3. Do you feel required to help?  It’s your job?  Is there a guilty, emotional tug that drives you to help?  A good question for yourself is – do I have a choice?  If you don’t feel like you have a choice, nine times out of ten you are really rescuing. 

 When you help someone from a healthy place, it’s from a place of fullness not lack.  Your support is not dependent on anything in return, just goodwill.  Your help has healthy boundaries and you are able to see the person also has choices.  The person can say no to your offered help and it’s ok.  You can say no and that’s ok too. 

 If you struggle with saying no, then I encourage you to go deeper.  This isn’t about helping someone else, but about validating how you see yourself.  Rescuing becomes how you identify yourself and your role in relationships.  Ultimately it becomes how you see your worth – to rescue others…Unfortunately this seemingly ‘good’ intention is actually harmful – do you really know what’s best for others?  Are you some all-knowing God here to re-direct your loved ones to the right path?  Maybe making mistakes is how they will learn the lessons they are here to transcend… 

 I like to think of babies learning to walk.  They must fall down, over and over.  They will never, ever learn to walk on their own if someone is always holding them up beneath their arms.  They need to find their own balance amid the falls…We never change.  Our falls look different at 32 and 48, but fall we do…And each of us, no matter what the event, must find our own separate peace…Can you allow another’s peace to look different from your own and be ok with that?

Tags: anxiety, balance, healing, meditation, release, rescuing behaviors, self-help quiz, stress, tips

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 25th, 2010 at 12:58 pm and is filed under Best Life, Communication & Relationships, Empowerment, Friend & Family, Spiritual Self . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.