242. Their Problems Are Not Your Problems
Managing everyone else's emotions while silencing our own leaves us depleted, even when no one notices the labor. Boundaries let us reclaim that energy instead of absorbing problems that were never ours to fix. When we stop carrying what isn't ours, we finally have room to hold our own lives, too.
Your boundaries are a reflection of how willing you are to advocate for the life that you want.
Are you the steady, calm one everyone leans on, while your own emotions stay tucked neatly out of sight? Are you taking a deep breath before answering a call from a friend or coworker because you already know it’s going to be another round of complaining? Are you struggling to set boundaries because you worry it will make you seem cold, unkind, or like you don’t care anymore?
You’ll learn that your boundaries aren’t a measure of how much you like someone or how loyal you are. They reflect how willing you are to stand up for your own time, energy, and peace of mind.
WHAT YOU WILL DISCOVER
Why recognizing emotional labor and fawning matters
7 practical tips to handle a chronic complainer you want to keep in your life
Why learning to tell the difference between venting, problem solving, and ruminating changes how you choose to respond
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TRANSCRIPT
Welcome to the Stop Sabotaging Your Success podcast, episode two hundred and forty-two. I'm your host, Cindy Esliger. This is the podcast focusing on what we can do today to take control of our careers and overcome the inevitable barriers to success that we encounter along the way.
When was the last time you took a deep breath before answering the phone—not because you were excited to hear from someone, but because you already knew what you were about to walk into? You know the feeling I mean. Your chest tightens for half a second. Your face already starts rearranging itself into what might be described as listening mode, thinking, "here we go again" before the person on the other end has even said hello.
In this episode, we're talking about something a lot of us do so automatically we don't even register it as work—managing everyone else's emotions, while quietly suppressing our own. Maybe it shows up for you as reading the room before you've even sat down, softening your tone so no one feels attacked, nodding along so no one feels dismissed, or being the steady one, the one people come to because they know we'll hold whatever they hand us. And somewhere in the middle of being loaded down with everyone else's emotional baggage, we stop noticing that we've buried our own.
So, let's name that pattern, trace where it comes from, look at what it's actually costing us, and—most importantly—find the language and tools to start putting some of it down. Because their problems are not your problems. You are allowed to stop internalizing what was never yours to solve.
Now, before we talk about other people's emotions, I want to talk about our own—starting with the simple, basic fact that we deserve to be exactly where we are. If you've spent any time in a male-dominated environment, you know the specific flavor of exhaustion that comes with it. You walk in and you're taking note of whether you're the only woman in the room, again. That soon spirals into a whole lot more overthinking about whether what you said just landed wrong. Were you speaking too softly? Too sharply? Is what you're doing too much, or not enough? So many feelings in such a short time.
And yet, what we seem to forget is the impact we're having that we might not even know about. Your emotional tone in a room has an impact on those around you, whether you're speaking or not.
If you're the person who stays calm when things get tense, that calm is doing something to reduce the temperature of the whole room.
If you're the person who smooths over an awkward comment with a bit of humor, that does something to help everyone else relax a little.
If you absorb a microaggression without visibly reacting—that comment about your tone or the slight that was dismissed as the "just kidding" that everyone else knew wasn't really a joke—how you manage that moment is doing something too, both for you personally, and for those around you who are watching how you handle it.
People are reading you constantly, even in your silences. How you manage your energy—whether you seem steady or frazzled, open or shut down—sets the tone for others around you, often without either of you realizing it's happening.
This is what we mean by emotional labor. It's the invisible work of managing not just your own emotional state, but the emotional climate around you. And here's the part that tends to get missed—because so much of this labor goes unnoticed. And the people benefiting from it usually have no idea it's happening. They just experience you as "easy to work with", or "great with people", or "so calm under pressure". What they don't see is the toll all of this takes on you.
This comes at a cost, and pretending it doesn't is part of how we end up depleted in the first place.
