Understanding Overgiving: Finding Balance Between Caring for Others and Yourself

In this blog, you’ll discover how Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) can help first-time mothers in their third trimester reduce childbirth anxiety. You’ll learn what drives prenatal fear, how it can impact labour and wellbeing, and what recent research reveals about EFT’s effectiveness. We’ll explore the findings of a recent research study showing significant reductions in anxiety after just five days of EFT practice. Plus, you’ll find simple, research-aligned tapping steps that can support calm, confidence, and emotional balance as you prepare for birth.

Do you often find yourself giving more than you have the energy, time, or resources to give?

Perhaps you are always the person others turn to in a crisis. You listen, solve, organise, lend money, offer emotional support, and rearrange your life to make things easier for everyone else.

Yet when you need help, reassurance, or care, few people are available.

At first, this may look like kindness or generosity. However, when giving repeatedly comes at the cost of your wellbeing, it may be a pattern of overgiving.

Overgiving is not simply doing too much. It is often rooted in deeper fears and beliefs about love, safety, belonging, and worth.

Healing does not require you to become less caring.

It invites you to care for others without leaving yourself behind.

What Is Overgiving?

Overgiving happens when you give beyond your emotional, physical, practical or financial capacity.

You may find it difficult to say no, ask for support, receive from others or prioritise your own needs. You may continue helping even when you feel exhausted, resentful, anxious or overwhelmed.

The difference between healthy giving and overgiving is often found in what drives it.

Healthy giving comes from choice, capacity and genuine desire.

Overgiving often comes from fear, guilt, obligation or the need to be chosen.

A helpful question to ask yourself is, “Am I giving because I genuinely want to, or because I am afraid of what may happen if I do not?”

Why Do People Overgive?

People often overgive because, somewhere along the way, giving became connected to safety, love, approval or belonging.

You may have learned:

“I am loved when I am helpful.”
"My needs are too much.”
“It is my responsibility to keep everyone happy.”
“Conflict is dangerous.”
“Good people always say yes.”
“I must earn love rather than simply receive it.”
“People may leave if I disappoint them.”
“My value comes from what I do for others.”

Overgiving may also develop when you had to become emotionally responsible too early.

Perhaps you learned to notice everyone else’s moods, anticipate their needs, keep the peace or prevent disappointment. What once helped you feel safer may later become a pattern of self-abandonment.

Overgiving can also be connected to:

Fear of rejection or conflict.
Guilt when saying no.
Anxious attachment.
Low self-worth.
Shame about having needs.
A strong need to feel useful.
The hope that your generosity will eventually be returned.
The belief that caring for yourself is selfish.

Sometimes, giving can even feel safer than receiving. When you are the helper, you may feel more in control. Asking for help, admitting what you need or allowing another person to care for you may feel far more vulnerable.

Signs You May Be Overgiving

Overgiving can appear in many areas of life. You may:

Say yes before checking how you truly feel.
Feel responsible for other people’s emotions.
Give money that you cannot comfortably afford.
Rearrange your life repeatedly for other people.
Offer emotional support while neglecting your own wellbeing.
Feel anxious or guilty when setting a boundary.
Continue giving even when you feel resentful.
Struggle to ask for or receive help.
Feel valuable mainly when you are needed.
Overexplain your boundaries or quickly withdraw them.
Feel afraid that people will reject you if you stop helping.
Choose relationships in which you are always the rescuer, organiser or emotional container.

Overgiving can also affect the body. You may notice exhaustion, tension, poor sleep, headaches, digestive discomfort, agitation or a sinking feeling when someone asks something of you.

These experiences can have many causes and should be appropriately assessed. However, your body may sometimes be communicating a boundary that your words have struggled to express.

The Hidden Cost of Being “The Strong One”

Everyone may describe you as strong, caring and dependable.

You may be the person people call when something goes wrong. You organise, solve, support and carry more than anyone realises.

Yet beneath that strength, you may feel depleted, lonely or quietly resentful.

You may even wonder, “Who would I be if I stopped taking care of everyone?”

When being useful has become part of your identity, setting a boundary can feel like losing love, purpose or belonging.

The deeper healing is not about taking away your generosity. It is about helping you recognise that your worth remains intact even when you are resting, receiving, saying no or allowing another person to take responsibility.

Overgiving in Relationships

Overgiving can create imbalance in relationships.

You may always be the one to reach out, make plans, offer reassurance, repair conflict, and provide emotional support. But when you need care in return, the other person may not be available.

Over time, this can lead to anxiety, exhaustion, resentment, and the feeling of being unseen. Love does not require you to constantly prove your worth.

Healthy relationships include:

Giving and receiving
Honesty and boundaries
Emotional availability
Shared responsibility
Mutual care and effort
Respect for each person’s needs

When you start setting boundaries, some relationships may change. People who benefited from your lack of boundaries may resist them.

This doesn’t necessarily mean your boundary is wrong. It may simply reveal which relationships are reciprocal and which depend on your overextension.

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Financial Overgiving

Overgiving can also affect your financial security.

Perhaps you lend money even when your own bank balance is low. You may pay for other people because you feel guilty saying no or fear being seen as selfish.

You may have become the person who rescues everyone, even when doing so leaves you worried about your own bills.

You are allowed to be generous without placing your security at risk.

A healthy financial boundary may sound like, “I care about you, but I am not able to help financially.”

Another person’s disappointment does not automatically mean you have done something wrong.

Is Self-Love Selfish?

Self-love is sometimes reduced to comfort, indulgence or positive thinking, yet genuine self-love is much deeper.

Self-love is not only something you feel; it is something you practise through your healing, decisions and boundaries.

Everything we do or do not do is often connected to how we hope to feel, inviting an important reflection, "Are your choices helping you feel genuinely aligned and nourished, or are they temporarily helping you avoid guilt, rejection or conflict?"

Loving yourself does not prevent you from loving others; in fact, a healthier relationship with yourself can help you love others with greater honesty, freedom and choice.

You do not have to choose between loving yourself and loving another person—the deeper invitation is to remain connected to yourself while you care.

Three Components of Self-Love

Release what stands in the way:

Gently work through the emotions, past experiences and beliefs that make it difficult to love, accept or choose yourself fully.

This may include fear of rejection, guilt about saying no, shame about having needs, grief from conditional relationships or sadness about not feeling chosen.

Healing may also involve exploring specific childhood experiences in which you learned that you had to be helpful, responsible, pleasing or emotionally available to receive love.

The younger part of you may need to hear:

“You do not have to earn love.”
“You are allowed to have needs.”
“You are not responsible for everyone’s emotions.”
“You can be loved without exhausting yourself.”
“Saying no does not make you unkind.”
“You are worthy even when you are not giving.”

Make decisions from self-love:

Before making a decision, pause and ask, “Does this choice reflect love for myself?”

You might also ask:

Do I genuinely want to do this?
Do I have the capacity?
Will I resent this later?
Am I trying to earn love or prevent rejection?
Is this mine to carry?
Can I give less, differently or at another time?
What would a self-loving response look like?

This pause creates space between the request and your response. You do not have to give an immediate answer. You can say, “Let me think about that and come back to you.”

Set boundaries from neutrality:

Boundaries do not have to come from anger, fear or the need to prove something.

They can come from self-love, inner guidance and a calm understanding of what feels right for you.

A boundary may sound like:

“I am not able to do that.”
“I can help for one hour, but I cannot manage the whole task.”
“I need some time before I answer.”
“That does not work for me.”
“I care about you, and I also need to honour my limits.”
“I am available for this, but not for that.”
“I understand that you are disappointed, but my decision remains the same.”

Healing also involves learning to tolerate the discomfort that may follow a boundary without reversing it, overexplaining or compensating by giving even more.

What If the Responsibilities Are Real?

Overgiving does not always mean doing unnecessary things. Sometimes the responsibilities are real, and there may be no one else to take them on.

Healing is not about withdrawing support, but about changing how you give it so you don’t abandon yourself in the process.

What truly needs to be done?
What can be delayed or simplified?
What can be done less perfectly?
What belongs to someone else?
Where am I doing more than is required?
What small support can I ask for?

Healing often starts with small boundaries, not big changes. It may look like taking ten minutes for yourself, asking someone else to help, saying no, or allowing “good enough.”

You can still care for others without disappearing from your own life.

How Do You Give When You Are Already Depleted?

Even a few minutes of rest, nourishment, breathing, tapping, movement or silence can tell your nervous system, “I am also here. I matter too.”

EFT Tapping and the Growing Evidence Base

This study contributes to a broader and growing body of research on Emotional Freedom Techniques as a mind–body intervention.

Research over the past two decades has examined EFT for:

Anxiety and stress disorders
Depression and PTSD
Chronic pain and somatic symptoms

Systematic reviews and meta-analyses report moderate to large effect sizes for reducing psychological distress. Biological research has also documented measurable changes, including reduced cortisol levels and improved heart-rate variability.

What makes EFT especially practical is that it is:

Self-applied
Non-invasive
Equipment-free
Free from medication side effects

It offers a simple way to support nervous system regulation when stress levels rise.

For Therapists, Healers, and Coaches

If you already use EFT or nervous system–based approaches, research like this reinforces what you see in practice. When a client’s breathing slows or their body softens, regulation is happening in real time.

If you are new to EFT, begin with your own practice. Learn to use it for stress and emotional steadiness first.

Because sustainable change is not dramatic — it is built through small, consistent shifts that restore balance.

CONCLUSION

Childbirth anxiety is common among first-time mothers in the third trimester.

This 2024 study demonstrated that five days of structured Emotional Freedom Techniques practice significantly reduced anxiety levels in primigravida women. Severe anxiety was eliminated within the sample, and measurable improvements were observed across participant.

A few minutes a day. A few gentle taps. A simple pause before labour begins.

And within that small daily practice, the body begins to feel steadier and more prepared.

Love,

Dr Rangana Rupavi Choudhari (PhD)

P.S. Want to discover if EFT is right for you? Book a Complimentary Discovery Call.

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Childbirth anxiety in the third trimester can create both emotional tension and physical strain for first-time mothers. Worries about labour, complications, and the unknown can heighten stress levels just as the body is preparing for birth.

Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) offer a simple, non-pharmacological way to support emotional regulation during this period. By tapping on specific acupressure points while focusing on childbirth-related fears, EFT may help calm the nervous system and reduce psychological distress.

A 2024 study published in Contagion: Scientific Periodical Journal of Public Health and Coastal found that five consecutive days of EFT practice significantly reduced severe childbirth anxiety in primigravida women during their third trimester.

With consistent practice, anxiety levels decreased, and participants moved from severe distress to mild or no anxiety — suggesting that structured emotional regulation can meaningfully support preparation for labour.