The Difference Between Supporting Someone and Trying to Save Them
There is a difference between supporting someone and trying to save them. The fact is, no one can be saved by anyone but themselves! You can only support and help those who are already putting in the work and helping themselves.
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Boundaries are absolutely necessary when dealing not only with other people but also when dealing with ourselves. We must know what we are and aren’t capable of. Our self-care must remain at the forefront of our attention.
Being mindful of our energy and the energy of others can help us to lead a happier, more productive life.
We must monitor what we allow into our lives.
Does it serve us or harm us? Are we acting in our own best interest?
Even if we have circumstances in our lives which are trying and difficult, we still have a choice as to what we emotionally engage with.
Are you going to anchor yourself to fear or love? Are you going to focus on what you can, or can’t do? Where will you invest your time, attention, and energy?
Cultivating a strong inner peace to carry with us into every circumstance and every moment of life is a necessary, vital component of self-care. Volatile people are not in control of themselves or their faculties. They are like a time-bomb, ready to go off at a moment’s notice.
Inner peace provides stability and consistent, productive function. It allows for greater control particularly in times of great duress.
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Sacrificing and martyring yourself for the sake of another is not an act of love. It is an act of self-sabotage. Moreover, it solves nothing, and it does not solve the root of the problem.
A person bent on destroying themselves will continue to destroy themselves no matter how many times we save them. Trying to save them will only pull us down with them into their turbulent nightmare.
Sometimes, we must issue tough love, where we have to enact boundaries, and sometimes, that means we have to walk away.
Sometimes, we have to love people from a distance.
Instead of being a crutch to other people, show them how to help themselves, empower them, show them hope, faith, and their own potential.
Lead by example. Recognize that everyone has and always will have their own suffering. You cannot save anyone from all suffering. They will suffer, just like you and everyone else will suffer.
This is part of life and living.
We dictate how people are allowed to treat us by our own behavior, by our reactions and non-reactions. We must respect ourselves first before we can demand respect from others. We must uphold our own respect.
We must not sacrifice our own respect for others, because doing so is an act against ourselves. What are we sacrificing ourselves for? For disrespect? Why?!
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Make clear how you wish to be treated, and enact boundaries for all those who either won’t or can’t respect your terms.
Boundaries may be as simple as detaching yourself emotionally from a person or a situation. Remember, boundaries are not always physical.
The people you surround yourself will inevitably have a profound influence on you and your well-being.
Choose carefully. Surrounding yourself with good, stable, motivated, like-minded, drama free people is imperative. It is better to have a few right friends, than scores of wrong ones!
Getting out from the weight of bad relationships is so incredibly liberating. Now you can free up your time for what really matters, for what matters most!
Acceptance of any situation and circumstance will liberate you from your fear, stress, anxiety, and worry. Learn to let situations and people go.
It is OK if people don’t like you, don’t like what you do, or how you do it. Remember, you are living this life for YOU. This is your life first.
You can’t fight every battle and you won’t win every battle you fight.
Make sure your house is in order before you try to put the lives of others in order.
Don’t spend so much time, attention, and energy helping others that you and your life fall into neglect. There is nothing wrong with engaging in self-care!
Before we try to save anyone else, we need to first save and serve ourselves! You cannot serve anyone if you do not look after yourself!
It is time to take responsibility for your life. You are in charge of you. No one else. Don’t let life, other people, or your circumstances pull you to and fro.
You can be you, no matter the situation and the circumstance. You can be your own constant amongst the chaos. Learn to work with yourself, work to trust yourself, and learn to be self-sufficient.
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Be selective in where you put your time, attention, and energy.
Choose things that will serve to empower you further. The more you empower yourself, the greater your power in life to act from.
If you want to effect change, do it in your own life first. Build something, do something, be something, first. The more you invest in yourself, the more you will have to give from.
Life is so short, we only have this short life to live, and it is our responsibility to make it the best we can. We deserve peace of mind, we deserve a better quality of life.
Take the time to reflect on the choices you are making in your life. Take action to advocate for your well-being and self-care. Seize the day and make this life the best it can be!
-Akiroq Brost
Check out my other articles:
Real People Do Real Things
Defeating the Cycle of Psychological Violence Towards Yourself
Shifting from a Scarcity Mindset to an Abundance Mindset
Meditation for Beginners
How I Got Rid of My Excuses and Started Living.
Who do you surround yourself with?
Simple Common Sense Ways to Happiness and Self-Love.
Getting to know yourself - A Journal Exercise.
How to Find Your Way Through the Impossible Maze of Struggle.
How to use boundaries to improve the quality of your life.
