• Rather than try to offer advice, practice asking “How” or “What” questions, i.e. How do you feel about that? or What do you think your next step is?
• Practice talking about yourself rather than being the therapist in your relationships; share the latest news in your life
• Take healthy space from the broken people in your life; allot time for conversations with them and limit it to what feels good not exhausting.
• Practice exercising your boundaries and what you need.
• Reconnect to your sense of spirituality.
• Start listening to your intuition and gut reactions.
• Expand your network and connect with people who inspire & uplift you.
• Start building a deep relationship with your patterns of behavior and becoming conscious of them.

We all have stories and scars.

We find beauty through the broken times. Continue reading “How to Stop Being the Rescuer.” →

You will martyr yourself over and over again in order to meet the invisible quota of Lives Helped that floats above your head.

You will obsessively analyze how every choice you make might impact those around you.

You will assess every meal, every dollar spent, every vacation taken (or not taken) based on how it will impact the people you feel a responsibility to care for.

Because, in this unhealthy version of caregiving, our understanding of love has become warped. Love now looks like a relentless string of sacrifice.

Your thoughts might go something like this:

If I don’t love her with my constant presence, she will feel sad and lonely.

If I don’t love him with my attentive eye observing everything, he’ll get sick again, or maybe even die.

If I don’t love them with my efficiencies managing everything, someone will get hurt. Things will go very wrong if I’m not here to take care of them all.

Sometimes, love calls on us to invest our energy and time in tending to someone else’s pain.

But not 100 percent of the time. And not with the nurturing going down a one-way street, pouring out of the same person, over and over again.

If you see this pattern in any of your relationships, consider what it would take to expand your definition of what it means to nurture, to love, to care for. Continue reading “When you carry the Nurturer Gene, fixing other people can easily become a destructive self-identity. “ →

You’ll know if you have this trait too, because people will often tell you their secrets mere minutes after meeting you.

When someone has just been in a car accident or broken up with their boyfriend, you wrap your arms around them and for the first time that day, their body fully relaxes.

People tell you they feel at home in your presence. Safe. Heard. Cared for.

There’s so much beauty in having a trait like this. Without much effort, you nurture and care for those around you. It is a gift you give us all.

But there’s another side to the caregiver coin.

Helping other people can become addictive. It can begin to feel like the only way to show your love is to prostrate yourself at the needs of others.

Oh, you’re hurting? Lemme swoop in and save the day.

Oh, you’re broke? Lemme dump my savings into your bank account and all will be well.

Oh, you’re single again? Lemme set you up with my neighbor’s son.

Whatever your ailment, I’ve got a fix for you!

And the gratitude from the people we’re supposedly ‘fixing’ tends to flow so steadily that we become convinced of the healthiness of our stance.

We’re confident that healing every sore spot we see is not only natural and enjoyable, but it’s the main reason we were put on this planet. Continue reading “Are You a Natural Caregiver?” →

“Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It’s a relationship between equals.” ~Pema Chodron

After college, I was hustling hard to get a work visa so that I could stay in the US.

But then my mom got caught up in a political scandal, and without much reflection on how much this would alter my life’s plans, I dropped my dream of staying in America, drove 1,000 miles, and flew another 500 to be by her side.

Would she have crumbled without me there? My mama is a tough chick, so I highly doubt it.

But at the time, I (subconsciously) believed that when the ones we love are hurting, their pain trumps everything. Their pain gets top priority, and whatever goals and dreams we’ve been working toward now pale in comparison.

At the time, I thought that love meant tending to the other person’s needs first, always.

And this form of self-sacrifice came naturally to me (I’d behaved this way even as a young child), so I was lucky, right? Having inherent caregiver qualities is a beautiful gift, right?

Yes. And maybe not. Continue reading “Addicted to Helping: Why We Need to Stop Trying to Fix People” →

Continue reading ““People pleasing”” →