Episode 104
Self-Respect Is Not Self-Care, with Amy Loken
You can still be getting everything done and slowly be losing yourself. That is part of what makes self-neglect so difficult to recognize, especially for high-achieving, deeply responsible people. You are still showing up at work, caring for the people who depend on you, solving problems, meeting deadlines, and being the person everyone knows they can count on. From the outside, you look capable. Inside, though, something may feel very different.
In my conversation with Amy Loken, we talked about what happens when years of responsibility, caregiving, achievement, and being the go-to person begin to erode your relationship with yourself. Amy's perspective is that what we often call burnout may begin much earlier, with something she calls self-negotiation. The warning signs may appear long before you reach the point where you simply cannot keep going.
Self-Care and Self-Respect Aren't the Same Thing
We hear a great deal about self-care. Take a break, schedule the massage, go for a walk, get more sleep. Those things can absolutely matter, but Amy argues that there is something more fundamental underneath them: self-respect. She describes self-respect not as a luxury, but as the infrastructure we stand on to live and lead our lives.
That distinction matters because you can practice occasional self-care while continuing to negotiate away the things you actually need. You can take a bath on Sunday night and still spend the entire week saying yes when you mean no. You can schedule a vacation and still believe everyone else's needs automatically take precedence over your own. You can buy yourself something nice and still repeatedly abandon your standards to keep other people happy.
Self-care, in other words, can be something you do. Self-respect affects the decisions you make about how you will live, what you will protect, and what you are willing to require of yourself.
The Problem May Start With Self-Negotiation, Not Burnout
Burnout tends to get our attention because eventually it becomes visible. You are exhausted, you cannot concentrate, your performance changes, or you begin dreading responsibilities you once handled easily. Amy sees something happening much earlier, and she calls it self-negotiation.
It happens through small concessions that often sound perfectly reasonable in the moment:
I'll make that appointment after this project is finished.
I'll take a break when things settle down.
I'll get back to exercising when this busy season is over.
I'll deal with what I need after everyone else is okay.
I'll say yes because nobody else is stepping forward.
Any one of those decisions may be completely appropriate. Sometimes life genuinely requires triage. There are deadlines, illnesses, caregiving responsibilities, emergencies, and seasons when one part of life simply needs more from us. The problem comes when temporary concessions quietly become the default.
As Amy explained, the parts of ourselves we keep deferring do not disappear. They accumulate. Eventually, you may realize that you have become very good at maintaining a life in which you barely appear.
Resentment May Be an Early Warning Sign
One of the earliest signs that something is wrong can also be one of the most uncomfortable to admit: resentment. You love your family, so you feel guilty for resenting how much they need from you. You care about your work, so you think you should not feel irritated when someone asks for one more thing. You chose to help, so you tell yourself you have no right to be frustrated.
But resentment can contain useful information. Anger and frustration can signal that something important to you is being blocked or neglected. Instead of immediately judging yourself for feeling resentful, it may be more useful to get curious about what that feeling is telling you. Perhaps you need rest or help. Perhaps you agreed to something you do not actually have the capacity to do. Perhaps you have been so focused on being dependable that you have stopped considering what you need.
Feeling resentment toward a responsibility, or even toward someone you love, does not erase your love or commitment. It may simply be a signal that the way you are currently carrying that responsibility is not sustainable.
Being Needed Isn't the Same as Being Valuable
There is another reason this pattern can be particularly seductive for high performers: it feels good to be needed. You are the person everyone calls because you know what to do. You are trusted with the difficult project. Your family relies on you. Your colleagues know you will figure it out. People praise your strength and dependability, and that external validation can be enormously rewarding.
The danger comes when being needed becomes the evidence you use to prove that you are valuable. At that point, saying no does not simply feel like declining a request. It can feel like giving up part of your identity. Amy understands this dynamic personally through years of caregiving, first with her parents, then through the loss of her sister, and more recently while helping her husband navigate chronic health issues.
Those experiences have shaped how she thinks about strength. Continuing to perform while you quietly erode underneath is not necessarily strength. Eventually, what is happening internally affects what you are capable of giving externally too.
Heavy Seasons Require Navigation, Not Perfection
Amy prefers the word navigating to juggling, and there is an important distinction between the two. Juggling suggests that your goal is to keep everything in the air simultaneously. Navigation requires you to make choices about where you are going, what matters most right now, what needs attention first, what can wait, who can help, and what standards need to remain in place even while circumstances change.
This becomes particularly important during what Amy calls heavy seasons. A health crisis does not politely occupy the empty space on your calendar. Neither does caregiving, grief, a major professional transition, or a family emergency. These experiences take time, energy, attention, and emotional resources, whether or not you had those resources available to give.
The goal is not to pretend that nothing has changed and somehow maintain your usual performance everywhere. It is to decide intentionally how you are going to move through what has changed. Sometimes one area of life genuinely does need more from you, but that does not mean every other part of you must disappear indefinitely.
Boundaries Are External. Standards Are Internal.
One of my favorite distinctions from our conversation was Amy's explanation of boundaries versus standards. A boundary is the external line you establish, while a standard is what you require of yourself in order to maintain that line.
For example, you might decide that you do not take meetings during your lunch hour. That is a boundary. The real test comes when an important client asks for that time, someone tells you noon is the only time that works for them, or saying yes would simply be easier than tolerating their disappointment. That is where your internal standard matters.
