You’re Not The Boss Of Me!

Psychological reactance, burnout, breakups, and stuckness

Last week, a new client texted me at 2 AM from the hospital parking lot. She was halfway through her third overnight shift in a row. “You know what,” she wrote. “I’m done. That’s it. This is killing me. I’ve got to quit.”

And then, 10 seconds later: “But I can’t quit.”

Another 10 seconds: “But I need to quit.”

The thing about Sandy’s story (not her real name) is that her husband had seen her burnout coming a decade ago. He’d also seen it absolutely tank her during the height of the pandemic. 

He’d been nudging her toward a change for years. He’d even gone so far as to plot out three different exit strategies. 

She found a reason why each one of them would never work.

Her mentor had also suggested she could consider part time work. But she knew the lie that is “part-time” medicine. So, nope. Not that one either. 

Her therapist wanted to work with her on setting better boundaries. That one—oof. It met with a 20-minute rant on how boundaries aren’t enough to exist in a system that’s designed to extract as much work out of her as it can (and, truthfully, she’s not wrong).

Her friends, her rabbi…they all had suggestions. 

And she could find the Achilles heel in all of them.

There’s a name for this. It’s called psychological reactance. It was keeping Sandy stuck, and it might be keeping you stuck too.

When Helping Hurts

In 1966, psychologist Jack Brehm proposed his theory of reactance. In the seminal paper, he wrote: 

Individuals have certain freedoms with regard to their behavior. If these behavioral freedoms are reduced or threatened with reduction, the individual will be motivationally aroused to regain them.

Psychological reactance is the reason this sign exists:

It’s also the reason we’re always tempted to do this:

Source: u/levyhime on Reddit

And it’s found everywhere, not just in us mere mortals. In fact, this is the quote that opens Brehm’s 1981 book on reactance theory:

When the press predicted that [President] Johnson would get rid of all the Kennedy men in the White House, he invited them all to stay, and when he was later praised for doing so, he gradually let almost all of them resign.

So, whether we’re a random New Yorker writing a blog post on a Sunday morning (hello!) or the President of the United States, we’re hardwired to resist—hardwired for an instant, visceral pushback—when we feel our freedoms being threatened. 

The most obvious example of psychological reactance is the toddler actively resisting his nap despite eyelids that weigh more than his head. 

But it’s everywhere.

I have a friend who’ll literally ask me to give her dating advice, and then immediately tell me why it’s wrong. That’s reactance.

I’m sure you’ve got those friends too (and maybe, just maybe, you’re that friend). Once you start looking, you’ll see it everywhere, including in yourself. 

The impulse to disagree when someone gives you advice. That initial resistance when a coach, doctor, or therapist tells you what you need to do. That rebel that emerges when well-meaning friends opine about your work-life balance.

All of those are reactance.

And, sadly, sometimes the more desperately you need help, the more ferociously you might resist it from the people who can help you best.

You’re Not the Boss of Me

In 1976, Pennebaker and Sanders studied the things that trigger reactance. 

They created four placards to put in the men’s restroom at the University of Texas at Austin. (Honestly, why are these studies always done on college-aged men?) All four placards asked students not to graffiti the bathroom walls, but they varied in how they did it.

Specifically, Pennebaker and Sanders tweaked two domains:

• Authority: High-authority placards were signed by JR Buck, the Chief of Security, while low-authority placards were signed by JR Buck, a groundskeeper

• Threat: High-threat placards said, “Do NOT Write on the Walls!”, while the low-threat ones asked more politely: “Please, do not write on the walls”

Once the placards were installed, the researchers counted the number of new graffiti tags that showed up every two hours (it was the 1970s. There was lots of graffiti).

Here’s what they found:

• High Threat, High Authority: 1.24 tags per 2 hours

• High Threat, Low Authority: 0.58

• Low Threat, High Authority: 0.63

• Low Threat, Low Authority: 0.33

In other words: The most effective graffiti deterrent was a polite request from a low authority person—exactly the opposite of what people in authority expect!

The placards that elicited the most graffiti were the high-threat, high-authority ones. High threat elicited around twice as much graffiti as low threat, and, similarly, high perceived authority led to twice as much graffiti as low.

The boss might think he’s the boss of you. But those pooping college kids seem to be saying the exact opposite: “You’re not the boss of me, especially when you assert your authority.”

