In the last couple of months, many people have been contacting me for help who have a great set of qualities, and I am somehow pleasantly surprised by how many noble people there are around us, in this world, in which few of those real, genuine, humane values have been lost.
However, these people are good to everyone, except themselves. Being a good person, always being fair, always being at the service of others is the imperative belief that these people follow, and that sad look, when they cannot fulfill someone’s wish, request or whim, causes in them a huge sense of guilt that does not they can endure and then decide “oh, come on, one more time”, “let life go”. And they listen to everyone else, but not themselves.
I agree that one should do good, but even that good has its limits. Every belief and attitude about life can be good for us, but it can also be harmful, depending on how far we go and whether we neglect ourselves.
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The mentioned clients have what we would call a savior complex.
What exactly is that? The savior complex is rooted in our collective unconscious as a kind of archetype, a psychological genetic inheritance, which, depending on the conditions of growing up, develops to a greater or lesser extent.
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A rescuer is a person who is inclined to take care of others, often overwhelmed by the desire to help and to always be available to people in crisis.
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Rescuers often show a lot of empathy for people in trouble and are often overly involved in their lives. Most often, they do not want some kind of reward, but the work itself is a sufficient reward for them. They neglect their own needs and put the needs of others first.
This is, in fact, an unconscious action that often protects them from dealing with themselves and their own unacceptable or painful content. Very often they can become victims of manipulative or narcissistic structures.
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In relationships, their partners are their projects. Almost as a rule, there is something that they would “fix” with their partners.
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It is not rare that their partners are people who have certain problems in adjustment, problems with substance abuse or emotional regulation. Lifeguards are an exceptional support for such personality structures.
They most often treat their partners like children – at the same time they have a central figure in their lives, and they take away the power of mature, adult and responsible personalities for their actions.
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Accordingly, they often think that their partners would not survive without them and can be very inquisitive and controlling towards them. It is not uncommon for them to assume financial responsibility for their partner and even their obligations (eg scheduling appointments on their behalf, writing part of projects, looking for work on behalf of their partner, etc.).
Beliefs fostered and supported by rescuers are: “What I do helps” and “He whom I help cannot do it alone”.
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Both of these beliefs are mostly fundamentally illogical. First of all, there are few situations in which people really cannot survive alone. We all have a survival instinct and as we have seen historically, people can survive in concentration camps, on a desert island, in solitary confinement, on the street and in many other life situations.
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We actually choose how we present ourselves, ie. how we represent what we can do. We can scream for much more, but we choose not to. Because it’s easier that way and then we enter the role of the victim, and the savior can hardly wait.
Second, is what we are doing really helping? Sometimes the best help is to step away and let the person see life’s options and chances for themselves.
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By helping her excessively, we actually support that inadequate victim position and reinforce learned helplessness. We tuck the person into their perspective and the calm sea, instead of encouraging them to make a little effort and struggle.
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A very important thing, which rescuers forget, is that they exhaust themselves, and by exhausting themselves, they become dysfunctional to themselves, when they cannot give anything more than themselves to anyone. In the end, they most often become victims of the relationship in which they invested so much, because their project most often revolts or flies away.
Become aware of your behavior and the reasons why you do something!
Discovering the lives of these people, I often find out that during their upbringing they were forced to be someone else by their parents’ messages, usually critical, that is, that their way of behaving, thinking, and feeling is not good, but that someone else is always right.
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Or, very often they were at the center of a conflict between parents, so they played the role of “personal psychologist” for one of the parents.
Some of them “walked on eggshells” when addressing their parents, because they felt responsible for every parental condition and thought that it was their fault because mom was depressed and dad was angry.
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And not being able to withstand that unprovoked guilt, they obeyed their parents’ wishes. Sometimes they protested, but mostly they folded in the end. Some of the clients are, and I had parents who behaved according to a similar model and just adopted that behavior as desirable.
Listen people!
Really listen to them. Decide how much of yourself you can give without being threatened.
Set clear boundaries!
Many people with a savior complex have told me something along the lines of: “I felt that something was wrong, I felt that I shouldn’t, but…”.
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Many times they heard the inner voice, but did not listen to it. Listen to your inner voice. Primal feelings, intuition, I would say our unconscious, is a wiser and older part of the personality and knows more than what we think we know. Our consciousness that exists as something that is objective and concrete with clear insights is the tip of the iceberg and it is quite small. So listen to yourself for a start, that’s the limit.
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The limit is sometimes the feeling in the stomach, the discomfort, that voice inside, it’s not me… sometimes give it its due.
Do an experiment. “The whole world is a stage,” said Shakespeare. Which means that our life is not so serious that we cannot make mistakes or try something. We can try to listen to that little voice and see what happens. It might be really good.
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Then be aware of the situation in which you are at the service of others. What gives you and what drains your energy? And have patience, but this time for yourself.
Believe me, you will gain the respect and love of others if you respect yourself.
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Why? For the simple reason that you are more confident in yourself, you have become aware of yourself and your qualities, you know who you are. And people respect those who know their way around the most, because it’s a sign that they have stability and know where they’re going, and it’s nice to be around someone or with someone who knows where they’re going. When you have boundaries and know who you are, love becomes fuller and the world around you is different.
Source: www.sitoireseto.com
