Ever since I was a little child, I’ve always been a helper. Whether it was rescuing an animal, comforting a bullied classmate, or supporting my mom and dad, I was drawn to help others. I dreamed of becoming a lawyer to assist kids like me—helpless children in difficult home situations. As a child, helping was a genuine quality, pure and untainted.
As I grew older and my own pain intensified, I noticed a shift. My role as a helper morphed into that of a “savior.” No longer was I helping out of pure intent; now, I was driven by the discomfort of witnessing others’ suffering.
I wanted control. I wanted to fix everything for everyone, especially in my closer, more intimate relationships. In retrospect, it was like an unconscious addiction that created way more problems than it fixed. It was a defect really, masked as a quality. A curse on both ends of the rope.
The problem with trying to fix and control is that it shifts the focus away from the person in need and places it on ourselves. When we give unsolicited advice, we often overlook the feelings and unique circumstances of the person we’re supposedly trying to help. We fail to listen, to understand, and to provide the empathy that true helping requires.
Instead of supporting them, we inadvertently diminish their agency and capacity to solve their problems. True help is about empowering the other person, not imposing our solutions on them.
Empathy is not about changing how someone feels; it’s about letting them know they’re not alone in their feelings. When we try to fix someone’s situation, we unintentionally invalidate their emotions, making them feel unheard and isolated. True empathy involves sitting with someone in their pain, offering a supportive presence rather than solutions.
Becoming certified as a hypnosis practitioner and life coach marked a turning point for me. I began to shift back to my pure purpose of helping. I learned that true coaching is about guiding and helping, not fixing or controlling. The essence of being a great coach lies in not fixing but in empowering others to find their solutions.
As a mother, this lesson is sometimes challenged. The savior in me resurfaces, not because it makes me uncomfortable to see my daughter in pain, but because I want to shield her from pain altogether.
I catch myself trying to fix things for her, believing that if I control her environment, she will be immune to suffering. But this is not true. As Brené Brown says in Atlas of the Heart: “It’s not our job to fix things for our kids; it’s our job to teach them how to sit in pain.”
To help others, I must first help myself. This plays out daily in my role as a mother, where I am deeply emotionally vested. It is a daily practice of compassion and letting go, allowing my daughter to feel and know her emotions.
I strive to be with her when she is in pain, letting her know she’s not alone, and allowing her to figure things out so that she can grow, heal, and embark on her own journey. My goal as a mother is to be an example and teach her how to be open and willing to receive light and reflect it back to others.
In this journey, I’ve learned that true helping is about empowering others to find their strength, guiding them to discover their paths, and being a supportive presence. It’s about receiving light and reflecting it, not just creating it.
As Pema Chödrön wisely states, “Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It’s a relationship between equals. Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others. Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.”
True compassion involves understanding our shared human experience and connecting deeply with others’ pain, not trying to fix it. By embracing empathy and compassion, we create a space where genuine healing and growth can occur, both for ourselves and for those we seek to support.
