When your helping harms

Many of us go into a helping profession because we believe that being a helper is good and noble. And while helping people is generally a “good” thing (what that even means is a topic for another day), basing our identity around helping others can lead to doing more harm than good.

I know, I’ve been there. And I often find myself back there.

I am a Class 1 People-Pleaser. I have always had a really hard time with boundaries and I go along to get along.

Not only did this create destruction in my romantic relationships, it also stopped me from true connection with those closest to me. When you change yourself to fit in, suit the person you’re with or please them, you lose yourself. And abandoning yourself only works for so long, until you break down and take those closest to you down with you.

The illusion that it is noble and kind? Yep, that comes crumbling down too.

But what I didn’t realise at the time was that it also affected me as a healthcare provider. In my mind, my personal life was my personal life; my work was work. Two different things, no connection between my struggles.

Not so much.

I realised a few years in that I was also people-pleasing with my patients. I needed them to like me, and to get better from my care. I needed them to feel like I helped them (and preferably that I changed their whole life). I needed this to feel like I was worthy as a person and a provider, and to feel like I was actually good at my job.

I was co-dependent. With my freaking patients. This was not helpful to them at all. People do not need the pressure of your self-worth resting on their getting better.

And I wasn’t practising the way I wanted to, but rather how I thought my patients or employers wanted me to be practising. I felt inauthentic, ineffective and resentful. I became very vanilla in my care and it was a carbon copy of what others were doing.

When you build your entire identity around being a helper and being who others want you to be, your validation will come from helping people well, helping people more and helping people in spite of any conflicting desires or needs you may have.

When your identity is as a helper, you lose your actual identity. And who you are is so much more than just someone who helps others.

Who would you be if you truly started investigating who you are and what lights you up? If you started discovering what you really stand for?

You may not believe this right now, but not only will you feel more fulfilled and alive if you became more than just a helper, but you would actually genuinely make a bigger impact in others’ lives.

You would actually start helping.