

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And check out unarmor: for women who keep ghosting their devotion | THE KEY to becoming the radical force we all need | Nervous System Devotionals: your invitation to begin again: softly, gently, sacredly.