Quick, check your lingerie drawer!  If you find red knickers and a cape, you may be a Super-Coper.  You leap tall buildings in 4-inch heels, catapult over the glass ceiling, and perform acrobatic feats while juggling small children and grown adults alike!  Sure you may feel like you are walking a tightrope or precariously dangling from a trapeze, but no one else would ever catch-on because you are a Super-Coper.

So how can you tell if you have a super-heroine tucked away inside you?  Of course, the red knickers and cape is a dead give away!  After that (hmmm) you are likely female, probably a perfectionist, and most definitely the overly responsible one!  Super-copers are expected to handle it all…so they do.

Super-Copers rarely ask for help, never give-up, and make it all look astoundingly easy.

Here’s another thing, Super-Copers defy gravity!  It’s true (cross my heart) they have bounce.  They rarely, if ever, fall flat on their face despite the fact that their knees may be buckling under the load or they are teetering on the edge of burnout.

Most of us grew-up admiring super-heroines, who didn’t want to be Wonder Woman?  (I mean talk about an exciting lifestyle and BIG hair!)  However, if we have to get real here, (yes, my love, I’m afraid we have to) there are definitely drawbacks to being a Super-Coper.

For instance, not everyone loves a Super-Coper.  (Gasp!)  We know, hard to imagine,  what’s not to love about us.  Others want us to shoulder the load, sometimes demand that we shoulder the load, but then get a little cranky when we make it look ‘too’ easy.   Sometimes others perceive us as a ‘Little Miss Smarty Pants’ and resent the fact that we appear to handle it all effortlessly (sigh, we know differently).

No one sees the middle of the night worrying
about pulling it all off again tomorrow.

Super-Copers do whatever is necessary to solve problems, meet deadlines, or handle emergencies.  They don’t fall to their knees under the weight, they don’t wear their hearts on their sleeves, they don’t moan, winge, or whine, and they don’t beat their chest in the midst of a crisis.  (Usually because they’re too busy holding everyone else up and solving all their problems!) 

You won’t know when a Super-Coper is over-extended:
they often don’t know it themselves.

That is why it can be risky being a Super-Coper.  While you are busy being-all and doing-all you miss your own signs of exhaustion, overwhelm, or even illness.  Sometimes you simply ignore the signs because you believe you have no choice but to shoulder the load.

When you’re finally done, when you get the chance to catch your breath, the emotional impact hits.  We call this the Super-Coper Post-Party Crash.  You finally come down from the rush of stress hormones.  You may start feeling shaky, anxious, overwhelmed, or even sad or depressed.  You may even catch a cold or flu.  You most definitely end-up exhausted and depleted.

Here’s where it goes south, over-coping is so completely normal to you that you misinterpret this normal post-stress reaction as you ‘not handling things’ or as a sign of weakness which sends you running back to your wardrobe only to emerge wearing, you got it darling, red knickers and a cape!  Oh dear, you can see how the whole Super-Coper thing backfires!

You have been raised and trained to be a Super-Coper.  Family, friends, co-workers, pretty well everyone, have relied on you over and over again to be their super-heroine.  We would be willing to bet our crowns that you have filled this role from the time you were very young.  Even if you have been annoited the Super-Coper, you don’t have to agree to handle everything.

The time has come to be bold.  Stop letting others put you in this box, even when it comes gift-wrapped.

If you are a Burnout Queen you naturally have great problem solving skills and emotional fortitude.  You have life-coping skills that others don’t necessarily have or use.  You are strong.  There are just a few little gems you need to learn like setting limits for others, refusing requests, or letting others handle their own situations or problems. (Now that’s revolutionary!)

Being a Super-Coper is pretty special.  However, you need to recognise when you have donned your cape and gone over the top!

Being Super-Copers ourselves has allowed us to navigate some pretty steep slopes in life; our secret to preventing burnout in our lives is knowing how, when, where, and for whom to use our super-powers.

So, my love, go ahead embrace being a Super-Coper but please, promise no more leaping over tall buildings or saving the world!

Our last words of wisdom?  Lose the cape Darling but keep the red knickers because, you know, Burnout Queens live to defy ordinary!

Until Next Time…Grab Life by the Crown!

P.S.  The BOQs would love to hear from you!  Leave your wisdom and comments in the box below.