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Hello, everyone, and welcome to Boys in Boardrooms.
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I am your host, Andy Johnson, and today we're going to talk about that particular kind of high achiever who carries everyone.
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Chances are that you know this person, you may even be this person.
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The colleague who walks every direct report through every decision, the friend whose phone rings first when there's an issue, the partner who absorbs the household's emotional weight so that the people, the family around them don't have to feel theirs.
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This is that person who is always holding it together and who would tell you if asked that this is just who they are.
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I'm going to tell you something pretty directly today.
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That being this way is not kind.
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It's not generosity.
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It is emotional containment.
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And it is one of the most invisible forms of validation dependency that I know.
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I'm Andy Johnson.
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This is Boys and Boardrooms, a podcast about validation dependency, the quiet engine underneath high achievement that keeps capable people performing for approval in their careers and their relationships, the boys part and the boardrooms part.
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The same pattern runs both.
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So if you're new here, that's the frame.
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Today is about one of the quietest, most invisible forms that this validation dependency takes.
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And I want to repeat what I said earlier.
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Containment is not generosity.
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What it really is is something that requires looking in the mirror.
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It's identity work.
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Now, most of the high achievers that I work with carry someone.
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Sometimes it's a direct report, sometimes it's a partner, sometimes it's a boss or even a parent who never grew up emotionally.
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And sometimes it's all of them at once.
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And we have to start with a distinction because this episode will not work without it.
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Supporting someone is not a bad thing.
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Supporting someone comes from love.
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I am not against supporting others that you love within your life.
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However, containing them is something entirely different.
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Containing them comes from need, specifically your need to be the one holding it together, even if you can't initially see it that way.
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The diagnostic word here is should.
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When you hear yourself saying, I should be doing this for them, you are no longer supporting.
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You are containing.
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Watch that word the next time it shows up.
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It is honestly the cleanest tell that I know.
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And I call it containment because a container has limits.
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What goes in eventually overflows.
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And that is not a metaphor.
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It is what happens to people who run on this pattern long enough.
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They eventually overflow.
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I worked alongside a woman a few years ago.
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I'm going to keep her anonymous, but the story is hers.
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And the backstory here is that she was a leader that I wanted to emulate.
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People trusted her, and she was good at her job.
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And I'm going to use her story as my boardroom case for this episode.
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And I'm going to talk to you about how emotional containment played out for her.
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So she had a direct report who just couldn't quite get there on her own.
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The skill was there, but the confidence level just wasn't.
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This direct report needed constant sign-offs before deliverables went out.
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She needed walkthroughs before every executive meeting.
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And she would have emotional breakdowns when stress hit a certain threshold.
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And she would go to my colleague every single time about it.
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And my colleague, what happened was she started to carry about 25 to 30% of the work that should have been her direct reports.
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She was doing work that that direct report should have been doing at her level.
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But my colleague did this quietly.
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She did it without complaint.
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And ultimately, the reason that she did this is because deep down, she thinks that is what a good boss does.
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She thought she was being a good leader, but really what was happening was she was outsourcing her own self-worth to the question of whether her direct report could survive without her help.
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So what happened to my colleague?
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She burned out.
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Not the public kind, but that kind that colleagues notice before the person living it does.
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I'm sure you've all been there where you just know something is off.
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You can see it in their eyes, in the shrug of their shoulders, of them not being present in a room.
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This started to happen to her.
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And it was really upsetting, honestly, to see.
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Because she wasn't failing at being a leader.
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What she was ultimately doing was succeeding at being a container and it was depleting her because those are different jobs.
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So that is the boardroom version.
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The home version is ultimately the same engine in different clothes.
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I'm sure you can think of a time when you or someone you loved had to hold up a partner, had to hold up a parent.
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And not again because they needed your support desperately at the moment, but because that partner or that parent refused to hold up themselves, because that partner or parent consistently relied on you to do something that, as your partner or parent, they should be able to do for themselves, maybe with your support, but still be able to do it themselves.
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That's the distinction.
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So if you recognize yourself in what I just described, I'm going to give you the three questions that I use with my clients to figure out whether you are supporting someone or containing them.
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We're going to get a little bit more diagnostic here so you can apply this to your situation instead of just hearing the stories through it.
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So these are the three questions in order.
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And I'm going to be honest with you that they get harder as we go on.
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So we're going to start with question one.
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How does it feel in your body when this person comes to you for help?
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If you're feeling tension, if you're feeling excitement, the chances that your body knows what's going on before the mind admits it.
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So tension is a no.
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Excitement is a yes.
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Hold on to this.
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Number two, has the person processed before they got to you, or are they outsourcing the processing?
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And what does that mean by outsourcing the processing?
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The marker is going to be urgency here.
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Real support is requested.
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Real support is requested because the person who is going through something has already taken that time.
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They've sat with it.
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They have an opinion on it.
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They've molded over what their options are.
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And when they come to you, they say, hey, this is what I'm feeling.
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This is what I'm going through.
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Could you give me your opinion on this?
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I'm thinking maybe I should do A.
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Do you think I should do A?
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Or do you have a recommendation for B?
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On the flip side, containment is demanded.
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Oh my God, I need you right now.
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I can't do this on my own.
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I'm hoping that you have the answer for me.
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These are some differences between, again, them doing their own processing or trying to outsource their processing to you.
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And number three, what does it say about you if you don't do this for them?
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That last question is really the kicker because the first two questions are mechanics.
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You can start to identify why this person is coming to you, whether to be the container, or because they really just need your support in that moment.
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But the third one is where that validation dependency lives.
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So if the answer to number three is I'd be a bad boss, or I'd be a bad partner, or I wouldn't be enough, that's the pattern.
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That's the engine.
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The three questions don't fix anything here, but they definitely show you what's running beneath.
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Now, containment is one of the most invisible forms of validation dependency because it looks like virtue.
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The other forms, like we talked about during episode one, needing the partner, needing the promotion, they at least feel like wanting something, right?
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Desire.
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Maybe it's not such a good thing.
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Where containment feels like giving.
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You're giving your time, you're giving your energy to someone.
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And that's what makes it so durable, so invisible, because you can run on it for decades and never notice.
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But I'm going to tell you today that you are not a better partner, leader, or friend for doing the work for someone else, for containing them.
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You are just a more depleted one.
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And one more thing before we close here.
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I am not coaching you from outside this pattern.
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I have had to walk out of containment with people that I love more than once, most recently, very recently, actually.
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And setting that boundary was very painful.
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It changed the dynamic of a relationship that mattered to me.
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And it was still the right thing.
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Because at the end of the day, walking out of containment costs you something, yes.
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But staying in it is going to cost you something more.
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That was the case for me.
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So once you can see this pattern, you can interrupt it.
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And that's the whole project of this show.
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And it's also the work that I am still doing in my own life because everything is a journey here.
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So if you've heard yourself in any part of this today, the colleague you carry, the friend whose calls you cannot ignore, the partner whose emotional weather sets the temperature in your house, that is validation dependency in one of its quietest forms.
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Again, it's not generosity, it's not character, it's a pattern.
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And patterns can be named, mapped, and interrupted.
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Now, if you're looking to explore this pattern a little bit more in your life, I have a validation pattern quiz.
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And it's where you can start to see where this lives, how it shows up for you.
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That link is in my Instagram bio that's at advance with Andy.
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And this is also where you can follow along and connect with me directly.
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So as I mentioned during episode one, we will also have guests on these episodes.
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Someone who built a career on being the one who held it together, for example, until that pattern broke them open.
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These stories are the data.
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This is where we get to see the patterns and examine them and figure out how to work our way to the other side.
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So if that's you and you have a story to share, I would love to hear it.
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Send me a DM on Ad Advance with Andy.
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And as for the rest of you, I will see you on the next episode of Boys in Boardrooms.
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Thanks for tuning in.