Confusing Responsibility and Obligation Is a Mistake: Take More Responsibility for Your Choices
May 09, 2024
Obligation is a way of dis-owning our responsibility for what we do or don’t do
“I didn’t want to go to my friend’s party, but I had to.” “I have to go to work.” “I just have to go to the family reunion.” “I have to get married if we’re going to move forward.” These are statements I hear both in my conversations with patients and out in the world about obligations. There is a tendency to rely on obligation in how we approach events, jobs, and relationships with friends, family, and partners. Obligation is a way of saying, “I have no choice in the matter. I just have to do this and that’s that.”
However, obligation is also a refusal of your responsibility for the choices you make, how you show up in relationships, and what you do and don’t do. It’s a way of dis-owning (rather than owning) your part in living out your values, wants, and needs. We don’t do things because we’re obligated; we do so because we choose to do them.
Feeling obligated can seem simpler and less vulnerable
The “It’s out of my hands” aspect of obligation can make you feel trapped and like you can’t do anything about it. However stuck you feel, it can also be easier—more known, less risky, and less vulnerable—to simply go along with what you believe you’re obligated to do rather than getting close to yourself and your choices. Even if you ultimately choose to go through with an obligation, it is better to know why you are choosing it and to be fully active in your life. Conversely, when something is felt or framed as out of your hands, there is no questioning, shifting, curiosity, or disruption needed.
Instead, you can just roll along with life like you did when you went to the store with your parent as a kid. In that case, you just have to go with Mom; you’re not asked or brought into the complexity of the decision-making. Rather than being dragged along with Mom, you are now an adult in tow with a friend, a partner, a boss, or even your own child.
There is also a societal aspect to obligation related to what society tells you that you should or shouldn’t do. In this day and age, it can feel like you have such little control in the world vis-à-vis the economy, work, education, and responsibilities to family and friends. It can feel easier to just say, “That’s how the world works” rather than look at how this might conflict with your values and work out what you want to do, even if it might feel more isolating to go against the grain. For instance, “I have to go to work” means you don’t have to think about why you’re working, your ethics and values in relation to your current position, what may or may not feel fulfilling, and your feelings about your job.
Operating out of obligation can also cause painful, conflicted feelings
Though it may seem simpler, operating out of obligation causes much anxiety, frustration, sadness, loneliness, guilt, shame, and feelings of unsafety and distance. When you feel forced to do something, you feel stuck, and with that comes a lot of complicated emotions that can rear their heads, both externally and internally, at different points of the obligation.
Take a party you “have to go to” because the host is a friend who has been to your parties. Internally, you might feel nervous but move past this to just feel “off” at the party. You don’t want to be there but have a sense of guilt and indebtedness to your friend to have a good time. Afterward, you may feel sad or extra exhausted without knowing why; it’s because rushing to the solution of “Well, I have to” without listening to yourself and what you want can cause these feelings to come with more intensity. Externally, you may show up late or with a stinky, anxious, or just not-giving energy that others can sense. These feelings can also come out sideways by being snarky or biting toward another friend or your partner. When you feel you don’t have a choice, you don’t get to process your emotions and act your best self with an acknowledgment of the complexities of what that situation or relationship brings up in you.
Another common obligation is related to family like, for instance, a reunion trip that takes place every summer that your family sees as a requirement. While it’s a big event you’ve done every year since you were young, you might feel anxious about making it work with your busy life in NYC, worried about how your relationships with certain family members have changed, or disappointed about missing out on a long weekend in the Hamptons with friends. A lack of choice, coupled with simply powering through because, well, you have to, can make you feel at odds with yourself, lonely, and disconnected from your role in decisions. This can be painful because you’re left alone with a knee-jerk decision. Not only are you left alone, but you might be letting others leave you alone too. This can come out in funky ways either toward other people involved, such as family members or your partner, or toward yourself. These painful responses can be avoided if you approach these decisions through a more thought-out and active process.
How do you own your choices?: Slow down and evaluate your decisions
Owning your part in decision-making is a process of understanding yourself and your role in your choices, being curious about your feelings and yourself in the context of an activity or relationship. What are your values? How do you want to live your life? How does this event or relationship fall within that? This may take a long or short time, yet it’s worth it to be able to not feel powerless with obligations.
For instance, before immediately responding that you will go to a friend’s party because you have to, sit with the relationship: How was it built? How do you feel when you are around this person? Are you at your best or worst with them? What are the conditions that bring those things about? Why do you value this relationship? Is this party a building moment and if not, what else might be? Is this event based on an old version of yourself that no longer fits? Once you answer some of these questions, consider the event itself: Do you want to go? What might you need to go and have fun? Do you want to decline and propose something that feels more aligned with who you are now rather than an old version of yourself? Are you discovering this is something that doesn’t align with your current values like sobriety, being present, or the time? Are you afraid the relationship may not bear declining the invite?
Returning to the previous family reunion example, slowing down to own your choice around a family event can be of particular significance, moving beyond being towed along as if you were a kid. Ask yourself: How come you’re going on the reunion trip this year? What does it mean to you? Who do you want to see? What are you feeling about it? What do you need at every step if you do go? What do you need if you don’t? Even if you do decide to go, it is a choice made by doing the vulnerable work of knowing yourself, your values, and your relational needs more in that moment.
Therapy can help you be curious about your choices and obligation mindset
Everything in our day-to-day life moves fast and it can seem impossible to press pause long enough to discover how your values may or may not align with the choices you make. Therapy can be an opportunity to reflect on these questions about yourself, your activities, and your relationships, as well as how you came to fall into an obligation mindset. A therapist can ask: What feels easier about feeling obligated? What does obligation really mean for you? What feels painful about making choices or just going through for obligation’s sake? How did this work in the past in a way that was protective? In therapy, you can refocus and reorganize your thinking about what you previously chalked up to obligations and allow yourself to be more accountable about responsibilities and your values, wants, needs, and feelings. The frame of therapy, in fact, sets up this opportunity as going to therapy itself is a choice you make for yourself.
In disrupting patterns like doing things out of obligation, therapy can also disrupt looming feelings of anxiety, depression, rage, or fear. By no longer disowning your responsibility and making considered choices, you can become a more active participant in life rather than passively going through the motions because you have to.
