Too Good for Her Own Good

Family therapist Jo-Ann Krestan explains the code of goodness women live by and how they can break free from the burden of over-responsibility and move toward more balance in life.

Interview by Diane Campbell

The social revolution introduced by the women's movement has led women and men into a struggle to more equally define gender roles. Yet, many who have responded to the call for liberation find themselves burdened by a more overwhelming sense of responsibility than they experienced before answering the freedom call. While people have been freed to assume more privileges and responsibilities, many have not been free to let go of the role their gender has traditionally assumed. Women and men find themselves working harder than ever to prove that they are good enough and find themselves wondering "just how much is good enough?"

In their recent book, Too Good for Her Own Good: Searching for Self and Intimacy in Important Relationships, Claudia Bepko and Jo-Ann Krestan address the struggle for goodness in a historical context. They suggest that women's struggle to be good is a compensation for historical messages which tell women that they are inferior and deficient in comparison with men.

In their work as family therapists, Ms Bepko and Ms Krestan have formulated these rules into a "Code of Goodness." They discuss ways in which the code is a problem and suggest alternatives for women to create more balanced lives. The vital nature of a mutually sup-portive network of relationships is explored. Their systemic perspective leads to their belief that a balanced life includes caring for others, as well as for one's self.

Aurora: Could you explain the code of goodness you believe women live by?

Krestan: The code of goodness can be condensed into five rules: be attractive, be unselfish and of service, be a lady, make relationships work, and be competent without complaint. It is almost as if women were in a hypnotic trance because the rules of the code of goodness go so deep in our society that they affect us without us really being aware of them.

Aurora: What's so bad about being good?

Krestan: What's bad about being good is that it sets up unbalanced relationships where we do too much for others at the expense of ourselves. A woman who lives by the code of goodness focuses on everyone else instead of focusing on her own life. It also deprives other people from forming partnerships with her.

Aurora: How do you know when good is too good?

Krestan: Good is too good when you're trapped in an addiction cycle. Good is too good if you're suffering panic attacks. Good is too good if you forget to take responsibility for you because you're so busy taking responsibility for others. Good is too good when you're suffering from depression. Good is too good when you remember everyone else's birthday, and nobody remembers yours. Good is too good when you can say "No," but you still feel guilty.

Aurora: You suggest a code of balance to replace the code of goodness. Could you describe that code of balance?

Krestan: It's certainly not a prescription of rules so much as some ideas about what a woman who has broken free would look like. Part of the problem that we see in our clients is that they know what they need to break out of, but they don't know what feeling good would feel like.

Rather than focusing on being attractive, we can focus on being comfortable. On the issue of weight, we could accept ourselves as we are and set our own standards for health and comfort. Instead of trying to be a lady and always making sure our impulses never inconvenience or discomfort anyone else, we could learn to be direct with people. Instead of always being unselfish and of service, we could learn to be responsive so that instead of taking responsibility for someone else's problems, we are responsive to them. We are not suggesting that women throw out caring about other people's feelings, but rather that we learn how to be responsive to those feelings.

Take, for example, a woman who has been in a marriage for 20 years and decides she wants more of her own life. When her husband reacts negatively to that change, which he is likely to do if he is used to her focusing her entire schedule around him, the woman should not tell him that's his problem and if he doesn't like it he should find a new wife.

Instead, she could say something responsive such as, "I know this is a change in the rules, and it probably makes you a little nervous. It makes me nervous, too." This will validate or acknowledge his feelings.

Aurora: You talk about a men's code of strength. How does that code relate to the women's code of goodness?

Krestan: Most men and women are trying to live up to impossible standards that don't necessarily fit real men and real women. Feminism was to have given everybody more freedom. The problem is that now we are all free to take on the other guy's role, but we are not free to give up our own.

Women are free to choose the corporate track and to sequence their pregnancies, but they are not free not to be mothers and not to care about relationships. Men are free to be tender and loving companions and good fathers, but they are not free not to make a living. What looks like role flexibility has essentially become role overload.

A woman shouldn't be so trapped into having to be unselfish and of service that if she is out later than the man, she has to cook dinner. And the man shouldn't be so trapped into his image of himself as a good provider that he can't welcome a woman having a career.

Aurora: My experience as a therapist working with women is that often they get so removed from their own feelings that they don't know what it feels like anymore to touch who they are. What are some steps or exercises that help women know what they feel and what is true for them?

Krestan: We first of all get people to identify what stories about goodness came down to them in the families they grew up in. In one exercise, we might write down the indicators of the code of goodness up on the board and have people break into small groups to discuss the ones that lean on them the most. So the first step is a form of consciousness raising.

The next step is to trace where the rules came from. Women suffer from something that we call "basic female shame," which comes from the historical view of women as lacking and deficient compared to men. We all experience shame at different levels and to different degrees. But it is the "not fully valid as a human being" feeling that is part of the collective legacy of womanhood. Human beings suffer from a kind of existential shame for the human condition, which is the recognition of the fact that they are not divine. Women suffer from a second shame because they are not seen even as fully human. If men can't be as good as gods, women can't be as good as men. We are often caught up in a cycle of shame as a natural response to our failure to meet the impossible and contradictory standards of the code of goodness. We can't be totally competent and achieving while being unselfish and of service.

The code of goodness has been instilled in women in many subtle ways. I was told as a child, for instance, to never take the biggest piece of cake at a birthday party. That's such a silly thing! Where did that come from? It really was telling women, "Don't be too visible; don't bring too much attention to yourself."