If you're doing all of this—managing your own reactions and everyone else's, or absorbing the friction—you're doing two jobs at once, where one is your actual job, and the other is the job of emotional maintenance for everyone around you. And I can bet nobody described that second job in your offer letter. Nobody's paying you for it, but it truly is contributing to your feeling of exhaustion.
This shows up with particular intensity for women in male-dominated environments, where there's often an unspoken expectation that you'll be the one managing the tone of the room while keeping your own emotions tucked neatly out of sight.
Feeling frustrated? Swallow it, smile, and move on.
Being talked over? Let it go, don't make it a thing.
Feeling hurt by a dismissive comment? Don't let anyone see that it landed.
That pattern has a name and it's called fawning. It's a stress response, right alongside fight, flight, and freeze—and it looks like appeasing, accommodating, smoothing things over to keep the peace, often at your own expense.
Fawning can feel almost automatic if you've been doing it long enough. And chronic fawning comes at a cost. It depletes your mental energy, because you're monitoring everyone's mood and adjusting yourself accordingly. It erodes your clarity, because so much of your attention is focused outward with managing others, instead of inward figuring out what you actually think and feel. And over time, it chips away at your confidence, because the more practiced you get at reading and adjusting to everyone else, the less time you spend trusting your own read on things.
Nobody sees the labor involved in being the emotional glue that holds a team together—the person who notices the tension between two colleagues and quietly diffuses it, who absorbs a leader's bad mood so it doesn't roll downhill and affect everyone else, or who smooths over the awkward silence after someone's comment landed wrong. That work is real. It takes energy. And when nobody acknowledges it's happening, that energy just quietly drains, day after day, meeting after meeting, until you're so burned out and you can't entirely explain why—because on paper, you didn't do anything unusual. You were just being "easy to work with".
The work of managing feelings—whether they're your own or other people's—to keep interactions smooth and relationships intact tends to be something we take on willingly, often because we were taught early that being liked and easy to be around was safer than being direct. It becomes so automatic that we stop registering it as a choice at all.
Which means the first tool for redistributing it or releasing it is simply this: notice when you're doing it. Notice the moment you're about to smooth something over and ask yourself, is this necessary, or is this a habit of mine because I think I need to preserve the harmony in the room? Not every tense silence needs you to fill it. Not every bad mood is yours to fix. That pause, that flicker of awareness, is where you start getting some of that energy back.
If you take nothing else from this discussion, recognize the fact that their problems are not your problems.
Let me give you an example, because I think a lot of you already know who I'm about to describe. You have a coworker, maybe someone you consider to be a friend. Someone you genuinely like, or at least used to enjoy being around. And when the two of you talk, it's rarely about anything except what's wrong. Their job is terrible. Their significant other did something inconsiderate, again. For them, people in general are exhausting, and it seems nobody understands them.
You listen politely, because that's what a good friend does. But somewhere in the middle of the conversation, you notice you start feeling drained or you feel stuck, like you've been standing in one spot holding something heavy for longer than you wanted to.
And here's the detail that gives it away: their name pops up on your phone, or they stop by your desk, and before you even look up, you take a breath. Because you already know what's coming. It's not that you don't like them—you might genuinely like them, or at least you used to. But you also know this conversation is going to be one-sided,,, and by the end of it, you're going to feel like your battery needs a full recharge.
If you're being honest, you're not really engaged because they seem to be talking at you. You're nodding. You're muttering "mmhmm" or saying "that's frustrating" and "I hear you". You rarely offer real feedback, because you know any kind of helpful feedback isn't really what's being asked for—and also because you've learned that offering any suggestion of a possible solution doesn't change anything, anyway.
You dread these interactions. But you don't say anything because it feels unkind to try to change how someone communicates with you. Maybe you consider yourself a pretty assertive, take-charge kind of person in most areas of your life, and yet here, with this one relationship, you can't fathom doing anything that might hurt their feelings.
You want to preserve the friendship, but you also know you just need some distance. So, maybe you've tried letting a call go to voicemail, and then felt so guilty about it that you found yourself constructing a reason for why you missed it—even though they didn't even ask.
