A Contagion of Inauthenticity
By Louise Sutherland-Hoyt
- Introduction We hear “over-serving” and picture a bartender pouring one too many drinks. But there’s another kind of over-serving, and it’s not about alcohol. It’s emotional, social, and spiritual. It is borne from exposure to adversity in childhood and wounds the soul. For many women, over-serving isn’t a bad habit. It’s an unconscious means of survival, a mindset that slowly, insidiously, erases our sense of self. It’s nothing new. It’s been commonplace among women, and some men, since time immemorial, to be groomed by (well-meaning) parents and culture to go along to get along, fit in like a boss, and don your best facade. Over-Serving is a thing that’s not going away easily or nicely, and I reckon that we will always adopt inauthentic ways to deceive ourselves into believing we’ve got this. It’s just going to wear a different outfit.
What Does Over-Serving Mean? In its original context, over-serving refers to giving someone more alcohol than they should consume. It’s the act of crossing a line—of ignoring the limit.
When applied to women, over-serving becomes something deeper. It means giving too much of yourself, too often, for too long. It’s the quiet compulsion to meet everyone else’s needs before your own. It’s over-pouring emotional energy into relationships, responsibilities, and parenting roles until there’s nothing left to give.
Other common terms for this include codependence, self-sacrifice, emotional over-functioning, and people-pleasing. Each term points to a pattern of chronically placing others’ needs, comfort, or emotions above one’s own well-being. Over-serving may feel noble, but it leads to resentment, exhaustion, and a fractured sense of self. Enough of that.
Why Over-Serving Is So Common Among Women From early on, many women are taught that their value lies in their service to others. Being “selfless” is rewarded. Saying no is punished. So they overextend, over-function, over-care. This often looks like:
- Always being available, even when exhausted
- Taking on emotional labor without acknowledgment
- Avoiding conflict to keep the peace
- Saying yes when they mean no
- Enabling others’ bad behavior
Over time, over-serving can become automatic—so normalized that burnout feels like baseline. But let’s be clear: we weren’t born to be agreeable. We weren’t put on this planet to bend endlessly for approval. But somehow, it keeps at it, relentlessly poking its ugly nose into our desire for love, acceptance, and belonging.
How I Lost Myself to Over-Serving I know this pattern intimately because I lived it, for most of my life. I over-served in nearly every area of my life, relationships, work, community, marriage, and parenthood. Believing that my worth depended on being needed, my priorities were distorted, to say the least. I kept saying yes to others while silently saying no to myself and my integrity. It’s not that I drifted away from myself; I’m hard-pressed to recall a time when I wasn’t guessing at how to be. I felt useful, but was not seen. Capable but not connected. It took time, truth, and the radical act of unbecoming myself to begin the work of finding home. And that return? It wasn’t quiet. It was bold, agonizing, sometimes paralyzing, a wildfire, BUT, entirely mine.
A Contagion of Inauthenticity. As I see it, Over-Serving is a carrier, and none of us is immune. It spreads when we confuse approval with love, achievement with worth, or performance with presence. It’s intergenerational. Over-Serving Moms tend to raise Over-Serving daughters. The more we over-serve, the more we stray from our exiled authentic selves. We wear smiles that don’t match our pain and suffering. We are undiscerning of our own wants and needs. I often ask myself, did I ever know who I ever really was?
Over-Serving Is Like Enabling. Over-Serving isn’t just being generous. It quietly endorses bad behavior in others and invites exploitation into our dwelling. Like over-pouring a drink, it numbs reality. We take on the discomfort of others but at our own expense. We obstruct consequences, bypass growth, and shoulder burdens that don’t belong to us. Just like enabling an addiction, over-serving may seem kind, but ultimately sustains disconnection and deepens the wound.
Both behaviors ignore healthy limits. Both create an imbalance. And both, in the name of love, block genuine connection. When we always fill in the gaps for others, we plug up the space where growth and truth could emerge from darkness.
Conclusion: Un-Becoming an Over-Server
Un-Becoming begins with noticing.
Where am I giving from guilt?
From fear?
From habit?
From shame?
These questions don’t make you selfish. They make you conscious.
Because Un-Becoming an over-server isn’t about withholding care—it’s about reclaiming it. It’s about tending, not bending. Tending to our own injured souls so we no longer bend ourselves out of shape to keep others comfortable.
The contagion of inauthenticity ends when we stop confusing self-sacrifice with love and start honoring the quiet truth inside us. The truth that says: You matter, too.
Say less. Serve less. Be more.
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