Unwanted help.
I was in VitalHearts resiliency training once for the volunteer job I do for CASA. I highly recommend it to anyone who is in the healing fields themselves such as nursing, social work, etc. The concepts in it are practices I use and teach to my healing students already, presented in a very practical manner for the "typical" person.
In this training, someone told a story about a person in her office trying to offer help that wasn't asked for. This person asked if their coworker wanted help, and he said no, but she still thought help was necessary. It inspired me to blog about it!
In my experience, most of us have done this, offering help we think people need and not really asking if they even want our help. Maybe they don't want to change, or maybe they don't want to change the way we think they should want to. Yet we persist and later resent them for not being able to accept our help.
Are you offering help where it isn’t being asked for?
Picture by Gerd Altmann on Pixabay
Check-in with yourself. Are you offering someone help who isn't asking you for it? Are you trying to "fix" someone in a way that maybe they don't want to be fixed? Is it causing resentment in yourself or another?
Notice what you are doing and try and release your need to help in this way. Offer help where it is wanted and back off where it isn't. It is nothing personal, people are all just only ready for what they are ready for.
Are people projecting onto you that you need to be rescued?
Image by Peggy and Marco Lachmann-Anke on Pixabay
Maybe someone is doing this to you, offering you help you don’t want or don’t perceive you need. If this is happening to you, maybe you need to gratefully thank them for their intention, but inform them that you aren't interested in changing in the way they want you to. Share your perspective of what is happening and own your journey as your own.
When someone assumes to have the answers for someone else, the ego is involved. The ego isn’t bad, but it does represent the singular self, the one with its own perspective and therefore, it is unlikely to be a perfect fit for someone else’s problems.
Just be in tune with this idea and see what it wants to reveal to you. Perhaps you will learn a lot about your own solutions and where it sometimes feels easier to let someone else have the answers, even when they really don’t.