Emotional boundaries: 5 ways to help people solve their own problems
The art of nudging people without trying to fix them
Your friend or colleague comes to you with a problem. They come to you because you have a solid track record of wise advice and solutions. Problem is that it’s become a habit and they’re dependent your input to do the things that you know they can do themselves. While you enjoy helping people out, you now realise that the dependency causes you to feel exhausted and resentful. You decide to become become less available, except feelings of guilt and fear of conflict keep you in a seemingly endless cycle of fixing others’ problems.
You start to ask yourself, how do I break free from this habit without destroying my relationships?
If you dig a bit deeper, you might notice that you get a rush of energy when you’re needed by others and you’re able to alleviate their suffering through fixing or helping them solve their problem. But you’re working really hard for it because perhaps you are guiding that person toward outcomes that matter to you more than what matters to them.
This is a typical story of how we rescue others from their emotional state to alleviate our discomfort with their suffering, get a dopamine hit as a reward, followed by a crash in our energy levels to the point of exhaustion.
Please listen to a brief description of a framework that describes relationship dynamics that keep people stuck in distress and disempowerment, and how this can become a type of activism that perpetuates injustice.
Here’s how to know if you lack emotional boundaries when helping someone:
You need to work hard to inspire them into a growth mindset.
You get them to focus only on the positives when they vent about what’s wrong in their situation.
You explain what you think they should do while also believing that you’re communicating clearly and effectively.
You feel dissatisfied when the person doesn’t follow your advice, apply the strategies you shared with them or achieve their goals.
You feel like you’re letting them down when they leave the encounter still feeling hopeless, down or disappointed.
By taking on these approaches, you could be subtly trying to control their experience to get them to see their situation the way you’d like them to see it. You could be in danger of giving off the ‘If only you saw it my way, you wouldn’t be suffering’ message, which is more deflating or shaming than helpful.
There is another way to approach this situation without compromising your energy levels, being their saviour and preserves emotional boundaries. It requires you to shift your own perspective about the other person and their experience of suffering as well as your approach to helping them resolve their issue.
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