Integritus Prime

Over time, I’ve developed my service mechanisms (the shows Mornings with Marilyn, Dr. An, and Beyond Medicine) through my own company and social media platforms. This is because other organizations and systems contained toxic people who damaged me and the cause they were supposedly serving. I learned a lot about service, and how it can create systems where people bring and act out their trauma. I also learned that what is given freely isn’t often valued well. So, I endeavored to find the right balance of service and paid work, to make the most positive impact I could.

I’ve been reflecting on service, and how complicated it can become when we do not examine the people, the structures, and our own boundaries.

Service sounds beautiful. And it is beautiful, when it is rooted in love, integrity, humility, and a genuine desire to help. But service can also become a place where wounded people seek power, control, attention, validation, or moral superiority.

I believe in using our gifts to make life better for others. I believe in giving. I believe in helping. I believe in creating spaces where people can learn, heal, think, feel, and become more themselves. But I no longer romanticize service. I have seen people use the language of service while behaving cruelly behind the scenes. I have seen organizations speak about justice while mistreating the very people doing the work. I have seen causes become containers for ego, competition, projection, and control. That was information. So now, when I think about service, I think about three things.

1. Investigate the people

Before you give your time, energy, talent, money, or heart to a person, group, organization, ministry, movement, or cause, investigate the people. Ask yourself: are these people of pure intention? Do they behave with compassion? Is their public language aligned with their private behavior? Do they respect others when they are being critiqued? Do they repair harm when they make mistakes? Do they listen? Do they share power? Do they treat people at the bottom of the hierarchy with the same respect as those at the top? These are areas where the pattern becomes clear. Beware the classic hypocrisies:

• A person can speak beautifully about healing, but create fear in every room they enter.
• A person can talk about justice, but be deeply unjust in how they treat colleagues.
• A person can claim to serve the vulnerable, but become harsh, dismissive, or controlling when challenged.
• A person can use spiritual, feminist, humanitarian, or community language and still be acting out unhealed trauma.

I have compassion for this, but compassion does not mean we ignore the harmful impact.

Here are some important questions we could ask:

1. Is this person safe to build with?
2. Is this person honest when they have power?
3. Is this person kind when they are under pressure?
4. Is this person capable of self-reflection?
5. Is this person serving, or are they using service to feed something unresolved?

Those questions can save you years of pain.

2. Look at the structure

It is not enough to investigate the people. We also have to look at the structure. Some structures are built to serve. Others are built to protect or finance themselves.

A structure built to serve asks: how do we meet the real needs of the people we claim to care about? How do we listen? How do we stay accountable? How do we make sure the people doing the work are not being exploited? How do we make sure resources, credit, care, and decision-making are shared fairly?

A structure built to benefit itself asks different questions, even if it does not say them out loud:

• How do we preserve our image?
• How do we keep control?
• How do we get free labor?
• How do we keep people grateful enough that they do not question us?
• How do we use the language of service to protect the institution?

A toxic structure can take good people and wear them down. It can normalize over-giving. It can punish honesty. It can reward the people who flatter the system and isolate the people who name harm. Then the cause suffers.

The people who were supposed to be helped receive a thinner version of service. The workers become exhausted. The vision gets smaller. The work becomes about survival, politics, image management, or appeasing difficult personalities. That is not service. That is dysfunction dressed up as sacrifice.

I have learned to ask: is this structure set up to genuinely serve, or is it set up to feed itself? Look at how decisions are made. Look at how money flows. Look at who gets credit. Look at who gets protected. Look at who is expected to keep giving without being cared for. Look at whether the organization can receive feedback without punishing the person who offered it. The structure will tell you what it really values.

3. Hone your boundaries

This may be the most important lesson for me. Service without boundaries can become self-abandonment.

It can look noble from the outside. You are always available. You answer every message. You say yes to every request. You give free support, free labor, free emotional holding, free wisdom, free strategy, free care. People praise you for being generous, but inside you are tired, resentful, stretched, and quietly disappearing.

That is not sustainable or balanced, and it is not honest.

I had to learn that giving from depletion is not the same as giving from love. Giving because I am afraid to disappoint people is not the same as service. Giving because I want to be seen as good is not the same as purpose. Giving because I have not yet learned how to say no is not the same as generosity.

Service should stretch us sometimes, yes. But it should not consistently drain our life force.

This is why I now think carefully about the balance between free service and paid work. Free work can be meaningful. Paid work can also be service. Charging for your expertise does not mean you are not generous. Having boundaries does not mean you do not care. Sometimes, payment is part of the structure that allows the service to continue. It helps cover the time, preparation, skill, emotional labor, recovery, technology, administration, and years of learning that make the work possible. It also helps people value what they are receiving.

We do not have to give in ways that deplete us to prove that we care. We can give in ways that are clean, intentional, joyful, and sustainable. We can serve through free offerings, paid offerings, public teaching, private work, creative projects, community spaces, and quiet acts of care.

The question is not, “Am I giving enough?”

The better question is: “Am I giving in a way that is aligned, sustainable, and true?”

If your service is constantly costing you your peace, your health, your voice, your dignity, or your ability to do the work well, it may be time to revisit the structure of your giving.

Not because you are selfish. Because your service matters too much to be built on your depletion.

So here is the question I want to leave you with: where are you still calling something service when it is actually self-abandonment?

This week, look at one place where you are giving. Investigate the people. Look at the structure. Then check your own boundaries. Your answer may tell you what needs to change.