Do no good, and you’ll receive no evil.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Folk proverbs
What lies beneath the desire to help a loved one?
The urge to remake the person, impose your point of view, educate them, and teach them how to live.
A common situation is when someone has managed to change something in their own life through transformational courses or spiritual practices, and now they absolutely want to make sure everyone else changes too.
A person sees unpleasant situations in their neighbor’s life, and they are convinced they understand the causes of those troubles.
And they want to force the other person to change their life, because their loved one is suffering so much in that life.
They are convinced that their pure and sincere intention is nothing other than making their close friend’s life good and easing their suffering.
It is for these very reasons — out of nobility and kindness of heart — that many people rush to “rescue” others, sincerely believing they are helping.
But if you look deeper into this issue, in reality they are causing harm, both to their neighbor and to themselves.
Imposing your beliefs on a loved one about how to live better is an insidious quality that leads to problems in life — emotional breakdowns, loss of health, and deteriorating relationships with people.
In this article, we’ll explore these questions:
- Why does a good deed lead to sad consequences?
- Why does helping others and trying to improve their lives end up ruining your own?
- How are the concepts of “help” and “harm” interconnected?
Take care of yourself, don’t rush to save the world
Perhaps you feel that someone needs saving, that you have a desire to protect the whole world from trouble. But all the world truly wants is your own happiness.
It’s better to focus on yourself and work on your own life. Make it happy. Those around you will see your successes and will naturally be drawn in, wanting to know how you got to that point in life.
When a person doesn’t get enough positive emotions and enjoyment from life, they react aggressively to everything and view everything that happens through a dramatic lens.
Such a person has no resources; they cannot help. Not because they are callous or indifferent, but because they have nothing to give.
You cannot share something you don’t have yourself. And if you do share something from your last reserves, your help will be of poor quality, because it is inherently filled with the energy of lack and deficit.
If you discover the rescuer role within yourself, it’s a sign to pay attention to your own life and work on yourself.
To understand where self-devaluation comes from, the article “15 Steps to Unlocking Your Inner Source of Love” will help you.
Stop living in drama
As a rule, your help to loved ones leads to you falling into resentment, anger, and demands.
A common example is when parents meddle with their “goodness” in their children’s lives, and then expect gratitude for that interference. They complain that their child somehow didn’t appreciate their noble impulses of kindness and help.
There is another unpleasant side to this kind of parental behavior. Children get used to this type of kindness, where there’s no need to ask or take initiative.
They don’t learn to express their desires, so they will expect help from others as a given. As a result, they are met with disappointment and the belief that the world is cruel.
It’s one thing when you offer to help, and quite another when you barge in uninvited with your help.
Is your help even needed? And is the person ready to accept it?
Or did you decide for yourself what’s best for someone else and go force your kindness on them?
Allow people to walk their own path
Don’t expect your loved ones to appreciate your impulses. If major changes happen in your life, people will notice on their own.
But when you impose your opinion and prove that you are right and the other person is not, you are asserting yourself at someone else’s expense.
What speaks through you is pride: “I know how to live,” “I’ll teach you how to act,” “I know better what you need.”
First of all, this shows disrespect for the person, failing to value their right to develop as they wish. You don’t allow them to make a mistake, which they have every right to make.
Show respect for the person, trust them with the right to manage their own life.
Even when you are absolutely convinced that someone is building their life poorly. That they are uncomfortable living the way they do.
Secondly, this leads to unpleasant consequences for you. Even if the person outwardly agrees with you, a residue will remain in their soul that will affect your future relationship.
When you impose your opinion and prove to someone that they are wrong, you deprive them of the chance to live their own life.
You lose your own strength, spending your energy on proving you’re right. And you also drain the strength of others because you don’t give them a chance to open up and walk their own path at their own pace of development.
If you do manage to force those around you to live by your standards, your loved ones will simply lose themselves in someone else’s standards.
See also: How to interact with loved ones immersed in negativity, and why their state affects you
Why you play the role of a rescuer
A person tends to believe they show care for others out of love.
But love is incompatible with dissatisfaction toward others, with reproach, violence, or discontent.
A person cannot allow others to be imperfect when they don’t allow this for themselves.
A person judges others if they judge themselves. Mistakes in life are inevitable, and you cannot blame yourself or anyone else for them.
The care and involvement a person shows is an attempt to fill this gap within themselves.
By helping another, a person solves their own personal problems. Or runs away from their own troubles. After all, it’s easier to meddle in someone else’s life than to admit the imperfection of your own.
When a person knows how to value themselves, they have no need to assert themselves by lecturing others.
What to pay attention to if you feel the urge to rescue others
- Such a person constantly notices and points out the small miscalculations of other people that have led to troubles in their lives.
In relationships, this manifests when someone has made a mistake, and the person constantly hints at it and reminds them of it.
- A person constantly quotes the kind words and compliments made in their direction.
This happens when they have handled a problem in a difficult situation, done something well, and they constantly bring it up in conversation with other people.
There is an attempt to assert themselves by leveraging the positive remarks made about them.
- When a person behaves in a conversation in such a way that the last word must always be theirs.
- When a person constantly interrupts others in a conversation.
- When a person places high expectations on other people. They have a deep-seated belief about how others should behave in any given situation.
And if people don’t live up to these beliefs and act differently, it leads to disappointment and a lot of grievances directed at those around them.
This leaves a strong imprint on such a person’s relationships with their environment.
The desire to change others and improve their lives is linked to criticism on your part towards your loved ones.
Because, in your understanding, they live incorrectly, act wrongly, and don’t do what needs to be done.
As soon as you start criticizing someone, your heart immediately closes.
The heart is your ability to love, to accept yourself and other people, and to build relationships with those around you.
You will learn what a closed heart is, who has it, and what its consequences are by reading the article “Why a Closed Heart is Dangerous for You.”
You will read about how to genuinely help a loved one without imposing your beliefs in the second part of this article.