If any part of that sounds familiar, that discomfort you're managing is real, and there are ways to respond to it that don't require you to blow up the relationship or fake a family emergency every time your phone rings.
Your boundaries are a reflection of how willing you are to advocate for the life you want.
They are not a reflection of how much you like someone, and not a measure of your loyalty. The boundaries you set are a direct reflection of whether you're willing to stand up for your own time, energy, and peace of mind.
I'll be honest with you—setting a boundary here is not going to make the discomfort disappear immediately. It might make things feel more awkward before it makes them feel better. But the more you set boundaries, the more self-assured and the less guilty you will feel doing it. It's like exercising a muscle, where the first few times you do it are the hardest.
There are some tactical things you can try before you have to get into having that hard discussion where you communicate your new boundary explicitly.
You can begin by trying to talk more about yourself during these interactions—actively redirecting the discussion rather than just receiving whatever's being handed to you.
You could try steering the conversation by asking them to tell you something good that happened that day, right at the start, before the complaining has a chance to really get rolling.
But be prepared because you might try both of these ideas and still find they slide right back into complaining mode. That's not a failure on your part. It just means it might come down to actually setting and communicating a boundary, or living with the consequences of not setting one.
Friendships are one of the hardest relationships in which to set a boundary, but family might be worse. With friends, there's this particular fear that if you ask for something different, they'll think you're being mean, or cold, or that you don't care anymore.
Plenty of friendships survive these conversations—more than you'd expect. And if a relationship does end because of a boundary you set, that's usually a sign of a bigger problem in the relationship, not proof that boundaries themselves are dangerous.
When problems go unaddressed and boundaries go unset, the relationship challenges don't disappear. They persist. They just get quieter and more corrosive. Our relationships, in a lot of ways, are a direct reflection of our boundaries—or the lack of them.
Keep in mind that other people have no idea what your emotional capacity actually is. They're not mind readers. It is genuinely up to us to use our words and our behavior to make that apparent to them. Nobody can respect a limit they don't know exists.
I won't pretend that any of this is easy. It's somewhat impossible to set a boundary and feel completely guilt-free about it, especially the first time. But the more you do it, the easier it becomes to set and to maintain those boundaries.
In order to make some of this a little easier, while you're in the middle of one of those conversations, try evaluating the truth of what they're actually saying.
It's not necessarily your job to tell someone they're wrong about their own life. But it's also not your job to sit and absorb an hour of them insisting that everyone around them is the problem, if that's not actually true. Because I would bet it's not the whole story.
And here's something that might surprise you—pretending to listen isn't actually the kind option. It might feel like the polite thing to do in the moment, but it's not. And it doesn't help either of you. If you genuinely like this person and want to keep the relationship, steering the conversation toward other topics can actually build something healthier between you, more than passive nodding ever will. Redirection isn't rejection.
What makes a healthy relationship is that you genuinely want to see each other grow. It's mutually supportive and mutually beneficial—not a one-way pipeline. It evolves as you evolve, rather than expecting you to stay frozen in whatever role you've played for the last five years. You both understand how to support each other. Setting a boundary doesn't threaten the relationship's foundation. You acknowledge each other's quirks and work around them instead of resenting them. And, most importantly, you can actually talk about what you're feeling with this person, not just absorb their emotions.
Some signs that your relationship may be tipping toward unhealthy include that it feels competitive rather than collaborative, you're not at your best when you're around them, or you feel emotionally drained after connecting with them, more often than not. Maybe you're starting to realize that beyond commiserating, you don't actually have much in common anymore. Maybe you're giving far more than you're receiving, or maybe the relationship has slid into something enmeshed—where your emotional state and theirs feel like they've fused together, and you can't quite tell where one ends and the other begins.
It also helps to know that complaining tends to fall into one of three categories, and telling them apart changes how you respond.
