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 swinging from the 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 ‘responsible’ one!  Super-Copers rarely ask for help, never give-up, and make it all look astoundingly easy.

Super-Copers are expected to handle it all…so they do.

Oh, here’s another thing, Super-Copers can defy gravity!  It’s true!  Super-Copers have bounce.  They rarely 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 she did have a very exciting lifestyle and BIG hair!)  However, if we have to get real here, (yes, my love, I’m afraid we have to) there are drawbacks to being a Super-Coper.

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

No one sees you lying awake in the middle of the night wondering if you can pull it all off again tomorrow.

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

It can be dangerous being a Super-Coper.  While you are 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.

Then there’s the Super-Coper ‘post-party crash’.  When you’re finally done, when you get the chance to catch your breath, the emotional impact hits.  You finally come down from the rush of stress hormones.  You may start feeling shaky, anxious, overwhelmed or even sad or depressed.   You most definitely end-up exhausted.  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 some sign of weakness which sends you running back to your wardrobe only to emerge wearing, you got it, 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.  The time has come to be bold and to 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 (whoa now that’s revolutionary!)

Even if you have been annoited the Super-Coper, you don’t have to agree to handle everything.

The thing is, it’s not a bad thing to be a Super-Coper, indeed it’s pretty special.  But you do need to recognise when you have taken it over the top, when you have donned your cape!  Being Super-Copers ourselves has allowed us to navigate some pretty steep slopes in life; our secret is knowing how, when, where, and for whom to use our super-powers.

Go ahead embrace being a Super-Coper but 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 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.