Amy suggests asking yourself three questions when you are deciding whether to hold a boundary:
What does this protect?
What does this require of me?
Where is the line?
Maybe the boundary protects your health, time, judgment, credibility, or ability to be fully present somewhere else. Then ask what honoring it requires from you. Perhaps it requires disappointing someone, asking for help, or tolerating the discomfort of not being the person who fixes everything. Finally, determine where your line actually is and at what point saying yes puts you into a deficit somewhere that matters.
You Don't Have to Over-Explain Your No
This conversation reminded me of a physician I know who protects the time she spends at a Tai Chi class. Patients sometimes request appointments during that period because lunchtime is convenient for them. Her usual response is simple: that time is not available, but another time is. She does not need to provide an elaborate justification for why noon is unavailable.
Occasionally, someone pushes. In those situations, she may explain that Tai Chi is part of what allows her to be the kind of physician she wants to be. In essence, she is asking whether they really want a doctor who continually skips the things that keep her functioning well just to squeeze in another appointment.
The point is not that everyone needs a Tai Chi class. The point is that something can be important even when another person does not consider it important. You do not need to prove that your reason for saying no is sufficiently impressive. Sometimes, “That doesn't work for me, but this does” is enough.
Think About Your Time and Energy Like Money
Imagine waking up with a wallet containing exactly the amount of money you need for the day. You need to pay the rent, buy groceries, and pick up a birthday present. Then you leave the house, and someone who forgot lunch asks if you can lend them $10. Someone else is raising money for a cause you genuinely care about. Another person asks for help with something worthwhile.
None of those requests is bad, and you may sincerely want to help with all of them. But if you keep handing out money without remembering what the money was already intended to cover, eventually you reach into your wallet and discover that you cannot pay for your own priorities.
Time and energy work similarly. There will always be worthwhile things competing for them, so the question is not simply whether a request deserves your time. You also need to ask whether you actually have that time available to give without taking it away from something you have already decided matters.
Let Other People Help
Being responsible does not mean personally doing everything that matters. Sometimes leadership means recognizing who else can handle something and allowing them to do it. Amy described learning this during periods when it became physically impossible to be everywhere and manage everything herself. She had to look at the people around her, identify their strengths, and determine what someone else could take off her plate.
At home, that might mean accepting someone's genuine offer to help or finding someone else to handle a recurring task. At work, it might mean giving a team member responsibility for something you would normally do yourself. Sometimes delegating is not merely a way to reduce your workload. It can also create an opportunity for another person to develop their abilities.
For someone whose identity is closely tied to being the dependable one, however, accepting help can be uncomfortable. It requires recognizing that your value does not come from being the only person capable of handling everything.
Success Looks Different When Nobody Is Watching
I asked Amy whether her definition of success had changed over the years, and it has. For her, success now has much less to do with the visible markers we commonly associate with it, such as money, professional titles, credentials, or other external accomplishments. Those things are not inherently bad, but they are not the whole story.
Amy now thinks about success in terms of what happens when the world isn't looking. Are you still the same person behind closed doors that you present to everyone else? Do your private decisions reflect the values you publicly claim matter to you? Do you recognize the person you have become?
Those questions may reveal far more about how well your life is working than how impressive it appears from the outside. Performance can maintain an image for quite a while, but it cannot necessarily give you the sense that you are living in alignment with yourself.
You Aren't Trying to Get Back to the Person You Used to Be
If you have spent years caring for other people, building a career, navigating loss, raising a family, or moving through other demanding seasons, you may eventually think, “I just want to feel like myself again.” Amy offers another way to think about that desire.
Maybe the goal is not to get back to who you were. You have changed, and the experiences you have lived through have changed you. Your priorities may be different. Your relationships may be different. What matters to you now may not be what mattered ten or twenty years ago.
Instead of asking how to recover an earlier version of yourself, Amy suggests thinking about the person you are becoming. Heavy seasons can change us, and perhaps they are supposed to. The question is whether you are present enough in your own life to participate intentionally in that change rather than simply reacting to everything happening around you.
Start With One Thing You've Let Slip
If you recognize yourself in this conversation, you do not need to overhaul your entire life this weekend. Amy's suggestion is much smaller: pause, look honestly at your life, and identify one area you know you have let slip. Maybe it is your health, your time, your environment, a relationship, an interest, or something you once did regularly that made you feel grounded.
You do not even have to fix it immediately. Start by noticing it without explaining it away. Once you see the pattern clearly, it becomes much harder to unsee it, and from there you can choose one small step toward rebuilding that part of your relationship with yourself.
The goal is not to become the person you used to be. It is to make room for the person you are becoming while still honoring the people, work, and responsibilities that matter to you. Self-respect does not require abandoning any of those things. It requires remembering that you are also one of the people your life needs to make room for.
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The information contained and documents referenced in the podcast “Your Priority Centered Life” are for entertainment, educational and informational purposes only, and are not intended as, and shall not be understood or construed as, professional medical or health treatment, diagnosis, or advice. We strongly encourage listeners to consult with medical providers or qualified mental health providers with issues and questions regarding any physical and/or mental health symptoms or concerns that they may have. Furthermore, the opinions and views expressed by podcast guests, partners and/or affiliates are not necessarily those of the podcast host. Dr. Alise Murray’s opinions and views are expressed in her individual capacity and are not to be construed as those of any of her podcast guests, partners and/or affiliates.