BRILLIANT + When Rest Feels Wrong + When Action Feels Wrong

The Over/Under-Functioning Bundle

For when one of you is doing too much, one of you isn’t doing enough, and you keep having the same fight about it.

Both of your nervous systems are working really hard to survive what feels threatening.

Name your price, $47 to $87 · suggested $77

Get all 3

You walk by the sink and you see the dishes. You walk by the pile of laundry on the floor and you fold it. You track the schedules, the meals, the groceries, the kids’ events, the appointments, the bills, and the health of every relationship you’re in. And when you finally sit down, your insides are anything but still.

Or you’re the one who says I’ll do it later, and then forgets. You can see exactly what needs to happen and you can’t make yourself begin. You keep telling yourself you’ll start tomorrow, or next week, or when you feel more ready, and the readiness never comes.

And if you live with the other one, you know the loop. The one doing less forgets. The one doing more jumps in and does the task, or explodes, or gives the big lecture. Then the one doing less shuts down more, and the one doing more ramps up the control and the rage. And you just keep going in circles.

It’s a spell, a literal full body trance that was cast over your nervous system long before you were old enough to know what happened.

Because everybody has been calling it character. Perfectionist, control freak, micromanager, workaholic, martyr, nag, uptight, too much. Or lazy, irresponsible, slacker, unmotivated, flaky, immature, avoidant. Labeling someone as lazy or as a control freak is an ignorant shortcut.

Shame freezes our ability to be curious and collapses the flexibility we need to change. So when we add shame on top of a survival response, we cement the pattern even more.

Just rest more and just do more might make sense in your head. The survival response doesn’t care. And overfunctioners, we’ll go do more work on ourselves, thinking maybe I’m the problem, maybe my standards are too high. That’s you trying to do the work for both people. It will not work.

You want a choice again. I can act, I can not act. Both options are available to me. You want reciprocity, where I carry what I have the capacity to carry, you carry what you have the capacity to carry, and we renegotiate when life shifts.

And you want to both be here, responding to this moment, with the energy flowing both ways.

3 pieces. BRILLIANT shows you the whole dynamic, and the 2 guides go inside each position. You don’t need to watch it with a partner, and you don’t need to know your type.

BRILLIANT

3-part workshop replay, with Q&A. Lifetime access. Sold on its own for $155.

• Why rest feels threatening to an overfunctioner, and why initiative feels dangerous to an underfunctioner
• How shame, capitalism, patriarchy, and gender conditioning bend both
• Whether your pattern is survival, learned behavior, or both, and how to tell the difference
• The 3 stages both of you go through to break the spell

An overfunctioner responds to stress by taking on too much: doing, fixing, managing, controlling, anticipating, rescuing, or compensating for others. An underfunctioner responds to stress by collapsing, numbing, withdrawing, procrastinating, avoiding, or going passive when they’re overwhelmed. Both strategies evolved to manage unmet needs for safety, attunement, and shared responsibility. And a body we see as lazy is often a body that is chronically exhausted.

David and I have had the conversation about messes in the house many times. I’d say, I walk by the sink and I see the dishes, and it’s like you walk by and don’t see them at all. I had a lot of resentment about that until I understood that my nervous system ran hotter than his.

When you’re hypervigilant, you actually notice more than other people do, and you notice it faster, and you feel more internal urgency to fix it. He did see the dishes. His nervous system just wasn’t flagging them as a threat the way mine was.

Partly because I’m super witchy and I like spell better than pattern or dynamic. But it really is a spell, because it’s automatic, it’s unconscious, and it’s very, very embodied. Being enchanted means you are soothed just enough to keep the pattern alive without it ever giving you the thing you’re desperate for.

Some of it is survival, wired in because it was the only way to be safe. Some of it is learned. How many of you live in a family where at Thanksgiving all the men get up and go watch the football game and all the women stay in the kitchen and do the dishes? Most of us carry some of both, and the work is different for each.

The one doing less forgets, and says, I forgot, that’s my responsibility. I’m putting a reminder on my phone right now. The one doing more feels the pull to take over, and says it out loud: I feel the urge to jump in and do this. Naming exactly what’s happening creates space between you and the compulsion.

It happens in layers and stages. You did not choose this pattern. I know you did not choose it. But breaking the spell is a choice.

One honest thing before you buy

When you finally stop overfunctioning, you collapse first. You collapse because you’re no longer letting your cocktail of stress hormones and all the shoulds in your head dictate what you do. You collapse because you finally have to feel the grief of how much you’ve been doing inauthentically and what it’s cost you. You collapse because your nervous system doesn’t know what to do with itself for a bit.

And moving again after years of not moving usually feels worse before it feels better too. It gets harder before it gets easier. Both guides will tell you what your body is doing and why.

If I don’t hold it all together, it will all fall apart. That was my inner narrative on repeat for decades. I cannot tell you how many years my ability to rest hinged on how many things I could cross off a to-do list.

I didn’t even see my own distortion until a few months before I taught BRILLIANT. As long as I was measuring David’s efforts by my level of exhaustion, he always came up short. He was actually contributing a healthy amount. He just wasn’t as tired as me.

If you’re the one doing more, you start initiating only when you’re asked, when you’re genuinely available, and when desire is present. You fuck around and find out with trust, so your partner has space to rise.

If you’re the one doing less, you set the reminder now. You take responsibility for a missed follow-through without justifying it, and you initiate repair even when you don’t know how: I know I’m supposed to initiate repair, and I don’t know how, but I’m going to try. And the 2 of you start talking regularly about who carries what.

Do we both have to watch?

You can watch BRILLIANT alone or side by side on the couch. Then read the guide for your own position, and after that, read the other one. That second guide is the one that changes the relationship.

How do I know which guide is mine?

When Rest Feels Wrong is for the one doing too much. When Action Feels Wrong is for the one doing too little. You get both, because most of us have lived on both sides.

Is it worth it if I’m the only one interested?

Yes. Understanding what your own body is doing changes how you show up in the dynamic, even before anyone else changes.

What do I get?

BRILLIANT, the full 3-part workshop replay with Q&A (sold on its own for $155), plus both guides. All 3 are yours to keep.

What should I pay?

It’s name your price, $47 to $87. The suggested price is $77. Pick the number that fits your life right now. It’s the same bundle at every number.

What you get

• BRILLIANT, the full 3-part workshop replay with Q&A, with lifetime access
• When Rest Feels Wrong, the guide for the one doing too much
• When Action Feels Wrong, the guide for the one doing too little
• All 3, yours to keep

Name your price

$47 to $87

Suggested price: $77. All 3, yours to keep. Pick the number that fits your life right now. It’s the same bundle at every number.

Get all 3