Some people dedicate their time to helping others; helping friends, family, significant others and even strangers. They’re called ‘fixers’ or ‘rescuers’ because they selflessly extend themselves to help others often neglecting their own needs.
They don’t like to ask for help even when they desperately need it because they think this takes away from their credibility as the helper or the fixer, because when the person who helps you needs help it becomes an ordeal.
But the truth is those who are trying to help or heal others are really trying to heal themselves and their wounds. They’re starving for that kind of help, love and attention they give others and the only way to satiate their hunger is to offer what they’re lacking to someone else.
They give the love they’re looking for, they give the help they need, they try to heal in others what they can’t heal within themselves and they try to rescue others so they can rescue themselves.
I’m not saying that some people are not meant to help and heal others; in fact, some people are born to do just that, but I’m saying that often those who get stuck in this role are really struggling in their own lives, battling their own demons and insecurities. Their only way out of the darkness and into the light becomes giving others the peace of mind and happiness they can’t find within themselves.
And this is the irony of fixers, they can fix anything and anyone but they can’t fix themselves.
They think they’re on a mission to fix people while they remain damaged and they think that by healing others, over time, they can heal themselves too, but the problem is that they do not acknowledge that they sometimes need help, that they sometimes need to stop helping others and focus on themselves.
They don’t realize that sometimes the rescuer needs to be rescued.
It’s a beautiful paradox that to numb our own pain we try to take away the pain of others, to silence our minds we consume ourselves with the problems of others and to heal our own hearts we try to ease those whose hearts have been broken.
But I think that this is what living the good life is all about; saving people from the lessons we had to learn the hard away, we want to rescue people because we know how it feels to drown, we want to heal people because we know what it’s like to have a broken heart and we want to help people because we know how hopeless life can be when you need help and no one is there to help you.
But the good side of rescuing others is that eventually you become one with them and you unknowingly rescue yourself too.