A few years ago I was working with another coach/facilitator whom I’ll call Susan. We’d been working together with a group that was learning leadership skills, and she complained to me one day about a participant who was being obstinate, creating barriers to progress for himself and for others.
I care about the people I co-facilitate with. They become like family to me, and I took in this complaint like a mama bear takes in the scene of her baby cub under attack. It wasn’t long before I confronted this man and told him he needed to settle down.
Setting aside the question of whether or not it was right for me to confront this participant (a question for another time), I’d like to talk instead about how I reacted to Susan just expressing her thoughts and feelings.
I was not directly motivated by his behavior, even though I had seen and heard it. I had not watched what happened and made my own assessment of what was needed.
Nope. My friend had told me about a problem she had, and I jumped in to save the day.
Have you ever done that? Start solving a problem because somebody told you about it, even though they never asked for help?
We love this in our superheroes. A child falls over a fence at Niagara Falls, and Superman suddenly appears, swoops in, and captures the child mid-decent. He simply heard the cries of the anguished crowd and jumped into action. The child is restored to her anxious parents, and Superman is applauded for saving the day.
The rescue habits of everyday mortals might not be so flashy, but many of us fly to the rescue just as quickly.
- Shawna and Eli enroll in a pottery class that meets once a week. After a couple of weeks, Eli starts complaining that the teacher is going too slow and not allowing space for students to create more complex works of art. So, Shawna goes to the teacher and says, “Some people are saying the class is too elementary. I think they’re ready for more complexity.”
- Larry notices that the copier had run out of black toner and whines loudly. Jessie can hear him and immediately goes to change the toner.
- Sheila and Otto have been fighting over who has the right to order their preferred supplies for the office, and when they bring the problem to Nita, she divides the budget up between them, 50/50.
- Becky tells Chrissy that her husband Jeff lost $6000 in one night of gambling, so Chrissy confronts Jeff and tells him he’s responsible for Becky’s drinking.
- When her partner Andi notices that Bethena isn’t doing her Physical Therapy exercises, Andi starts nagging her every day to do them.
In each of these situations, the decision to intervene is easily justified.
- Eli is shy, so Shawna knows she can help by talking to the teacher for him.
- Larry doesn’t know how to change the toner, and by the time Jessie taught him how to do it, she could have it done herself.
- Nita has a reputation for being a good listener and a fair judge, and she can easily remove the conflict by creating her own compromise for them.
- Becky dislikes confrontation and Chrissy doesn’t have a problem with it.
- Andi knows Bethena will likely have early-onset arthritis in her shoulder if she doesn’t do the PT.
Being helpful is not the problem. In each of these situations, however, the helper is accepting responsibility for the problem. In doing so they borrow trouble from others without asking for permission. The more problems they take responsibility for, the more difficult and complicated their lives become.
Many of these examples are small issues. However, given a lifetime habit of jumping in to rescue someone else, the cumulative stress of helping when help was not requested has an impact. We dig ourselves even deeper when we combine our helpfulness with a desire to eliminate conflict or make everybody happy — two impossible tasks.
In my own life, not only was I habitually jumping in to rescue everyone else from their problems, I was trying to prove my own value as a human being.
I’ve learned, however, that my rescuing habit doesn’t work that way. Rather, I was often solving problems that didn’t need to be solved, fixing instead of listening, or preventing someone from learning their own way through a situation.
It took me at least 30 years to remove most of the rescuing behavior from my life, and still I’ll admit to keeping my Wonder Woman lasso coiled at my hip and ready to snap into action. Rescuing has an addictive allure for me–it is a quick hit of dopamine to believe I’ve saved the day, that I’ve been the hero.
What keeps me from giving in to that temptation is knowledge:
- My value as a human comes from being human.
- I can come across as a self-important busybody when I rescue.
- I might hinder someone’s development by rescuing them.
- Unsolicited “fixing” can create new problems.
- Fixing the problem instead of listening when someone shares their vulnerability with me can actually mean losing their trust.
I wonder if you can relate to this. Do you try to solve others’ problems? What results do you hope for? What actually happens?
Something you can do instead is to be a compassionate listener when learning of someone’s suffering. This involves affirming that their suffering is part of human experience. (It sucks, and it’s what we have in common.). Be kind–and assure them of your intentions to be kind–but be clear that you am not going to rescue. Your stress will decrease, and their trust will increase. Unless you are paid to be a first responder, rescuing is not your role. If I step into that role I may only make things worse.
One caveat: Parents of small children ARE often first responders in their child’s life. Just don’t get carried away. Parental toxic rescuing is a thing. You know it.
If they DO ask you for help, but you suspect that helping them would still be toxic rescuing because of the circumstances, you can respond with a positive no. This might sound like, “I would love to be able to help you, but unfortunately I can’t right now. Do you want to plan on some time for us to talk?”
or
“You are important to me, and I wish I could do this for you. Unfortunately, I don’t believe that would really help you. Tell you what, though — I’ll bet Autumn could hook you up with some resources to make that easier for you. Would you like me to introduce you?”
And most of the time when someone is complaining to you or telling you about a hard experience, you can simply say, “Thank you for telling me. That took bravery. What do you plan to do next?”
