Are you the family's go-to person? If you're a highly functioning woman (HFP) struggling with anxiety, insomnia, and a crippling need to take care of everyone else, this episode is your intervention.
I discussed with Licensed Therapist Ibiye Oyali to spill the tea on the super responsible identity, where people-pleasing is driven by cultural expectations and the "first-born girl" narrative.
There is a difference between healthy excellence and paralyzing perfectionism, why you feel guilty for saying "no," and how to set luminous boundaries that protect your peace. Get the simple, strategic steps you need for HFP recovery—starting with the 80% rule.
 
Welcome to Emotional Healing for Christian Women.
Thank You! For listening/Watching.
⁠I’m Marvel C. Adeyemi⁠, a licensed Psychotherapist and Faith -Based Coach who supports Christian women.
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 Imagine waking up without the weight of shame, fear, and loneliness. Imagine finally feeling worthy, confident, and at peace — and doing it with God by your side. That's the healing we begin together
Perhaps you’re struggling with low self-worth, rejection, persistent anxiety, spiritual confusion, neglect, abandonment, or feeling disconnected from your purpose… If you're afraid of repeating painful patterns in parenting or relationships… If your past still triggers you — please know that healing is possible.
Through biblical lens, I’ll help you rebuild self-worth, trust, peace and clarity — so you can feel empowered, beautiful, and confident.
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 📢Disclaimer: I share content from my reflections for educational purpose only and should not replace professional therapy. If you need immediate support, please reach out to a licensed mental health professional.
 
TRANSCRIPT
Mav:
Hey, hey, hey, welcome everyone. Today's show is going to be very exciting and I'm already pumped up to hear everything about the high functioning processing. And with me today on the show is Ibinye. Ibinye is back today. Ibinye, thank you so much for coming in again.
Mav:
Ibinye Oyali is a licensed marriage and family therapist, as well as a coach for highly sensitive women. As a coach, she helps women manage big emotions, stand up by themselves, by certain healthy boundaries, and finally stop people pleasing. And as a therapist, her practice focuses on anxiety, insomnia, and couples' relationships.
Mav:
She works with high achieving women who struggle with anxiety and the need to take care of everyone else. She helps couples learn how to communicate better, create a stronger connection and resolve conflicts faster. Finally, she helps people with insomnia quickly fall asleep and stay asleep without pills or drastically changing their lifestyle. I think that is really holistic.
Mav:
Welcome, Ibiya. Thank you so much for having me back, Marvel. So today we're going to discuss, as I introduced earlier, the highly functioning pressing. Ibiya, please tell me, in your own expertise and experience and clinical observations, who would you say is a highly functioning pressing? So in my practice,
Mav:
I like to call them the super responsible member of the family. That's how I like to describe them. So the one person that everybody can turn to, whether at work, even at home, because it bleeds from the home to the workplace to friendships. The one person everybody calls when they need help, the one person who organizes everything, she is like the center of everybody's world.
Mav:
She takes care of everyone even before taking care of her own self. So that is how I would describe the high functioning person. Interesting. The go-to person who seems to be able to focus on what other people's needs are and helping them meet it most likely would be prioritizing their needs last. Yes, exactly. Sometimes they don't even know that they have needs.
Mav:
dear, wow. So what I'm imagining the highly functioning person would be would probably be, is it when they have really just burnt off or shut down, then they are now forced to confront their own needs, emotional needs in particular? Yes. So they get to a point where they're feeling completely overwhelmed.
Mav:
The burden on their shoulders is too heavy. They have too many responsibilities that they have allowed on their plate. They have not set strong enough boundaries. They know that everybody's counting on them, but they look at their schedule and they say, I don't have enough hours in my day. How do I handle this? And then the times maybe anxiety starts to creep in, but being that this is their identity now, they don't know how to renegotiate their boundaries.
Mav:
And that's when they now decide, I think I need help, I'm overwhelmed. Wow, thank you for providing that insight. I love that you mentioned boundaries and I loved that you mentioned overwhelmed. These are trigger words that I'm hearing from your end. highly functioning people, is they feel guilty for saying no? Yes.
Mav:
closely linked with people pleasing. Can you speak a bit about that boundaries and the false guilt when highly functioning people say no? highly sensitive people are always swimming in guilt because they know they have the ability to help. I think that's a lot of times where the guilt comes from is I know I can help you.
Mav:
But I'm looking at my schedule and I just don't have any room on my schedule. I'm looking within and I'm feeling so overwhelmed. But I feel bad because I don't know if you can help yourself. So they also have this thoughts. If I don't help other people, then other people will crumble, especially within a family dynamic. A lot of times they have been raised. A lot of times we'll see it in maybe the first born girl.