Think about that for a moment. When do we seek experts? When we’re deep in it (this is no longer a toilet metaphor). We go to experts to help us get out of the most intractable situations.

But the more expert someone is, and the (perceived) more authority they have over you, the less likely you are to comply, and the more likely you are to resist. 

Your Expertise Is Your Prison

For professionals who consider themselves experts in their own fields, this can get even more complicated. If you’re a doctor, a nurse, a lawyer, a teacher, a gemologist—whatever your expertise is, you’ve spent years, even decades, building it. You’re the one with answers, the one others turn to for help—and they even pay you for it. 

And now you’re burnt out from it.

There’s an adage every single one of my clients has heard from me: What got you here won’t get you there. 

In other words, the thought patterns, biases, behavioral techniques that allowed you to build the expertise (and burnt you out) are emphatically not the ones that’ll get you out of burnout.

And that’s exactly where the reactance rears its head. 

“This coach may also be a doctor, but she doesn’t know me like I know me,” you might tell yourself. And you’re right—you do know your situation intimately. You know every excuse, every rationalization, every reason why change is impossible. 

You’ve become an expert in your own stuckness.

In fact, recent research has shown that our reactance is highest when the perceived threat comes from our in-group. 

(Relatedly: Doctors make the worst patients.)

And that’s why I’ve watched brilliant physicians Houdini their way out of help, preferring staying stuck in burnout to taking a lifeline. On a recent call one cardiologist spent more energy arguing why a tiny alteration in his patient-facing schedule wouldn’t work than it would have taken him to actually plan one. 

Another (non-burnout) client spent months explaining why boundary-setting in his marriage was “impossible in this situation”—while that same marriage crumbled.

It’s not like they were willfully stubborn just for the sake of being stubborn. 

It was that their autonomy was threatened, and, even if the change would have, long-term, been better, they were protecting something that felt essential: their sense of control in a life that felt increasingly out of control.

What Got You Here Still Won’t Get You There

All right, so now what? It’s easy to see reactance in someone else, but what do we do when we see it in ourselves? Even worse, how do you escape when your brain’s the jailer?

First, we’ve got to see it. We’ve got to be honest with ourselves that reactance isn’t limited to Other People. It’s not just Terrible Two Toddlers.

And when we see it, second, we’ve also got to recognize the reactance for what it is. It’s not (always) wisdom. It’s (more often) just fear dressed up as expertise. 

That instant “that won’t work for me” response—just like any instant response—is far more likely to be a heuristic your brain’s defaulting to than it is to be your analytical mind honestly engaging with an idea. After all, your brain relies on cheat codes to save energy, because analytic thinking is slow. 

Doubt your immediate responses, or, if nothing else, interrogate them. 

Third, I’ve found it helpful also to notice the physical sensation of reactance. A surge of irritation, a “I need to get off this call now,” a chest tightening. When you feel it, take a pause. Ask yourself: “Am I rejecting this because it’s wrong, or because it threatens my sense of control?”

(Also, if the chest tightening turns to pain, get to an ER)

Fourth—and this is absolutely crucial—you need someone who can navigate your reactance without triggering more of it. Find yourself a coach who doesn’t tell you what to do, but guides you to discover your way through the fog of resistance.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned after working with healthcare professionals in burnout, it’s that the way out is through working with your autonomy, not against it. It’s about creating space for you to find your own answers, with just enough structure to keep you from getting lost in the heuristics.

The truth is you do know yourself best. You know your strengths, your situation, your constraints. But when you’re in burnout, you’re like a GPS system stuck on an old map. 

What got you here won’t get you there.

You need someone to help you update the software, not replace the entire system.

If you’re exhausted but can’t stop, if you’re drowning but fighting off help, if your friends keep telling you the same things, but you know they’re wrong, then consider: your reactance may not be protecting your autonomy. 

It might just be protecting your burnout.

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If you’re ready to work with someone who understands both the science of burnout and the art of navigating resistance, I’m here. Not to tell you what to do, but to help you find your own path back to a life you love. Here’s how:

→ SUMMER SALE. For the month of July ONLY, the first fifteen health professionals to sign up for my master course on getting out of burnout get the whole thing for 50% off! I’ve never given a deal this big, and probably never will again. Click here to apply!

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