When your strength becomes your cage

I have spent a lot of my life being capable. Give me a problem and I'll figure it out. Put me in a messy situation and I'll organize it. Hand me responsibility and I'll carry it. Need someone to step forward? I'm probably already standing.

For a very long time, I considered this one of my greatest strengths. I still do.

But I've learned something uncomfortable about strengths:

A strength stops being a strength when you're no longer free not to use it.

That's when strength can become a cage.

The Trouble With Being Good at Something

Over the past few weeks, we've been talking about the versions of ourselves that work: the capable one, the strong one, the helper, the achiever, the peacemaker, the person who always knows what to do.

We don't develop these versions of ourselves randomly. They work. They get rewarded. And when something works particularly well, we're understandably inclined to keep using it.

But eventually, there's a question worth asking:

Can I choose not to?

Can the capable person say, “I don't know”? Can the reliable person disappoint someone? Can the helper watch somebody struggle without immediately rescuing them? Can the leader let someone else lead? Can the resilient person say, “Actually, this is too much”? Can the achiever accomplish absolutely nothing of significance today and still feel okay about themselves?

That's where strengths get interesting. Because the opposite of a strength isn't necessarily a weakness.

Sometimes it's freedom.

When Capability Becomes Compulsion

I've been thinking about the difference between being capable and needing to be capable. They're not the same thing.

One gives me options. The other removes them.

If I am capable, I can step forward when my skills are useful. If I need to be capable, I step forward because I don't know who I am if I don't.

If I'm helpful, I can offer support. If I need to be helpful, somebody else's struggle can become almost impossible for me to tolerate.

If I'm resilient, I can recover from difficult things. If I need to be resilient, I may keep enduring things I should actually leave.

If I'm independent, I can take care of myself. If I need to be independent, receiving help can feel like failure.

Same behaviour from the outside.

Very different experience on the inside.

One is capacity. The other is compulsion.

The Strength Everyone Loves

And here's where this gets particularly tricky: other people often benefit from our cages.

The employee who never says no is wonderfully dependable. The leader who carries everything makes life easier for everyone else. The peacemaker keeps uncomfortable conversations from disrupting the room. The resilient person can tolerate conditions nobody should have to tolerate. The helper is always available. The high performer keeps producing.

Of course these behaviours get rewarded. Sometimes we're even celebrated for the very patterns that are exhausting us.

That's why changing them can create friction.

The moment the reliable person says no, someone may call them difficult. When the fixer stops fixing, someone may accuse them of not caring. When the strong person finally says, “I need help,” people may not know what to do with them. When the accommodating person develops boundaries, somebody will almost certainly prefer the old version.

That doesn't automatically mean the change is healthy. Feedback still matters. Impact still matters. Self-awareness still matters.

But resistance doesn't automatically mean the change is wrong, either.

Sometimes resistance simply tells us that an old arrangement worked better for someone else.

Don't Throw Away the Strength

I'm not interested in turning our strengths into pathology.

Capability isn't a trauma response simply because you're capable. Ambition isn't unhealthy because you like accomplishing things. Helping people isn't secretly people-pleasing every time you do it. Resilience isn't dysfunction. Independence isn't avoidance. And leadership isn't ego.

Sometimes a strength is simply a strength.

The goal isn't to become suspicious of everything we're good at. The goal is to have choice.

I want to be capable without believing I must always know. I want to help without needing to be needed. I want to lead without needing to control. I want to be resilient without using resilience as an excuse to tolerate the intolerable. I want to achieve without asking achievement to prove that I matter.

I want access to my strengths.

I just don't want to live inside them.

The Freedom Test

So here's something I've started asking myself:

Can I choose the opposite?

Not forever. Not dramatically. Just sometimes.

If competence is one of my strengths, can I admit I don't know? If generosity is one of my strengths, can I decline? If independence matters to me, can I receive? If leadership comes naturally, can I follow? If achievement energizes me, can I rest? If resilience has carried me through difficult things, can I decide something isn't worth enduring?

And if doing the opposite creates disproportionate discomfort, maybe there's something worth getting curious about.

Not ashamed of.

Curious about.

Because perhaps the question isn't whether you're strong. You probably are.

The question is whether your strength belongs to you...

or whether you've started belonging to it.

Your strengths should expand the ways you can move through the world. They shouldn't reduce them.

So keep the capability. Keep the ambition. Keep the resilience. Keep the leadership. Keep whatever beautiful, hard-earned strengths have helped make you who you are.

Just make sure the door isn't locked behind you.

A strength stops being a strength when you're no longer free not to use it.

Forward, with purpose.

— Amber

Download Chapter Eleven of The Feisty Human and continue the conversation.

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