Those who are compelled to save you will always need saving themselves in the end....
When you're not sure who is saving who
The call to help people can be so loud and all-consuming that you feel an imperative to find a solution before you really know what the problem is. The querulous, puzzled face and the eyes darting from one person to another to listen out for any useful snatches of conversation. That aha moment when you chance upon something someone’s said and think you’ve nailed it. But really all you did was guess, because in the end, this isn’t about helping someone else, it’s fulfilling your own need to feel needed.
You need that person to stay the same, the same person they were at twelve, the same person they became at twenty-two. The woman they became at thirty, always needing, always vulnerable, always helpless. That wise old owl coming to the rescue, when really all those years you had developed an addiction to saving people, getting a hit from the appreciation (which is really just plain grateful). The constant interplay of hero and saviour is a heady concoction and a hunger that never goes away. It gnaws away at you whenever there’s a crisis brewing, whenever something unheard or not known is a lost opportunity to save someone.
Change can sometimes leave you feeling like you’re standing on shifting sand, worse when it’s a person and not a circumstance. For the saviour to survive you must always be in need, and the people around you must remain the same, they cannot change, they cannot evolve - only continue needing and wanting and falling.
The role of saviour must only be taken by someone whose needs and wants are always met. Or you’re led to believe they are, or perhaps they choose to believe they are, because really, when you’re a saviour, there’s always going to be an unmet need hiding in there somewhere.
The pull to keep you where you are will be strong. Any changes, any shifts in circumstances will pull the saviour out of their seat. They must always have their hands on the wheel. Perhaps it’s too late to change direction now, perhaps you have to let that person keep on saving you even when you no longer need saving.
You know, looking at them from a safe distance, they’re going to come unstuck, sometime soon. And when they do, they’ll be like an exploding star, a supernova, a sudden brief explosion before disappearing into their own black hole. The one who must always be saving is always the one who will need saving themselves in the end.
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That was a short piece that came to me suddenly and was slightly different to what I usually write. It’s about people becoming accustomed to helping a person or people constantly until it becomes an addiction, a need to feel needed. Until they forget about the person they’re trying to help. Like savour complex or helper’s syndrome, or super helper’s syndrome (yes there is actually something like that, it’s real). It can come from a good place, but often to the detriment of the person doing it. I’ve known lots of different people like that in my life, so it’s not about one particular person. I think people on the spectrum and those with other forms of mental illnesses or conditions can be susceptible to those kinds of people.
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