Negative Self-dialogue - An Exercise.
Strategies for Coping With Criticism in a Positive Way.
Stop Hiding Behind Your Excuses and Live Your Truth.
Create a Life You Love with the Powerful Intentions.
How Self-Acceptance Will Set You Free.
Create a Life of Peace Through Mindfulness.
Strategic Detachment.
How to Handle Negative Experiences in a Positive Way.
10 Steps to Living a More Meaningful Life.
Changing Perpectives.
It is OK to make mistakes.
Finding your "Why".
Does this serve you? Or does this harm you?
12 Strategies for Improving your Diet.
Developing a new relationship with fear.
Finding Self-acceptance.
How to Find Courage When You Don’t Have the Answers.
Eight ways to increase and maintain your self-confidence.
Tips and strategies to help you get a good night’s sleep.
What matters? A journey into Faith.
Finding your way back to yourself, reconnecting to love.
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Well said. This can be a tough pill to swallow, especially when you're someone who genuinely wants to help others, even at the expense of your own resources, be it physical resources, and/or even emotional resources.
During my recovery from addiction, I tried to hold onto some friends who were not ready to make this change. Of course, with addiction, the statistics are not in favor of the addict recovering. It's sad indeed, and I was enabling these "friends", at the expense of my emotional well being. I knew they were taking advantage, but because I cared for them, I would allow it. Eventually, I had to cut ties, and of course they tried the manipulation tactics, but I saw it for what it was, and I wasn't doing them, or myself any favors. I'm better off today for releasing myself of the burden.
I'll need to give this some thought.. Correlation to PTSD, cycle of abuse, hmm 🤔
I feel like my time, attention, and energy is well spent on @akiroq's blog 😍
I like how you link your past articles. Are you a psychologist?
I'll need to devote an entire day to reading your articles. You have a way with words. I'm intrigued, and very happy to read what you have to say.
People have to want the change for themselves, no matter how much, not matter how much we want that change for them. It's devastating. It's heart wrenching. It's so hard. It's so hard to see people you love fall apart in front of you, to be helpless to do anything, and to know that anything you do won't help. Really, what can be harder? I feel for people who go through this. I really do. It can tear a person apart.
What's worse, for an addict it can make recovery almost impossible to be around these type of people. It's like they are a black hole that sucks everything around them into the chaos.
Making a clean break is often necessary.
We do what we can. But we need to also look after ourselves. What are good are we if we put ourselves in a position where we then need help too? We need to care for ourselves before we help others.
Haha. And I enjoy my time responding to your comments. It's win win!
To answer your question: No, I am not a psychologist. This is my passion. I write about the things I have struggled with in my own life. I do so in the hopes it might help others.
Personal care should always come first in my opinion. I've learned some tough life lessons in regards to making sacrifices that can leave me in precarious situations.
I recognize "expectation" to be quite a falsity, in terms of outcome aligning with with expectation.
An empathetic person might expect a selfless sacrifice to provide a sense of security. Example:
Exhaustion of resources to care for someone who isn't making necessary change to care for themselves. (a pitfall for an empathetic individual) The subtle expectation might be: "This person has my back if the roles were reversed."
Major expectation, which is highly unlikely given the evidence! I have been fortunate enough to experience this pitfall, more than once. If I have the resources, I have to measure my expectations very carefully before making decisions.
Initially I thought you might be a psychologist, but it's obvious enough at this point that you don't subscribe to what I would consider a standard psychology based thinking.. Well, if you did we would probably already be disagreeing on some things 😄
Thank you for taking the time to formulate such in depth responses. I thoroughly enjoy conversing with you Akiroq.
Hello!
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My goodness, look at all that cake. Cake cake cake cake. Hahahaha. But seriously, those look delicious. Thanks for the support and encouragement. I appreciate it!
Yep I agree. If someone if on a downhill spiral it is practically impossible to pull them out of it unless they want to themselves. It's a tough one especially when it comes to drugs. You know that person is addicted and you want to support but you are helpless to stop it. I've seen it happen to my cousin and his son . He just didn't know what to do to support and he reacted angerly when his support did not work. He had to go to a professional on the end about advice on how to support with his son
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One of the hardest things is to see someone spiraling out of control and to not be able to help them. Not because we can't do anything, but because anything we do, won't help. Yes, by supporting someone who is using, by solving problems for them, we are enabling them. It's so hard! Yes, I recommend professional help for drug addiction. Especially for severe addiction issues. For someone trying to quit on their own that can be very dangerous. People die coming off of drugs(heart attacks, choking on their own vomit, hitting their head during seizures).