In healthy relationships, helping means mutual care and support. But when helping becomes compulsive, the delicate balance between giving and receiving can shift, with potentially devastating results.

Compulsive helping means going beyond reciprocity to help in ways other people don’t need or want. Also called caretaking, compulsive helping is trying to “fix” someone else - or their problems as you perceive them. 

According to Dr Robert Lefever, a prominent addiction specialist in the UK, caretaking can be more insidious than drug or alcohol addiction. Because we’re taught from birth that being helpful and caring is “good” behaviour, it can be very hard to distinguish “helpful helping” from compulsive helping. 

How caretaking threatens the helped person

We all know the feeling of being “helped”. Someone takes something out of your hands without asking, as if to say, “that’s too heavy for you.” Or someone gives you a solution to a problem you were working on, denying you the satisfaction of figuring it out for yourself. Obviously, if we’ve asked for help, we’re grateful, and our relationship feels balanced and reinforced. But when there is a disparity between our desire or need for help and the help given, we don’t feel the helper has given to us: we feel they have taken.

The “take” in the word “caretaking” is significant. Compulsive helping is often described as narcissistic or arrogant because it puts the helper’s needs first. When a baby is born, they need a great deal of help, but as they grow we gradually withdraw so the child can develop confidence and independence. Self-help is vital in the formation of identity, so by helping excessively, caretakers stifle others’ growth. 

This is as true for adults as it is for children. We may know what a small child needs better than they do, but when it comes to adults, we don’t. Lefever writes, “if you hear that phrase, ‘I know what’s good for you’, Run! Run for your life because that person is going to cause you immense damage.”

How caretaking harms the helper

When helping is compulsive, the helper is taking from themself too. The need to be needed is addictive and compulsive helpers are often so consumed by helping others that their other needs are neglected and their self-identity is threatened. If caretaking behaviour begins at an early age, the individual may struggle to develop an independent sense of self.

How to identify and challenge caretaking behaviour

When our helping is compulsive, our self-esteem depends upon other people, which never works. My self-esteem has to be based on my own actions, thoughts and feelings. Moving away from compulsive helping to helpful helping means getting to know our own thoughts and feelings - our own selves -  as independent from those of others. 

Change is always hard, even when it is towards a healthier and more peaceful way of being, because change means moving away from the familiar to the unknown. This can cause us to feel anxious, fearful and even despairing. At Lifetime we work with people as they grow through these tough emotions into a space where they can live differently. 

Thank you for reading.

Malachy, Lifetime Therapy founder, counsellor and teacher

Get in touch: info@lifetimetherapy.co.uk