When Helping becomes over-helping
You care. You show up. You’re the one people come to when things fall apart—at work, at home, in the group chat. You listen. You offer advice. You fix it. But somewhere along the way, helping turns into overhelping. You find yourself drained as you immerse yourself in imbalanced relationships. Resentment builds, and you’re unsure how to pull back without feeling guilty. Still, you keep showing up.
The truth is, many of us are playing unconscious roles in our relationships. We become the Fixer, the Helper, the One Who Always Has It Together. These roles look admirable on the surface. They make us feel needed, capable, and valuable. But serial fixing often comes at a cost we don’t talk about enough: burnout, boundary-blurring, and the loss of our own emotional space.
The Roles We Don’t Realize We’re Playing
We learn these roles early. Perhaps you had to keep the peace in your family, or you were praised for being “mature for your age.” Over time, being useful becomes a big part of your identity. It’s how you feel connected to others, which is great, but you often lose yourself in the shuffle. Connecting with yourself isn’t as familiar. Helping becomes your default setting.
But when our sense of worth is wrapped up in solving other people’s problems, it becomes almost impossible to step back. We start overfunctioning in relationships by anticipating needs, smoothing things over, offering support before it’s even asked for. We think we’re helping. Often, we’re actually taking on more than we should and fueling imbalances, enabling, or creating codependent relationships.
The Toll of Over-Helping
Burnout doesn’t always come from our jobs. It often comes from the way we relate. From holding everyone else’s emotions. From solving problems that aren’t ours to solve. From carrying the invisible weight of being the emotional anchor in every room we walk into.
It often serves as a distraction and source of stimulation from our own issues. If we’re helping, we feel good, and it takes precedence over self-reflection, suppressing the guilt we might feel if we focus on ourselves or say “no.”
The cost is quiet but heavy:
You feel drained after most conversations.
You notice resentment creeping in, but then feel guilty about it.
You have no idea what it feels like to just listen without also planning a solution.
You rarely share about yourself.
This is where overhelping turns into self-abandonment. And over time, it chips away at your presence, your energy, and your ability to show up authentically. Not just for others, but for yourself.
Support, Don’t Solve
There’s a difference between showing up and taking over. Between empathy and overidentification. Between supporting and solving.
Let’s say a friend is venting about work. The serial fixer jumps in: “You should just quit. Or go to HR. Have you tried doing XYZ?” But maybe they don’t want advice. Maybe they just want to feel heard. Yes, this reframe will feel different and not as involved at first, but like anything, it takes practice.
A supportive response might sound like:
“That sounds really hard. Do you want to talk it through or just vent right now?”
Support creates space. Solving often fills it. When we start with validation, we’re keeping the ownership with the other person and empowering them to get their own ‘reps’ in and problem-solve, while we remain in the role of a supportive presence.
It’s not always easy to resist the urge to jump in, especially when helping has been your default. But here are a few questions to consider the next time you feel pulled into fixer mode:
Am I helping because they need me to, or because I need to feel needed?
Would I feel anxious or irrelevant if I didn’t jump in?
What would it mean to trust that people can carry their own experiences?
When we meet people where they are and learn to Support, Don’t Solve, we create space for deeper connection, greater trust, and far less resentment. We get to be present without becoming over-responsible. It’s a pattern I’ve witnessed for years in both my clients and my own life—and one I explore more fully in my upcoming book, Serial Fixer, which breaks down the key steps of the Support, Don’t Solve framework. So, stay tuned!
Helping is a beautiful thing, but only when it includes you, too.