The next step is to face a little crisis of goodness or a crisis of focus. Take this scenario, for example: I want to go to the library, and my kid says, "Can't you just run by the dry cleaners? It's not out of your way, Mom." I have really set the day aside to go to the library, but I say to myself, "It's not that much out of my way. What's the matter with me that I can't take five minutes out?" But women lead interrupted lives, and that is a crisis of focus. Do I give them, or do I give to me?

At this point, we teach women that change starts small, and we coach them through the process of change. The point at which change occurs is not the first step but the second step when the other guy tries to make you feel guilty for changing.

In a work situation, for example, the first step may be to decide that you are not going to work overtime anymore. So you say to your boss, "I've decided to take Saturdays off." The language here is very important. "I've decided" is much stronger than "I wish you would recognize my need for a day off."

But your boss is going to try to get a little more, particularly if you have been working overtime for nothing for 10 years. He says, "We're really counting on you just this one time. We're behind on the deadline."

Now is the choice point; either you give in, or you get angry because he's trying to stop you from making the change, or you responsively and firmly say, "I understand I'm changing the rules, and perhaps I should have given you more notice that I am not willing to work overtime any more. I understand that you're annoyed with me, and I accept that. But I'm going to take Saturdays off."

What happens with women and men both is we want to change, but we want someone else to give us permission to change.

Aurora: So a lot of your work focuses on helping people stay in their process of change.

Krestan: Yes, that's a very good way to put it. It is important for people to stay centred in their change and to get support from others so they don't feel undue guilt. Staying in that process of change is extraordinarily empower-ing. When you resist that first invitation to change back, what Harriet Lerner [author of The Dance of Anger and The Dance of Intimacy] calls the change back reaction, you feel differentiated; we call it empowered.

Aurora: So how does the code of balance empower women to move from goodness to wholeness?

Krestan: The code of balance empowers women to know themselves and to make choices about their own standards rather than to simply take refuge in the standards of others. Each of the ideas in the code of balance has a different way of empowering. Let me mention a few examples.

Being direct, for example. One of the self-help exercises we suggest is that you call a friend who tends to keep you on the phone too long. When it comes time to get off the phone, be direct and say, "I'm going to get off the phone now," without offering a bunch of excuses. It's a choice about what I am and am not going to do. When a woman is faced with a crisis of good-ness, she needs to ask herself, "What's the issue? What's my bottom line? Whose problem is it? What, if anything, needs to be done about this by me?" and then simply to take a position and make a statement, not about what she needs from the other guy, but about what she is and is not going to do. That locates the power in her choice rather than waiting for a re-sponse from the rest of the world.

There are many subtle ways in which women are so wonderfully talented at being the power behind the throne and empowering everybody else, but not taking the power themselves. By power I want to make clear that we're talking about power "to" not power "over." It's power "over" that I think has destroyed our environment, our family relationships. I think it frees men, too because if women are direct, men can respond directly. Nurturing, in balance, can also be very empowering. We suggest that women hang onto their wonderful skill of nurturing, but that they direct at least a little of it at themselves not just at everybody else.

There is simply more to do than can be done in our lives when most of our time is spent at work. Work dominates the lives of all of us too much. As much as we may love it, most of us are out of balance with it, most by necessity rather than by choice. A society that demands that people sacrifice the major portion of their lives for the sake of other people's profit is not a nurturing or a healthy society.

When the rules of work begin to change at a larger societal level, life will become more balanced for all of us. But women may have to stimulate that larger change by making the point that they can't do it all. If we play by a rule, we reinforce it. Since our presence in the work force is becoming more economically important to businesses, women may be in a critical position of power to force change in the larger rules about how this society does business. If we learn to say "no" more often in a work setting, then we change the expectations that anyone, man or woman, can work single-mindedly without concern for relationships.

When our work environments can allow for more vacation time, childcare, flexible work hours, job sharing, and a shortened workday, we'll all feel differently about work. We'll get the message that perfection, competition, achievement, and production aren't the end goals of life itself, that they aren't the major measures of our value as people. We'll give up some of the drive to have "things" that feeds our imbalance with work. Work will have its important, but balanced, place in our lives, whether we're men or women. And as a result, we may get to be in better balance with ourselves.

Books by Jo-Ann Krestan

Bridges to Recovery: Addiction, Family Therapy, and Multicultural . Free Press, 2006

Das Superfrauen-Syndrom. Vom weiblichen Zwang, es allen recht zu machen ,
by Claudia Bepko and Jo-Ann Krestan. Fischer, 2001

Nosotras; libres, amantes, creativas (Taller De La Hechicera) , by Claudia Bepko, Jo-Ann Krestan. Gai, 2000.

Singing at the Top of Our Lungs: Women, Love, and Creativity , by Claudia Bepko , Jo-Ann Krestan. Perennial; Reprint edition 1993.

Too Good for Her Own Good: Searching for Self and Intimacy in Important Relationships by Claudia Bepko and Jo-Ann Krestan. Harper Collins, 1991.

Too Good for her Own Good-Breaking Free from the Burden of Female Responsibility, by Claudia Bepko and Jo-Ann Krestan. Harper and Row 1990.

The Responsibility Trap a Blueprint for Treating the Alcoholic Family , by Claudia Bepko and Jo-Ann Krestan. The Free Press, 1985

Article originally published Fall 1991

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Campbell, Diane. Too Good for Her Own Good: Jo-Ann Krestan. Aurora Online: