How to Help Without Getting Burned Out

I think most of us know the old adage:

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day.
Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime

People pleasers love to jump into action to help people. We are empathetic, and caring and enjoy doing things to help and support other people. And that is great, except when that caring causes us to constantly exhaust ourselves. What I want to give you in this post, are some practical ways that you can help people without actively doing any work or taking on their problems for yourself. The bonus of this is that not only will it be less tiring for you, but it will also be “teaching a man to fish” (please excuse the gender biased language) and empowering them to see and grow more of their own resources. It is a simple technique of mirroring and affirming.

1. Mirror

If you are an empathic person, when someone comes and talks to you about a problem, then you tend to absorb all their feelings, and want to do anything you can to help them and make them feel better. However, the best way to help them is not to take on their burden like a sponge, but to reflect what they are saying like a mirror. This means that you do not take on the weight of their problem which is tiring for you, and it helps the other person to feel truly seen and heard, and to gain more clarity about what is going on for them. When you take on their distress and see it as something that needs to be fixed as quickly as possible, it sends the message that their distress makes you uneasy and is wrong in some way. It also elevates the general level of stress that you are both feeling. When you hold a calm listening space and simply reflect back to the person what they are saying and expressing, then that sends the message to the person that they are okay and what they are feeling is okay. This acceptance helps emotions to be effectively processed and stress to be reduced. This is also a good way to manage people who are trying to dump their emotional garbage on you.

Here are some mirror phrases you can use:

“That [sucks/stinks/sounds awful etc]”

“It sounds like you are feeling [sad/upset/stuck/overwhelmed/stressed/helpless/hopeless etc]”

“I hear that for you this is/feels like . . . [repeat or rephrase what they have said] “

2. Affirm

The best form of help you can give someone is empowering them to grow in their belief in themselves and their capability. When you jump in to do things for people that they can do for themselves or that they are avoiding but could handle, then you are rescuing them, not helping them. Be their cheerleader. Keep it about what they can do to solve their problem, not what you can do. The aim is to come into a place of acceptance of the problem and then to help the person identify for themselves how they could move forward from there.

Here are some affirming phrases you can use:

“I understand that this is not something that you want, but I think it is something you can handle”

“What do you see as your options in this situation?”

“What do you think is the best option for you right now?

“If [worst case scenario of their problem] happens, what could you do then?”

“What resources do you have available to you?”

If you use these phrases and the other person simply responds with “I don’t know” repeatedly then go back to mirroring e.g. “It sounds like you are feeling really stuck right now. It that right?”. This may be enough to shift the person into seeing some options for themselves or they may stay there. Let it be okay to stay there. In this case the active problem is how they are feeling about the problem. Just mirror that. Resist the temptation to jump in with suggestions of what you could do to help. This may be a pattern and this person may be consciously or subconsciously coming to you to be rescued and to avoid taking responsibility for themselves.

If the person does come up with a plan of action for themselves then simply affirm that with a phrase like:

“That sounds like a really good idea”

“I believe in you to handle this well”

That is all you need to do. Simply mirror and affirm. When you do this, it is highly likely that the person who came to you with the problem will leave the conversation thinking you have been incredibly helpful because you truly heard and validated what they were thinking and feeling, and demonstrated confidence in their capability.

You can think of this process as being like playing tennis as opposed to playing catch. When someone hits the ball to you (the problem) you gently hit it back to them rather than catching and holding on to it. You always hit the ball back to the person who started the game (i.e. the person who owns the problem).

I have added a one page cheat sheet of these conversation scripts to the resources library for paid subscribers.

You may have read all that and thought "Yay! this sounds great. I can start doing it right away." Or you may have felt resistance. You may have felt a little contraction in your body at reading this, a little fear or a little push against it. If you felt resistance that was not just nervousness about remembering what to say, but more like finding this suggestion a little threatening, then this is probably what is going on for you.

Is it help or control?

We as people pleasers are often also perfectionists with a strong need for things to be done right. As a result, our being helpful, i.e. doing everything, can sometimes be control in disguise. The next time you feel the urge to be helpful ask yourself, “am I being helpful out of true kindness or because I want this done in a way that feels right to me?” I know this may feel confronting. I know because I have been confronted with it myself. We nice people don’t want to be told that we are secretly control freaks, but people pleasing is a type of controlling behaviour. We are nice to try and keep our environment safe and to ensure that people are nice to us and do not reject or abandon us. That is usually what is at the core of people pleasing in terms of subconscious beliefs and operating programmes. I mean no judgement here, and to be honest I deliberated a lot about whether to include this section in the post. However, I think it is important to share this awareness for those people who are ready to receive it, because when you understand the real reason why you are doing what you do, including the deeper subconscious drivers for your behaviour, then you have the clarity to evolve. You have the information you need to choose different healthier and more effective ways of meeting your wants and needs.

If anything in this post has confused or triggered you, or you just want more information, then feel free to contact me via online message or by emailing info@janinelattimore.com.

Aroha nui, much love
Janine

Resources:

Under Pressure: Confronting the Epidemic of Stress and Anxiety in Girls by Lisa Damour (this is a great book which I highly recommend to anyone raising or working with teenagers. It is focused on teenage girls, but most of the content applies to teenagers in general)

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