Are you Serial Fixing the Emotional Baggage of Others?
Have you ever walked away from a conversation feeling like you were carrying someone else’s weight? As if their emotional baggage somehow ended up in your carry-on? Some interactions fill us up, even energize us. There’s a connection, not a transfer. But others leave us depleted. There’s a heaviness we feel, and perhaps a sense of confusion. We worked really hard, and empathy might continue to radiate through us to the point of becoming anxious thoughts. We feel responsible, we feel invested, we care about this person and are now part of the equation. This isn’t inherently negative, but it does reveal the fine line between showing up with compassion and stepping too far into someone else’s experience, a pattern I call serial fixing.
I see it all the time in my practice, so much so that I wrote a book about it. Parents, leaders, educators, and partners. People with very different lives but the same pattern. Highly empathetic individuals who find themselves over-invested. When helping becomes habitual, and supporting others forgets to include themselves in the equation. Self-worth doesn’t include self-connection; it’s fueled by the validation of others and the repetitive search for purpose embedded in others’ problems and how much you helped resolve them.
Serial fixing (like anything) comes in different forms, but ultimately it leads to false ownership and imbalanced relationships. Giving and being available, yet also feeling lonely. Often, the need to feel needed becomes a stand-in for self-worth. When we lack internal validation and connection to ourselves, we outsource our value. Helping becomes the fastest route to feeling useful, purposeful, even loved.
Most of us were taught that being a “good friend” means showing up, listening, and offering help. But for many (especially empathic, responsible, emotionally attuned people) those moments of support quietly shift into something else. We don’t just sit with someone’s pain, we carry it. We soothe, fix, over-accommodate, and unknowingly operate on their timeline. Not just so they feel better, but so ultimately we can feel better too.
So what does serial fixing look and feel like?
Emotional hangovers
Anxious thought patterns rehashing conversations or brainstorming how to solve others’ problems
Fabricating ways you might have caused the pain or discomfort by not stepping in sooner or not being a “good enough” friend
Using others’ problems, hurdles, or issues as a way to structure your identity and confirm that you are connected and good in your role with others
What helps?
The good news is that you can shift out of serial fixing without becoming cold, selfish, or unavailable. For many serial fixers, the idea of pulling back feels risky. They fear being seen as negative, unkind, or selfish because being liked has long felt essential to being safe or worthy. There’s a sense of guilt, and they tend to feel more comfortable letting the issues of others become their structure rather than taking the time to care for or check in on themselves. They know what they should do to improve their self-care and are huge encouragers of others’ self-care, yet guilt, feelings of unworthiness, or their InnerCritic comes into play.
Show up and meet others where they are. If you find yourself immediately problem-solving, giving advice, or prematurely relating, you are serial fixing.
The first step to avoid this is validation. Meet the person where they are. You don’t have to structure it. It takes patience, but start by putting effort into understanding their message and the emotions that go along with it. They need to keep ownership of what they are going through. They too need to get their reps in when it comes to problem-solving or simply sitting in discomfort while you support them.
Think of everyone carrying a ball of tangled yarn. Don’t let others throw you their ball of yarn. You have your own, perhaps several! Yet, you don’t have to untangle it yourself. You can help them pull on certain threads, but the ownership and the pace should stay with them.
It is very difficult for empathetic people to see others struggling, especially those they love or feel deeply connected to. Take a pause and truly identify what your role is, what you can actually control, and what is yours. Serial fixers tend to engulf too much or are juggling and untangling everyone else’s ball of yarn while repeatedly misplacing their own.
How might your ego play a role? If you don’t solve or fix something, does it mean you don’t care enough? Logically, we know that’s not true, but convincing our InnerPleasers and InnerRescuers might be a different story.
People learn and gain resilience when they navigate hurdles with the support of others, not when those hurdles are consistently handed off. That creates micro-codependencies in relationships, which tends to result in stagnation. Serial fixers might remain highly sought after, but those they are solving for are not getting the reps they need to build self-trust and confidence.
Try following my mantra: Support, Don’t Solve.
You can still lead with empathy and be present without absorbing others’ emotions. How can you support without jumping in to fix and take false ownership? It takes practice, but remember, you can either turn left or right at the crossroads.
Right is fixing and solving.
Left is empathetically validating and keeping the ball of yarn with the rightful owner.
Serial fixing can look like pure compassion, but it often masks burnout, blurred boundaries, and buried resentment. It convinces you that your worth is tied to your usefulness and that if you’re not holding everything together, everything will fall apart.
You weren’t meant to be the container for everyone else’s chaos. Intimate, healthy relationships can exist without compromising yourself or carrying the weight of everyone else’s baggage. Emotional burnout doesn’t have to be the norm for highly empathetic people. There’s a way to stop just talking about self-care and urging others to set healthy boundaries, while silently battling your own internal conflicts and losing yourself in the shuffle.
It might start with a simple but powerful shift: carrying only your own baggage and allowing others to be responsible for carrying theirs.