You are trying to help people in your life - because you’re a nice person, you’re a problem solver, you know what people need. And you just know you can help them - even if they don’t even realize they need help.

Do you have someone you are trying to help financially?
What about a family member, friend, or even an acquaintance with an addiction and you are trying to help them get sober?
Have a friend who is struggling in their marriage? You always have some advice for them.
Trying to help someone be a better parent? You’ve got some tips.
Your spouse could use some tips, and you’ve got some for him/her.

But guess what?

Your “helping” is keeping people stuck.

Unless someone specifically comes to you asking for help, you aren’t doing anyone any favors. Here’s why:

1. You’re keeping them stuck (yes, even though you think you’re helping them get unstuck)

The first and most important step for people to get help is for them to seek out help. If you are always there stepping in and helping before they even get desperate enough to ask for it, you’re enabling their ability to stay stuck.

2. When you help people out of the kindness of your heart, you’re taking over for them things they should be doing themselves.

When you help people who could and should be doing things for themselves, you’re taking away their ability to be self-sufficient and independent. You’re making them dependent on you.

3. You’re depriving them of the satisfaction of being in control of their own lives.

Helping people puts you in the driver seat of their life which puts them in the passenger seat where they lose control over their own lives. Not only is this defeating, that feeling of defeat prevents them from ever being able to do what it takes to actually take control of their own lives.

4. You’re feeding your own insecurities and depriving yourself of a fulfilling life.

The truth is you won’t find fulfillment in helping others - what you’ll find in helping others is a way to nurse your wounds. Having the desire to fix others is the result of a wound. Here’s how you can know:

Who in your life was critical of you?
Who in your life was always trying to help you?
Who in your life was negative and judgmental?

Relationships with people like that leave wounds. And you learned that the way to not feel the pain of those wounds was to work hard to be better. Then you felt like you were overcoming. You felt like you were trying. You felt like you could control outcomes - life was better or easier or, at least, less painful if you were making people happy.

But you are spending your life trying to help people be happier, hoping that if you can help others then you will feel fulfilled. But it doesn’t work that way. You will be fulfilled when you heal the wound by letting go of the need to help others. When others don’t need you, that’s when you are free to live.

5. It’s a form of control.

When you help people, you feel like you can control outcomes - life was better or easier or, at least, less painful if you were making people happy. So now you just want to pass that little secret on to others - help others learn how to try harder, work on themselves, do better. It’s a way of trying to control others so that your life is better. If you can help the people in your life who are miserable, then maybe you won’t be as miserable.

If you can help someone get on their feet financially, then you can stop worrying about them.
If you can help your spouse feel happier, then that will have a positive effect on you.
If you can help your friend be a better parent, it won’t be so painful for you to watch her struggle with her children.

You aren’t just trying to control someone else’s life - you’re trying to control your own by controlling theirs.

6. It hurts them rather than helps them.

It passes your wound onto the people you are trying to help. You’re telling others that they can be better, which translates into “you aren’t good enough” (it’s a subtle way of being critical) and wounds people so that they need you the way that the critical people in your life secretly wanted you to need them so that they could feel better about themselves - so they could feel like they were succeeding in life by trying to help others overcome the things that they themselves were insecure about (not being good enough) and, in the process, subtly telling others that they aren’t good enough - but if they do this and this and this, then they’ll be better, then they’ll be good enough.

7. It keeps people needing you rather than helping them be independent.

I know that your goal is to help people be independent and free, but helping people who aren’t asking for help is creating in them a dependence on you. Rather than being able to get to the place where they realize something has to change, they are constantly being rescued or told that all they have to do is think like you and then they’ll get better.

The fact is: they need to get to that place of hurt where not only do they realize that something needs to change, they take action to do it because staying where they are is simply no longer an option. It’s painful for you to allow someone you care about to get to that point - you want to rescue them, help them, redirect them before they get there. But, in doing that, you are making them depend on you to avoid the pain of the consequences of their way of life rather than finding out for themselves how to stop the pain.

8. Pain is a good thing, but you’re taking it away.

It feels good to help people because it feels like you are helping them avoid pain. Unfortunately . . . painfully . . . pain is a good thing. It’s what motivates someone to get better. Helping someone isn’t motivating them to get better - it’s simply giving them a way to avoid the pain - and it’s making them dependent on what alleviates their pain - you. In the way that someone uses alcohol or drugs to alleviate pain, making them dependent on the alcohol or drug, you are making someone dependent on you for alleviation of pain rather than actually seeking a solution to free themselves.

9. You’re avoiding your own pain as much as you are trying to help them avoid theirs.

It’s hard to watch someone go through something hard, so you try to avoid having to do that by helping them avoid that difficulty. Your motivation is ultimately selfish - you want to avoid the pain of having to watch them struggle. I know it’s hard to see it that way, but the most unselfish thing to do would be to step aside and just make yourself available to them if they ever come to you for advice.

10. And finally, you’re no fun to be around.

If you find that there is tension in your relationships or that people seem to avoid you, it’s likely simply because people who are always trying to fix others aren’t fun to be around. People feel less-than around you. People feel like you are finding things wrong with them so that you can fix them.

People don’t want to be fixed, they want to be loved. And love isn’t enabling, it’s freeing. Don’t work harder on someone’s life than they are. It’s when you can let go of the need to help others and just let them be who they are - it’s when you let go that you realize . . . .

hope isn’t found in our situation changing; it is found in our situation . . .

Need to know how to stop helping so that someone can get some help?

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When Helping Isn't Helping (Fighting for Someone Who Won't Fight for Themselves)