Helping or Supporting? The Difference That Burns Us Out

Are you the first call when something goes wrong for everyone you love? Do you have a plan before they’ve even finished talking? Do you know exactly what they need, have it handled by dinner, then feel completely wrung out by Thursday…with no idea why?

Then this one’s for us. You want the honest answer? We run ourselves into the ground so that everyone we love keeps thinking well of us, and so we never have to feel the guilt of saying no. That has to stop, right now! And the first step is learning the difference between helping someone and supporting someone, which is what this whole post is about.

What Helping Costs

When we help the way we usually help, we become a crutch. We see what needs doing and we do it before anybody’s even asked, because from an early age we’d been told that’s what love looks like. So what does all that helping actually get us? Annoyed when the thank-you never comes, unseen and unheard, taken for granted, unappreciated, burnt out and, somewhere under the burnout, resentful.

Ever notice how little of what we do actually gets seen? The remembering, the planning ahead, the knowing what needs to happen before anybody else has even thought about it. When it all goes smoothly, not a word. When one thing slips, guess who gets the look? It wears on us slowly and eats into our focus, our patience and our ability to enjoy much of anything. We can sleep eight hours and still wake up tired, because we never clocked out of watching over everybody.

If you’re wondering whether this has gone past tired, the signs of burnout are in another post.

The other person’s paying too. Every time we step in and handle all of it for them, we clip their wings a little and call it nurturing the whole time. They never get the moment where they figure out what they actually need, because we’d already decided for them. Then we walk off anxious and stressed, carrying their problem around with us.

I know this part isn’t comfortable to read, so keep reading anyway.

Where We Learned It

You’re not crazy. From the time we were little, we were taught that fixing things is a woman’s job, and that if somebody’s struggling, the loving thing to do is swoop in and handle it.

And if we don’t? Oh, there’s a whole list of names waiting for the woman who doesn’t step in. Selfish, self-centered, heartless, not a good person. And the big one, not a real woman. I’d bet you’ve heard a few of them yourself.

So we help, every single time. Do that long enough and it turns into a reflex. We don’t ask what they need, because we already know (we think). We make the decision for them and take the whole thing over. That pattern has a name, overfunctioning. It even comes with a badge of honor. Look how much she handles.

The trouble with the badge is what it does to everyone around us. The people we keep fixing for come to expect it, because they’ve never had to learn to do it for themselves. So they lean harder, we fix more, and we feel a little more unheard with every round. Either they end up resenting us for running their lives, OR we end up resenting them for never noticing what we carry. What a vicious cycle that is.

There’s a belief under all of this, too. We’ve come to believe our worth comes from being the woman everything runs through. Asking for help feels like failing, handing something back feels like it’ll get done wrong, and setting any of it down feels like losing our place. No wonder we don’t set it down.

Helping vs. Supporting

So what’s the alternative? Supporting. It’s different from helping in one specific way.

Helping is doing. Supporting is waiting.

Somebody you love hands you a problem. Instead of grabbing it, you wait for them to TELL you how you can help. That’s it, that’s the whole move! Simple? Yep. Easy? Ha! I’m still practicing this one myself. (If they truly can’t do it, or it’s an emergency, that’s different. This is about all the other days.)

When you support instead of help, you step back from being the savior who swoops in and saves the day. You become an ear, a shoulder, a person they can come to when the overwhelm gets loud. The problem stays with the person it belongs to, so they get to learn what it feels like to carry it across the finish line themselves.

And what about you? You’re allowed to keep your boundaries. You get to stay in the relationship without resentment eating it from the inside. You get to not burn out. Nobody can do everything for everyone. That includes the helper, because the helper needs support too. (Yep, that’s us.)

Can We Support Without Losing Ourselves?

Yes, we can! We’ve just got to do a little rewiring first.

First, we figure out the why, because once we understand why stepping in feels like the only option, we can start changing what we do. That’s a big part of what we work on together in therapy.

It was NEVER your assignment to fix everything for everybody! Your place in people’s lives isn’t measured by how much you do for them. Let them struggle a little. That’s how they learn they can handle their own lives and feel how powerful that is. No more clipped wings. And a lot more of our own lives back, with less burnout, less stress and a whole lot less aggravation.

Don’t know where to start? That’s okay, that’s what the first call is for. A breaking point isn’t the entry fee.

I work with women here in Cedar Park and online anywhere in Texas who are tired of carrying everyone. That’s Solid Ground Counseling & Wellness, my practice. The first call doesn’t cost a thing and runs 15 to 20 minutes or so, just the two of us talking through what’s going on for you and whether working together makes sense.

When you’re ready, request a time or write to me.

On solid ground,

Acelli