🎪 Not My Circus, Not My Monkeys… Except They Are My Monkeys (and They're Juggling Chainsaws)

Confessions from an ADHD, HSP heart with a savior complex offering a sassy guide for boundary-challenged fellow zebras

You know the phrase. We’ve all thrown it around with a smug sense of emotional maturity:
“Not my circus, not my monkeys.”
Translation: Not my problem. I’m walking away. I’m evolved. I read Brené Brown. I have boundaries.

But what happens when your circus tent is somehow magnetically lined with guilt, obligation, hypervigilance, and an honorary trauma-responder cape stitched from childhood conditioning, religious guilt, and your type A personality tendencies?

Because here’s the truth: sometimes those monkeys are yours.
Or at least they feel like yours.
Because you were born with the neurodivergent sixth sense that picks up other people’s stress like a damn emotional Wi-Fi signal.

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When You’re an Empath with Executive Dysfunction

Let’s start with the basics.
If you’re reading this, odds are your brain runs a cocktail of ADHD, HSP wiring, and CPTSD leftovers from helping people your entire life. You can’t sit in a room with someone crying without plotting six possible rescue missions and Googling resources like you’re on a CIA task force.

You know the vibe. Hell, I live that vibe.

• You offer to “just send a quick email” to help.

• That turns into drafting their appeal letter to Medicare.

• And suddenly you’re on a three-way call with their pharmacy fighting about a prior auth denial like a pit bull in yoga pants.

Because you. Can’t. Not. Help.

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Exhibit A: My In-Laws and the Geriatric Monkey Parade

So here’s a story.

My sweet, aging in-laws are... resistant. Resistant to help. Resistant to admitting they can’t drive, shop, pay bills, wipe their asses or function without confusing the toaster for the TV remote. But are they grateful when you bring up home care? Oh no. That’s “interference.” That’s “pushing.” That’s “you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Guess what I did anyway?

I meddled. Like a nosy zebra with a clipboard and a martyr complex. I tried calling home health agencies. I suggested geriatric care managers. I practically drafted a PowerPoint on assisted living. All out of love. And desperation. Because I could see the flaming hoops they were stumbling through and thought maybe, just maybe, I could duct tape this circus together.

Cue the family tension.

Cue the “you need to stay out of it” speech.

Cue the weird silence at dinner.

BUT—here’s the twist—a few short days later, they did call back the patient advocate I found to help them. An outside resource who wasn’t in the family. My relentless hint-dropping, my awkward boundary-overstepping campaign? It actually worked. They are *hopefully* going to get much needed help. Real help. And my husband and I finally exhaled for the first time in six months. Until the next call at least.

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What To Do When You’re the Ringleader of Everyone Else’s Crisis

If you’re someone who feels emotionally hijacked by other people’s chaos, let me validate this: it’s not because you’re broken. It’s because you care. A lot. Too much, even.

But there’s a difference between caring and carrying.

You were never meant to carry other people’s monkeys on your back while also juggling flaming torches of your own chronic illness, disability, or burnout. And yes I am speaking to myself here!

You were not meant to be everyone’s:

• unpaid crisis manager

• over-functioning advocate

• stand-in therapist

• walking Google Doc of community resources

Especially when they haven’t even asked. I’m still pondering why I do this. Therapy to follow.

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How to Leave the Tent Without Guilt

So, what do you do when your trauma-trained brain insists on staying?

1. Ask: “Am I the best person for this job?”
Not: Can I do it?
But: Should I? Would my energy be better spent healing myself or helping someone ready to help themselves? Am I enabled a learned helplessness?

2. Use the sacred phrase:
"I trust that you'll figure this out, and if you want resources, I'm happy to share a few
(to myself- but I can't manage this for you.)"
It’s both empowering and boundary-setting. A chef’s kiss of emotional disengagement. Ah, if I could only learn this one! It’s way easier to write about how to stop, than to actually stop this behavior.

3. Stop forecasting doom.
Just because someone might fall doesn’t mean you have to build them a crash pad. People grow when they wobble. Let them said Mel Robbins.

4. Make your monkeys interesting.
If your own life feels empty or disconnected, you’ll keep hijacking someone else’s drama for meaning. Tend to your own circus. Start that new project. Take the pilates class. Focus on your monkeys—they miss you.

5. Remember: rescuing isn’t always helping.
It’s sometimes preventing someone from building their own wings. It also creates resentment—on both sides.

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Soapbox Moment: Let the Monkeys Poop in Their Own Cages

There is freedom in letting people struggle. It’s not heartless. It’s respectful.

There is strength in sitting with the discomfort of “this isn’t mine to fix.” Widen your windows of tolerance and let the shit smell fill the air.

There is peace in leaving the tent before the fire starts.

And you—zebra, sensitive soul, neurospicy wonder—you’re not heartless for walking away. You’re healing.
You’re choosing rest over rescue.
You’re finally learning that not every monkey deserves a seat on your back.

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You are allowed to care deeply and act sparingly.
You are allowed to advocate fiercely without intervening compulsively.
You are allowed to love others without being their emotional life raft.

Let your own circus be weird and wonderful.
Let your monkeys be quirky and well-fed.
But keep the gate locked. Because not every monkey needs your banana.

—Zebra Underground
(where compassion meets boundaries… and sarcasm is self-care)