The Impact of TED* (The Empowerment Dynamic)

Overadulting costs can include health, relationships, and peace of mind.

Have you ever felt your plate has more on it than you can actually handle?

If so, you're not alone. Over the past decades, I've worked with hundreds of high-achieving professionals who feel overwhelmed, on the edge of burnout, or fully in it. They're capable, intelligent, independent, and composed, relied on by everyone.

While they look successful from the outside, beneath that exterior often lies an internalized sense of "I have to," driven by past conditioning, fear, or perhaps the belief that top-notch performance will generate love and safety. Inside, often they feel as if they're drowning.

That feeling comes from Overadulting, a state of excessive action that can emerge when untenable internal beliefs, difficult people, unfortunate circumstances, and/or broken systems overtake our typical daily routines. Adulting-on-steroids often stretches us beyond healthy limits, leading us to suppress our own needs and emotions to keep everything "together."

I know this feeling intimately. From fall 2024 through summer 2025, I found myself living a textbook case of Overadulting. While training Connect2's first Associate Crisis Navigation Partners® (a vision I've held for years) and expanding our administrative team, I finally felt I had the right squad in place to propel my business to serve significantly more people. Meanwhile as a single parent, I served as the main support for my son who had unexpectedly returned home from college for a year, as well as my daughter who was still at college. So I was running my business and household, parenting, taking care of myself, supporting my own clients through their crises, training and supervising several new team members, and generating marketing content to bring in clients for the new Associates. And oh by the way, the United States was enduring the election of a new president and his administration's first year, leaving my loved ones, my clients, and myself feeling fearful and destabilized. The ambient stress permeated everything.

I kept telling myself I could handle it. After all, I'm a Crisis Navigation Partner®. But somewhere along the way, "I can do this" became "I have to do this" became "I'm the only one who can do this," became "I don't think I can do this anymore." By July, my capacity, energy, and joy had fully depleted.

Ultimately I decided to pause Connect2 marketing for six months and allocate the found time to refueling myself. It was a solid decision, yet I could not ignore the irony. While guiding clients to navigate complexity, conflict, and crisis, I inadvertently Overadulted myself right into burnout.

Potential Costs of Overadulting

Here's a (likely incomplete) list of the potential costs of Overadulting:

• Physical: Chronic stress, disrupted sleep, weakened immune system leading to acute illnesses and chronic diseases, and other forms of conscious or unconscious self-harm (cutting, overeating, overdrinking, etc.)

• Mental: Compromised thinking or judgment

• Emotional: Anxiety, depression, emotional exhaustion

• Relational: Neglected relationships, resentment from loved ones and colleagues who feel emotionally abandoned

• Professional: Decreased productivity despite longer hours, burnout

• Existential/Spiritual: Loss of joy, distorted sense of purpose, profound loneliness

When we extend ourselves beyond our physical, mental, emotional, and/or spiritual capacity, we lose our ability to take care of ourselves and therefore others.

The Dreaded Drama Triangle: Home of Overadulting

In 1961, Stephen Karpman created the Dreaded Drama Triangle (DDT) framework. The DDT's three voices represent our drivers to Overadult:

1. Rescuer: "I'll fix it. I'll make everything okay. I'll save everyone."

2. Persecutor: "You're not doing enough. You should be doing more."

3. Victim: "I have no choice but to take this action. If I don't, no one will."

As Rescuers handle things, staying composed and super-reliable, they cycle repeatedly through the Persecutor ("I'm failing") and Victim ("I'm trapped!") perspectives. All these roles exhaust us because none of them are truly empowered; they leave us too little space to take care of ourselves.

During my aforementioned difficult period, I unintentionally morphed into a Rescuer—trying to "save" my team, my clients, and my son—alternatingly treating myself as a Victim ("I'll never escape this") and a Persecutor ("I'm not doing enough"). As these feelings and experiences occurred under high-stakes circumstances, they engulfed me.

What's the Alternative?

The Empowerment Dynamic (aka TED*) offers a powerful alternative to Overadulting.

Thankfully, David Emerald developed The Empowerment Dynamic (TED*), a response to the DDT that reframes its original roles into far more constructive ones:

1. Rescuer → Coach: Instead of saying "I'll fix everything," it inquires, "How can I engage support so that I don't try to handle everything myself?"

2. Persecutor → Challenger: Instead of playing the brutal inner critic, it asks "What can I learn from this?", encouraging growth with compassion.

3. Victim → Creator: Instead of assuming "I have no choice," it wonders "What choice DO I have? What do I want to create here?"

TED* invites us to make a shift. Instead of reacting from obligation, we can learn to act from choice. The Rescuer can become a Coach, supporting without over-functioning. The inner Persecutor can become a constructive Challenger, compassionately encouraging growth. The Victim can become a Creator, reclaiming agency. David Emerald's expanded framework can liberate us from a tendency to Overadult. It invites us to rest, set boundaries, and embrace interdependence—not as weakness but as vital expression of self-leadership.

TED* is not about doing less. It's about doing what truly matters, guided by a grounded sense of our Most Brilliant Self.

During my pause from marketing Connect2, I allocated all time outside work and family commitments to refueling. I slept well, exercised regularly, and ate meals prepared by others who matter deeply to me.

TED* In Action

When health diagnoses, mental health challenges, or major life transitions might catapult us into Overadulting, we can apply TED* to resist that force. Rather than slide into guilt-based overfunctioning, we can choose to support people from our own metaphorical cups filled with energy.

Near the end of my marketing hiatus, at the request of a close friend, I travelled to her home in New York City. Throughout half a year of chemotherapy followed by major surgery and a long recovery, she had become surrounded by mountains of unopened mail in her bedroom. She and her husband shared that the presence of the mail had kept them from sleeping soundly. The trauma of cancer, combined with the physical representation of their administrative chaos had piled onto these parents. During my visit, I faced their challenge with a smile and a letter opener. I found bills, multiple checks awaiting deposit, and letters threatening a $1000 fine and potential imprisonment for not responding to jury duty selection. I sorted all of it, filed everything that could be, and prioritized the outstanding action items.

My friends are neither incompetent nor irresponsible. They've struggled under increasingly broken systems—insurance companies, court systems, various technologies—that demand patients jump through a growing array of online and paper hoops, precisely when they're at lowest capacity. I am deeply angry that such organizations require people with major medical and mental health conditions to serve as full-time administrators of bureaucratic claims, medical billing procedures, and pharmaceutical procurement, precisely at the moments their bodies and minds are consumed by the work of recovery. When profit-motivated institutions and government bodies push intractable burdens onto patients and caregivers, these entities systematize Overadulting behavior, unethically generating substantial consequences.

TED* reframing guided me to support my friends in a way that was mutually beneficial. I felt honored and grateful to contribute. They've appreciated my compassionate encouragement of their growth through painful and scary circumstances.

It's Your Turn to Get Support

Overadulting thrives in isolation. Let's team up to break the pattern. You are already enough, and you don't have to go through anything alone. I continue to learn this lesson myself, one situation at a time.

If you would like support to shift out of Overadulting while taming the chaos of your complexity, conflict, or crisis, let's talk. Schedule a complimentary consultation to explore how you and a Crisis Navigation Partner® can create your sustainable path forward.