There's venting—where you're talking about an issue, not to seek guidance, but simply to release frustration, out loud. That's normal, human, and honestly kind of healthy in the right dose.
There's problem solving—where you're actually seeking advice or a path forward correcting something. This is the kind of complaining that can be somewhat productive.
There's ruminating—where you're going over the same issue again and again, without any real attempt to problem-solve or actually work through the frustration. This is less like conversation and more like dumping, using you as a receptacle rather than a participant.
Almost everyone complains about something at some point. That's not the issue. The issue is the frequency. The friend who complains constantly, without any limit, tends to do that because we've provided a space for it—an open door, no boundary in sight, and we keep showing up to take it on.
So, practically speaking, what do you actually do with a chronic complainer you want to keep in your life? Here are seven quick strategies for you to consider:
Empathize when it's genuinely warranted, not performatively, but when something real has happened that you can relate to.
Redirect the conversation by changing the subject when it starts looping.
Be intentional in your dialogue and state upfront, whether you're simply venting or actually looking for feedback.
Lead by example—pay attention to how often you yourself complain, and try to keep your own complaining in-check, because the tone you set matters.
Ask before you offer an opinion and be honest with yourself about whether this person can actually handle the truth right now.
Don't be dismissive—there's a difference between redirecting and shutting someone down.
Draw a clear boundary around how much time you'll give a conversation like this, and how often you're available for it.
If you're looking for actual language—because sometimes you just need the specific words you can use in the moment—here are a few ways to decline giving advice without being harsh about it:
"I'm not sure how to help with that."
"That sounds like a big issue. Have you thought about talking it over with the person who's actually bothering you?"
"How have you thought about handling this situation?"
"What I would do is completely biased and based on me. So let's explore what you could do in this situation."
Notice what all four of those have in common—they hand the problems back, gently but firmly.
Remember, nothing requires you to be a problem-solving expert for your friends. You can listen. You can share your own stories. You can help them think through their own problem-solving. But if any part of that starts to cost you more than you have to give, you're allowed to shift gears.
Some relationships won't survive that shift, and that's okay. It's natural for some friendships to fall away as you change, and it doesn't retroactively erase what that relationship gave you while it worked.
We are not indebted to anyone. We are accountable to some people, and responsible for others—but we are never obligated to pick up the weight of someone else's issues and carry it for them.
For years, I believed that being a "good friend" meant treating my friends problems as if they were my own—carrying them, losing sleep over them, feeling their frustration in my own body as though it belonged to me. It took me a long time to realize that their issues were never actually mine to solve.
Over-entangling yourself in someone else's problems isn't proof of what a great friend you are. It doesn't actually say anything good about the relationship. What it usually shows is a lack of healthy boundaries—yours specifically.
Once you're able to separate yourself from other people's problems—not just intellectually understand, but actually practice it—it can feel like an enormous weight has been lifted. Not because you stopped caring, but because you stopped confusing caring with taking it on yourself.
You can be there for people without entangling yourself in their feelings, their potential solutions, or feeling responsible for their outcomes. You can listen. You can be present. And then you can allow them to work through their own problems, in their own time, in their own way.
So, the next time your phone lights up with a name that makes you brace yourself before you even answer—take a deep breath. Answer only if you want to. But remind yourself, before you say hello, that their issues aren't yours.
And that's it for this episode of Stop Sabotaging Your Success. Remember to download your Guide to Releasing What Isn't Yours To Carry at cindyesliger.com/podcast, episode two hundred and forty-two.
Thank you to our producer, Alex Hochhausen and everyone at Astronomic Audio. Get in touch, I'm on Instagram @cindyesliger. My email address is info@cindyesliger.com.
If you enjoy listening to this podcast, you have to come check out The Confidence Collective. It's my monthly coaching program where we dig a little deeper into what's holding you back in your career and we find the workarounds. We help you overcome the barriers and create the career you want. Join me over at cindyesliger.com/join. I'd love to have you join me in The Confidence Collective.
Until next week, I'm Cindy Esliger. Thanks for listening.