Mav:
And doesn't matter if she has an older brother or not, a lot of times the responsibility of taking care of the household will be upon the oldest girl. And because you've been relied on so heavily for years, other people learn how to cross their legs and sit down and relax, and you're always the one standing up getting things done. So when you say no, if you dare say no,
Mav:
Sometimes the family rebels and they say you're being very selfish because it's your role to take care of your young girl or if you don't help us then who's gonna help us but then the family forgets that they also have two hands and they're actually able to help themselves but when you're high functioning you say well I've lived this way all of my life I'm able to do it you actually forget that your family is capable
Mav:
There's a lot of culture trigger words I hear from you saying things about birth positioning, first born girl, they have first born boy as well, the culture responsibilities that have been woven into our narratives, that has conditions, particularly people in the first born birth positions to be struggled with this huge responsibility that when they say no,
Mav:
they could be punished. Yes, absolutely. So they tend to kind of probably just stick on a lot and lock up their own feelings. And sometimes it's hard for other members of the family to read their emotions as well, and they may not share their struggles. Can you talk to this cultural expectation we have? I think
Mav:
for people that are from culturally diverse backgrounds, we are African, West African from our cultural backgrounds. Can we begin from there? And then I believe also with other cultures. Okay. So usually when somebody is the first born in the birth order, it's typically their responsibility to take care of the ones who are younger than they are.
Mav:
And it starts from a very young age. And then as they reach adulthood, it's not just, okay, make sure you hold your brother's hand and make sure you cook for the family. It also becomes financial. It also becomes problem solving. It also becomes conflict resolution. It becomes sometimes even housing, food, clothing, meeting the basic needs. And a lot of times the person who is in this high functioning, usually first born position,
Mav:
Yeah, nobody really checks in on them to see if they're okay. They are the ones who are checking in on the parents. They're checking in on siblings. They often will even check on extended family members. So I like to say that families have a dance and that's what their own dance looks like. You take care of all of us and I'm guessing you're responsible enough to make sure that you take care of your own needs. Now it's not like these families are actively trying to be mean.
Mav:
or they don't care about this person, they care. But when you have somebody who is so responsible, responsible people learn how to put their needs on the back burner. So they typically you look fine when you ask them, how are you doing? Which again, it's very rare that anybody's even checking in on them. They'll just say fine. Because they're thinking my needs are not as important as yours. So if I tell you I'm not doing fine,
Mav:
you might worry about me and I don't want to do that. That's not the natural order. I'm the one who's supposed to be worrying about you. But on the other hand, these high functioning people at night when they lay their head on the bed, there's a little bit of resentment because you know that your shoulders are heavier than the shoulders of the people around you. You have an inclination that the people around you are capable, but you've also trained them.
Mav:
rely on you. You've also trained them to solve, you know, for you to solve all their problems. Let's be honest, if somebody solved all your problems, you begin to lose your own problem-solving skills. You helplessness. Yeah, yeah, so true. And as you're just speaking, I'm just having images of big uncles, big aunties.
Mav:
who never really shared how they felt. And even when I remember checking in in one of my big uncles who does so well, it's always deflated. I'm good. How about you? And you just find that I called to check in on you and to know I'm doing well, I'm fine. How about you? How about your husband? How about your kids? And I'm like...
Mav:
The conversation is turning around again. So it's such a cultural conditioning for that. I believe shaped the high functioning person. Absolutely. Yeah, I had a lady tell me that she was applauded and rewarded whenever she takes on added responsibilities. Yes. But you know, family members, that seems to be when she's.
Mav:
validated in the family space. And then when she contemplates reducing what is on her plate, she worries about how her family will respond to that. Yes. So she withdraws from them for a while. Yes. Wow. I have had the opportunity to speak with some friends that are from other cultures as well, such as
Mav:
the Asian culture and I found that we tend to have such similarities as well, kind of driven to, you know, get qualifications, you know, get good paying jobs, know, own properties. And then there's this endless drive that doesn't allow us to slow down and really ask ourselves, what really are my values?
Mav:
what are the legacies I like to leave? Because sometimes we still feel, I feel that we're stuck in what cultural expectations are and the times have changed and culture has evolved. But then the things that drive us have not changed. We're still stuck in that space where we're not asking, confronting the question, why am I doing this? What's the end?
Mav:
particularly when things are really involved in talking about AI introduced and the whole thing is just... It's like the AI has just crushed a lot of routines and I'm hearing lots of high functioning people go like, what am I gonna be doing now? Yes, yes. How am I going to do that because...
Mav:
A lot of time is now going to be saved if one is implementing the AI. let's not go into that. But talk about poor sleeping and sleep problems. I know this is really your space. Talk about that and how it's functioning.
