Male Codependence

Do you want to rescue others? Does it hurt you to see others in pain and helping others relieves the sympathy pain you feel? Do you help to feel needed or fulfill something within yourself? Do you want others to view you as helpful? Is it more important to have a helpful image than to truly benefit another? What am I getting out of this unhealthy dynamic of rescuing, enabling, or encouraging something not helpful for me or the other person? The reasons why we help others can be endless. After reading this, you may get the impression that it’s not good to help others. That is simply not true. It is good to help others, it is not good to rescue others or create a dependence with another person. So how can we help others in a healthy way? The key to helping in a healthy way is setting boundaries or setting limits. Understand what you are able to do for someone, what they can do or start to do for themselves and set up the “rules of helping” early and continue to reinforce it. It is not about pleasing or attempting to not disappoint someone else. It is about protecting yourself and empowering the other person. When helping, your main goal should be to help someone help themselves and become a stronger, more independent person in the future. The support/assistance you provide needs to become the inspiration that compels the person to adopt their own plan to manage their lives and create their success. The hardest part is once you realize your assistance is doing more harm than good, you will need to stop. There will be times when not doing is the most helpful thing you can you do. http://sueb.hubpages.com/hub/Helping-Too-Much

God loves us the way we are,
but too much to leave us that way.
Leighton Ford