Are you a phenomenal helper that also suffers from being a burned-out people pleaser? It can be a difficult balance, especially when your heart is in the healing of others.
When you possess a natural helping spirit, you give to others in the most supportive way as part of who you are. And your intent is always to be of true and genuine help. But, unfortunately, the best intentions can land differently than expected. And you not only can connect poorly with another but also give so much that you hurt yourself.
Examine who you are as a helper. Acknowledge both your gifts and your challenges. Recognize if you are helping or reaching further into people pleasing. Knowing the difference is key and can be important to building healthy relationships with others and toward yourself.
Master your balance and become an even better helper to yourself and everyone else in the process.
Why Helping Others Is Your Calling
Not everyone has a helping spirit. Even the nicest individuals may be focused on other deeds than helping others. Or, more often, nice people do not realize how much they support others and do not call themselves “helpers”.
You may be a person who receives genuine joy by being intentional when helping and supporting. Providing a helping hand to a person, an animal, or the environment when needed sparks an indescribable joy and energy that lights you up.
It does not matter if you get a thank you or if anyone knows that you helped at all. You know and that is all that matters. Your knowing is enough to gain new energy and that feel-good feeling of being of service.
Charitable givers, volunteers, mentors, teachers, donators….the list of titles is lengthy and so are all the good works that come from those that help. You are called to perform these actions because you feel a sense of purpose in sharing your gifts with others.
The calling, or knowing, is that you are supposed to provide what you have to others in order to positively impact another’s well-being. And your calling is confirmed in the positivity you gain in the process. Helping others is an absolute and unquestioned mission for you.
What Helping Excellence Looks Like
Whether you are in a helping profession or you are simply a helpful person, you innately strive for excellence in your brand of giving. Helping excellence takes many forms but starts with the unique ability to combine being introspective, extrospective, and compassionately empathetic.
- When you are introspective you not only know yourself but acknowledge your skills, abilities, or assets of value. You honor yourself by knowing that you have worth and your gifts are valuable to share.
- To be extrospective is to demonstrate that you are attentive to absorbing the world around you. You pay attention to your surroundings and even look beyond your immediate view to understand the context of life and your place in it.
- But the key that binds is your compassionate empathy. This is where all your gifts truly synchronize. You see your gifts of worth, interpret the needs outside of yourself, and extend yourself to give selflessly to bridge the gaps. You understand the pain and discomfort of something or someone else, see how you can be a solution, and are compelled to make yourself available as a resource.
This remarkable talent and example of character and humanity are what set helpers apart from all others. It is a form of excellence that gives true purpose to your body, mind, and spirit.
What Causes People Pleasing?
Sharing your talents with heartfelt compassion can be a beautiful experience for both the giver and the receiver. However, there are times that while a helper can give with the best of intentions, it is not a healthy exchange.
The reality is that helping feels good but when an attempt to help fails, it can feel horrible.
- You may have created the perfect solution, but you were impatient to capture all details so you missed the true mark.
- It is possible that the receiver of your kind acts was not in the heart space to receive your assistance well. And instead took your act of kindness as an act of pity or condescending behavior.
- You could have had the best and most thoughtful plan but may have had unintended bad timing.
And while mistakes happen as a normal part of life when helping fails it can make you feel disconnected and unsure of your ability to give well.
In the heart and mind of the committed helper, leaving another with a poor experience creates a restlessness that needs repair. It is in this dissatisfaction with self that the unhealthy people pleasing tendency can rise.
How to Identify Unhealthy People Pleasing
People pleasing can appear very similar to being a helper but can take a more negative, unhealthy turn if you are not self-aware.
The nature of unhealthy people-pleasing is that you take specific actions to ensure the result of making another person happy. It can become toxic when you will take action regardless of the negative impact on you.
Some people develop this pattern at a very young age, attempting to please overly strict or aggressive parents or other influencers. Others develop this behavior as a result of their work or school environments as a means to ensure positive achievement or acknowledgment.
But often failed helpers will turn into unhealthy people pleasers. Particularly if a helper has inadvertently experienced a significant instance or pattern of failed attempts to help.
Having experienced a negative or even angry response to their extended help, a helper may overextend looking for ways to fix the failure or make the person happy. What is worse is that it is hard for an innate helper to see the difference between helping with genuine positive intent or helping for personal gain.
Helpers can hurt themselves when desperately trying to calm their own people pleasing anxiety due to displeasing someone else. They can also become overly focused on being seen or treated in a positive way in response to their giving.
This unhealthy and imbalanced excessive preoccupation with giving can be detrimental to your mental health, financial stability, or your physical well-being. When helping hurts then somewhere the helping excellence equation has been thrown off balance.
What to Do When Helping Hurts
Correcting your behavior and healing from obsessive people pleasing is possible. Depending on the length of time this pattern has gone unchecked, it can take time. All helpers should develop the habit of being good givers to themselves.
Evaluate whether or not you are in a healthy giving status or not:
- Can you honestly say that your act of giving still feels good to you?
- Are you genuinely still a happy giver?
- Do you feel energized or mentally or physically depleted when helping others?