Mav:
Well, if you think about the high functioning person, they put their needs last. That includes their physical needs, right? The main goal of a high functioning person is I have this list of tasks, I have this list of projects, I have this list of achievements I need to be completing, and I need to do whatever it takes to check them off. It's as simple as that. So whether it means I'm not going to be eating well,
Mav:
whether it means I'm going to lose two to three hours of sleep, whatever it takes, I need to do it. Because remember when you're high functioning, it becomes part of your, your identity as a person. Right. You feel like a failure if you're not achieving at that very high level. And the interesting part is in my opinion, think high achieving people, the level at which they function, even on an average day,
Mav:
is still higher than the average person. I will say to them, do you know how hard you're pushing yourself? Because if you gave life 80 % of efforts, that would still be higher than most people's 100 % in my opinion. And they're like, really? But when your identity is about everything has to be A plus, everything has to be done to the best of my ability, sometimes there's some perfectionism going in there. There's a difference between excellence and perfectionism.
Mav:
Excellencies, I'm doing my best. Perfectionism is no mistakes ever. Please pause that for a moment. Let's take that in. Please repeat that again. Yes. Thanks. So excellence is doing things to the best of your ability. Right. It does not have to be perfect. Perfectionism is no mistake.
Mav:
Excellence is healthy. It means I'm doing my best, right? So some days my best could be a C plus because that's what's going on. Let's say I wasn't feeling well. I went and I wrote an exam. I got a C plus. That was my best. I had a headache. It is what it is. That's excellence. Perfectionism means even though my head is throbbing, I will still push myself to get that A plus. And if I don't get that A plus, I feel so
Mav:
horrible about myself as a person. I don't even give myself a pass because I would think. No excuses whatsoever. that is so, so big. I wish we had time to unpack that. Where high-functioning people tend to have the standard in their head. I like to And it's in their head. It's in their head.
Mav:
Do high functioning people attract certain kind of people relationally?
Mav:
I would imagine so. I would imagine that a lot of times you meet a high functioning person who's attracted to someone who's maybe not as high functioning because high functioning people tend to be fixers. Don't worry. I'm going to fix it for you. Don't worry. I'll pick up the slack. Don't worry. I'll compliment all the things that you don't have. Of course you have cases where two high functioning people
Mav:
If we stop that now, it's going to take the whole lot of more time. Thanks for sharing that. When you talked about striving for perfection as a high-function person, how does it tie up to anxiety and expecting the worst, always on the alert for what might go wrong, hyper vigilance?
Mav:
And how can a high functioning person begin a journey of recovery? What steps can they take?
Mav:
So if we are to rewind back, a lot of times high functioning people are rewarded as children. We see that a lot in certain cultures where when say an auntie comes to visit you and the first, she doesn't even really ask how you're doing. She just asks, how are you doing in school? And then you go, I got five A's and she says, oh, what a wonderful girl, right? Or let's say you say,
Mav:
I got four As and one B. Rather than celebrating everything, they say, how can you get a B? You need to strive for an A, right? So you get the impression in your head, I'm only worthy if I'm getting As, right? When you graduate from university, they ask, so what are you doing? Certain professions, they say, lovely. Another profession, they'll say, no, you could do better.
Mav:
So you learn quickly. My value lies in the number of things I can check off the list. And these are things that breed perfectionism. Again, I don't think parents or aunties and uncles are trying to breed perfectionism. But it's the little comments, you know, even I remember when I was going to school in Nigeria in my secondary school, had inspection. I don't know if it's every week or every day. I don't remember.
Mav:
Basically, you line up during the assembly. They checked, oh my gosh, they checked everything. They checked our hair. They checked our fingernails. They checked our uniforms, down to our socks, to our shoes, right? So again, there's nothing wrong with being neat and tidy, but the expectation was you should always be 100 % put together. It's a little, little subtle communication that...
Mav:
make us think there's no room for failure and of course if there's anything that's out of place you immediately get a punishment yeah so sad because yeah i remember that puts it has now given birth to a lot of affectionism in appearance like yes my hair is not this way yeah and i'm not wearing clothes like this
Mav:
I'm not going to be validated. wouldn't receive compliments when I go out for events or some parents might ask their kids, particularly daughters, did you receive compliments for your new hair today? And the girl begins to develop that mindset that my worth is in my appearance. when it's
Mav:
looking any less, I'm not going to be validated. And that is so much pressure. brings so much pressure. Yeah, yeah. And we see parents only praising children when the work is done perfectly. Even something as simple as go and sweep the floor or go cook soup or whatever it is that domestic task is. Parents seldom praise children for effort, right? Which is excellence.
