Why I Feel Responsible for Things I Can't Control

He is responsible for thirty people. That is a real responsibility and he takes it seriously. He is also responsible, in his felt experience, for their moods, their wellbeing, their private circumstances, and any outcome that touches their lives while they are under his care. He knows the second part is not rational. He cannot stop feeling it.

Inflated responsibility is the experience of feeling causally implicated in outcomes that are not caused by you, and accountable for preventing harms that are not in your power to prevent. It does not feel like a distortion. From inside the experience, it feels like paying attention.

The thing about inflated responsibility is that it produces effort. He prepares more, checks more, follows up more. The preparation is real and sometimes useful. The cost is that the scope of what he feels responsible for keeps expanding – because there is always something he has not yet prepared for.