Tiz the Season for Trying to "Fix" People
I’m just going to jump right in here………This time of year can be complex for many people for many reasons.
I find this, as with most things, to be a time of great contradictions especially as we round out year 2 of a pandemic.
There is gratitude and there is grief. There is joy and there is sadness. There is the desire for community and the need to be alone. There is the feeling of overwhelm and the experience of loneliness.
I was in a session with my therapist this week and we were diving into some of the reasons why I was feeling particularly emotional and activated right now.
It ended up being quite layered but what I felt was resonant and essential to share was this very deep and urgent need that I can often experience around needing to “fix” people; needing to “help” them in some way and essentially, needing them to be different.
If the person denies this help or resists it, whether or not they even asked for it, I can sometimes become irrationally upset and resentful (even if I never express it).
I am sharing this because this is actually a theme I am hearing in my circles and communities and it feels especially pronounced during this time as some of us may be around people or in environments that could activate this in a much more intense way.
It might go a little something like this:
Someone either communicates an issue in their life or you notice it on your own (if you are a highly sensitive person, this likely happens often)
You believe you have a solution for them
Whether invited or not, you share this solution
Perhaps they dismiss or ignore the solution (that to you makes so much sense and is an easy “fix” for them)
On top of being upset about them not valuing your advice, you now either have to sit with the knowledge that they are choosing not to change their situation or you actually have to witness them stay in their current situation / suffering
You feel resentful
They feel judged
The relationship is compromised
Let’s discuss what’s happening here on an energetic level.
If / when this type of interaction occurs, the quality of our experience is now entangled or dependent on the actions of someone else, which we don’t have much control over. Our sense of joy, contentment and having a settled nervous system is now dependent on whether or not someone does what we *think* is right for them (even if it *is* right lol).
This can create both manipulation as well as co-dependency.
This usually never comes from a bad place; in fact it usually comes from an over-caring / unhealthy empath place (for more information on retiring the Empath identity, I highly recommend this video).
I know for me, it comes from a deeply wounded experience from my childhood of watching my grandfather slowly die over time from Parkinson’s and there was nothing I could do about it. Because I didn’t know how to hold space for that big of an emotion as a child, it instead morphed into trying to help everyone as a means of alleviating this deep fear of loss and feeling out of control.
Your energy is your greatest currency and you lose some of that currency by falling trap to the hook of the “fixing pattern. Tending to your own emotional needs and regulating your nervous system is what will help shift your experience, not focusing on the experience of others.
Regardless of what your specific root might be, I invite you to get curious about what you feel you are getting by trying to fix / help / change / others? What emotion or need is trying to be met within yourself?
If this is something you struggle with as well, particularly this time of year, I created the video below to help release this need so you can experience more ease and calm in your body, your experiences and maybe even in the relationship itself.