Mav:
They usually only praise perfection. So what does that do to a child? You're at home, you're only ever praised when things are perfect. You go to school, you're only ever praised when things are perfect. You're really only ever praised if you get all A's. If you a B, then sorry, it's not good enough. So everywhere you go, and then of course, imagine in the workplace, you imagine.
Mav:
This is probably what's expected of me. And as you keep doing these things, it quickly becomes a part of your personality. So I'm not really sure if we're born highly functioning or if it's a nurture thing, but I don't know. I know the culture definitely plays a big role. Absolutely. By culture, again, I'm including the home environment as well. Imagine that a child is raised in a home environment where probably, I think, women.
Mav:
particularly seem to be very poor to high functioning. And when the mom is a high functioning person and the girl is watching that and observing that from the mom, often that becomes a model. And then they go on and pass that on to their own children and the next generation and the next generation. And that just keeps going on. So think about it. Let me just interject really quickly.
Mav:
Yeah, if think about it, a lot of women in certain cultures are pretty much superheroes. So they're having a career where they are working really hard and trying to be perfect. Their appearance pretty much looks perfect. Then they come home and they are these domestic goddesses. You know, they have to be able to cook like queens. They have to be able to clean like
Mav:
i know what. so they are working so hard. and i don't even know if these women sleep. i'm not sure when these women are sleeping or if they sleep. so as a a girl watching that, that is your role model right? somebody who barely sleeps, who is stressed. i mean you can tell they are stressed out. i mean you can just tell. but that's the norm. so you think this is what is expected of me. anything short of that, lot of times you'll be called lazy.
Mav:
Wow, this is so much. Hi listeners. I guess the point we're trying to make today is that it's okay for your plate not to be full all the time. It's okay to not have what to do, to-do list every day of the week. It's okay to put your legs on the couch and just watch a movie if you like.
Mav:
It's okay to unlearn some of the ways that we were parented in a high functioning space and to repair ourselves and say, hey, I have worked hard enough. It's okay to feel rewarded to go to, inspire, fix your nails, fix your hair. Yes. get a pedicure, get a manicure and, go for swimming and do relaxing things.
Mav:
and being intentional about it as well and schedule that into one's, routine and to say that I need down times. Down times are really important. And yeah, as we bring this to a conclusion, I just wanted to recommend more strategies that, you know, can help highly functioning people go into recovery.
Mav:
Yes, yes. So it is important to begin to give yourself a pat on the back for just everyday mundane activities. A lot of times high functioning women almost punish themselves. We say such negative things about ourselves. We think we are lazy, we are stupid, all these things. So remembering that excellence versus perfection as you're doing your task as yourself. Am I aiming for perfection or am I aiming for excellence?
Mav:
I often will tell my clients who are high functioning, I want you to learn how to function at 80%, not 100%. And they usually gasp. They're like, what? That sounds awful. I said, when you're making your bed, make it at 80 % your normal level. Put a little bit of wrinkles in the bed. And they're like, oh gosh, how horrible. I said, yes. When you're writing your paper, instead of reviewing it 20 times, only review it 18 times, 80%. That's what I need you to function at.
Mav:
Find somebody to hold you accountable as well. Find a non-high functioning friend who can validate you, who can check in on you, who when you're moving too fast, because high functioning people don't always notice how fast they move. When you're moving too fast, they slow you down. They say, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. You've been sitting at that computer for six hours. Come on, let's go out, let's relax. It's very, very important. Those are some things. And with the to-do list that you mentioned, I often say,
Mav:
Don't put more than three things a day on your list. You don't have to have 10 things. Three things and we're done. That's it. Wow. I need to start doing that now. Three things and then learning to outsource if you can, right? You don't have to be the one completing every single task at work or every single task in that household. You need to train your family, your friend, your work colleagues.
Mav:
to hear you asking for help. It is not bad to need help because you're human, right? So asking for help, outsourcing tasks, learning to just sit back, schedule a day a week or a day a month where you just relax. Like you said, go to the spa, get your nails done, go for swimming, go for a walk, read a book, take a nap, do something else that is not productivity, quote unquote, productivity focused.
Mav:
Yeah, and not feel like you're wasting time. Yes. Because that's another thing, feel guilty about downtime. Yes. Yeah. Wow. We are packed in such a short time, but we have to go. It's such a lovely conversation to have about how it's functioning.
Mav:
I am not sure if we're concluding this topic. We might be bringing more episodes to it. We need to unpack this high functioning thing, particularly culturally. I believe a lot of people will find the strategies really helpful. So listeners, take your time, listen again to this podcast and most importantly, utilize the information shared.
Mav:
Thank you, bye for now. Thank you.

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