You're So Busy Fixing Everyone Else That You're Falling Apart

You're the person everyone calls when they have problems. You give advice, lend money, offer shoulders to cry on, and solve crises that aren't yours. You feel needed, important, helpful.

Meanwhile, your own goals sit ignored. Your own problems pile up. Your own life stays stuck while you're busy managing everyone else's.

This isn't kindness. This is avoidance with a hero complex.

You're using other people's problems as an excuse to avoid dealing with your own uncomfortable realities.

The Helper's High That's Actually a Low

Your brain gets a dopamine hit every time you solve someone else's problem. It feels good to be needed, to have answers, to be the person others depend on. It's easier than sitting with the discomfort of your own unsolved issues.

But here's what's really happening: you're becoming addicted to feeling important while your own importance in your own life diminishes.

Research from University of Michigan shows that people who constantly help others at the expense of their own needs have higher rates of depression, anxiety, and burnout. Your rescue addiction is literally making you sick.

Why Your Brain Chooses Their Problems Over Yours

Other people's problems feel more manageable than your own. When your friend needs relationship advice, you can see their situation clearly and offer solutions. When you look at your own relationship issues, everything feels complicated and overwhelming.

External problems have clear boundaries. Internal problems feel infinite.

Plus, solving other people's problems gives you control and immediate gratification. Your own problems require sustained effort, uncertain outcomes, and facing uncomfortable truths about yourself.

So your brain tricks you into believing that helping others is more important than helping yourself.

The Real Cost of Your Rescue Addiction

Let's get specific about what constantly fixing others actually costs you:

Your own goals become afterthoughts. While you're managing their crises, your projects, dreams, and priorities get pushed to "when I have time." Spoiler: you never have time.

You attract users and energy vampires. People learn they can dump their problems on you and you'll handle them. You become everyone's emotional dumping ground.

Your problem-solving skills atrophy for your own life. You get so good at seeing solutions for others that you lose the ability to navigate your own challenges.

You develop savior complex. You start believing that others can't function without you, which feeds your ego but keeps everyone (including you) dependent and stuck.

You become resentful. Eventually, you'll resent the people you're constantly helping, especially when they don't reciprocate or take your advice.

Your own emotional intelligence for self-care disappears. You know exactly what everyone else needs but have no idea what you need.

The Types of Problem Addiction

The Advice Giver

You have solutions for everyone's life except your own. You can see exactly what your friend should do about their job, but you stay in your own job that makes you miserable.

The Financial Rescuer

You lend money, pay for others' emergencies, and fund their poor decisions while your own financial goals suffer.

The Emotional Sponge

You absorb everyone's feelings, drama, and stress. Your emotional bandwidth gets consumed by their problems while your own emotional needs go unmet.

The Crisis Manager

You swoop in during emergencies, fix everything, then wonder why you're always exhausted and your own life feels like an emergency.

All of these feel noble, but they're sophisticated ways of avoiding your own growth and responsibility.

How to Stop Being Everyone's Savior

1. Recognize the Pattern

Before helping anyone, ask: "Am I avoiding something in my own life by focusing on this?" Often, the urge to help others spikes when you're avoiding your own difficult work.

2. Apply the Airplane Mask Rule

Put on your own oxygen mask first. You can't help others sustainably if you're suffocating in your own unresolved issues.

Help yourself first. Then help others from a position of strength, not desperation.

3. Distinguish Between Helping and Enabling

Helping empowers someone to solve their own problems. Enabling does the work for them and keeps them dependent.

Ask: "Will this help them become more capable, or more dependent on me?"

4. Set Help Boundaries

Decide in advance how much time, energy, and money you're willing to spend helping others each week. When you hit that limit, you stop.

Your help should come from surplus, not sacrifice.

5. Practice Strategic Selfishness

Schedule time for your own priorities first. Make your own goals non-negotiable. Let other people figure out their own problems while you work on yours.

This isn't selfish. This is responsible.

6. Change Your Response Scripts

Instead of immediately jumping in with solutions:

• "That sounds difficult. What do you think you should do?"

• "I trust you to figure this out."

• "What are your options here?"

• "I can't help with this right now, but I believe you'll handle it."

Stop giving fish. Stop teaching fishing. Let them figure out they can fish.

The Uncomfortable Truth About Helping

Most people don't actually want your solutions. They want your attention, validation, or someone to complain to. When you constantly solve their problems, you rob them of the opportunity to develop their own problem-solving skills.

Your help might be helping them stay helpless.

People with their shit together don't avoid their own problems by solving everyone else's. They work on themselves first, then help others from a position of strength and choice, not compulsion and avoidance.

Your Problem Priority Audit

List the top 3 problems in your own life that need attention. Then list the last 3 problems you helped others solve.

Ask yourself:

• How much time did I spend on their problems vs mine?

• Which problems would make a bigger impact on life satisfaction if solved?

• What am I avoiding in my own life by focusing on theirs?

• How do I feel about that ratio?

If you're spending more energy on other people's problems than your own, you're living other people's lives.

Your Self-Focus Challenge

This week, decline to help with one request that you would normally say yes to. Instead, use that time to work on one of your own neglected priorities.

Notice what comes up when you say: "I can't help with this right now, but I trust you'll figure it out."

Notice how it feels to redirect that helping energy toward your own goals.

Reply with what request you declined and what you worked on instead. The most honest responses about the discomfort of choosing yourself get featured next week.

Next week: "Why you keep waiting for motivation (and how to act without it)"

Get Your Shit Together

P.S. Send this to someone who's always available for everyone except themselves. Sometimes we all need permission to be temporarily selfish in service of long-term sustainability.