- Are you forcing your help on others even when you are told repeatedly no?
- Do you often deplete yourself, your energy, your money, or other resources to help or please another?
- Have you developed an addictive pattern of receiving positive feedback and gratitude from others?
Perform an honest self-assessment of whether or not helping is still healthy and good for you. And if you determine it is not, or you hear regularly from people who care about you that you are doing too much, take time to make self care a critical priority.
Self Care as People Pleasing Recovery
The habit of giving turned into a giving compulsion can have significant detrimental effects on you. Dedicate time to the practice of self-care. Know and embody the understanding that only when your tank is full can you give to others at your best.
If being an expert helper is your goal, then respect that only a healthy helper can excel at helping. Also, to give when you are not at your best degrades the quality of what you give. A helper wants to give to another the best that they have to offer always.
Simple self care ideas can include:
- Allow an opportunity to help pass you by. There will never be a lack of need to be fulfilled. Permit yourself to evaluate your capability to give well and healthfully before volunteering to support
- Practice healthy boundaries. Helpers that help often become relied upon for support. While this can be an honor it can also be a burden. Develop a pattern of declining requests and saying no. And try not to fill in the space by committing yourself to a future event, but simply saying not for what was asked at this time.
- Reduce your commitment. Even with the best intentions you may have bitten off more than you can chew. Be honest about your limitations, apologize, and then release yourself. You are a much better helper when you give what you can healthfully.
- Rest and replenish. Sleep, eat, drink water, take a break. Giving is not a marathon or a sprint. Helping is not a contest to be won. You are at your best when you provide your body, mind, and soul the replenishment it needs to function at your healthiest. Take steps to ensure that you are not unintentionally breaking the vessel you have be provide as your vehicle to help and heal others.
While it may seem counter-intuitive and hard to retrain, giving to yourself first makes your helping stronger and more effective.
Great Helpers Accept Help
Another means to support your helping health is to lean on others.
Having people that you love and trust tell you when you may be going too far is important. In the midst of your helping frenzy, you may lose yourself in the process. An accountability partner can assist in providing you with another point of view regarding your personal well-being status.
Seasoned helpers can have a never-ending list of ideas on how to help. It is also essential to seize the opportunity to let others be expert doers when you may be a visionary expert.
You do not have to have the vision and make it happen all by yourself. Permitting others to be a part of the process is another form of giving. Through your vision and inspiring energy, you create opportunities for others to participate in the helping process.
Reframe what other forms of helping can be.
Because you know how to give you provide an excellent opportunity to teach others and to create more helping hands for the future.
Related Article: How to Energize and Maximize Your Giving Spirit
Keeping Your Passion for Helping
If you are a natural helper but suffering from chronic people pleasing or helper’s burnout you may find yourself in the strange place of needing a charge to your helping spirit. You may also be trying to balance your self-care with your care for others for the first time and feel confused in the process.
Be reminded and use as motivation that your unique gifts serve the world in a special way and continue to be needed. Giving to yourself puts you in the best position to serve.
Give yourself permission to experience all the benefits that your helping gift provides to others and yourself:
- Reflect on positive past experiences where you well-demonstrated your gift of helping. See the smiles and gratitude in others and remember your own feelings of gratification.
- Save any memories of gratitude you may receive such as cards, gifts, or smiling photos, and review them as part of your self-care regimen. Congratulate yourself for all the help you have extended to others.
- Affirm to yourself how you have grown to be an excellent helper and all the ways that you have helped others. You are not the same person you were when you helped for the first time. Your helping gifts are likely overflowing when you truly reflect on all of them.
- Have close friends and confidants to confide in when you feel unsure and let others remind you of your beautiful spirit. Don’t worry. They won’t think you are being prideful. The best partners know when you need a boost and will be more than happy to remind you how truly wonderful you are. And you deserve to hear it, especially when you need it.
- Take a moment just to be grateful. Be thankful for your helping gifts and talents and all the experiences that they have provided you. You have been given an exceptional way to live your life and not everyone can experience what helping has given to you.
- Recognize that you are enough. While you are excellent in all that you do for others, it is not the only thing that defines you. You do not have to do a single other thing in order to be considered a good and loving person. You do not have to prove what you are, you just are. Accept that your spirit goes far beyond your actions and relax into knowing that you are enough no matter what.
Conclusion
If you are a natural helper then you should know that you possess a unique gift of giving to others. That gift is worth special care and attention as it serves an important need in the world. No matter how big or small your contribution, your help can be critical to another.
Know how to give to yourself so that you are in the best mental, physical, and spiritual health to help. And recognize the signs of unhealthy or compulsive people pleasing. Remember that knowing when you need to receive help is just as important as the help you give.
Balancing your view of yourself, all that surrounds you, and the empathetic compassion that you extend to others can be challenging at times. But when you master this synchronicity, you can heal from excessive people pleasing and excel in living your purpose, helping others to the best of your ability.
Can you relate to this post? Are you on the path to becoming a healthier and happier helper? Share your progress in the Comments below.
Maybe you know someone else who could use these reminders to support their helping spirit. If so, please share!
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