The helper syndrome is a syndrome that you can easily suffer from. Like Maarten, a great guy with a heart of gold. He feels that it’s his calling to spread light on this planet and he is very busy doing as there is a lot of misery. He is helping everybody who is in need.
A handkerchief here, a shoulder there and of course always a listening ear. He gives and gives and gives. Not only that he does his very best, he also carries the suffering of the other.
The helper syndrome
One day he’s had enough. He can’t go on. He comes to me exhausted and empty. He looks at me with a look full of desperation. “Mahatma, I think I suffer from the helper syndrome. But what is that, this helper syndrome and how do I get rid of it? I am so tired too. Does the misery never stop? I know that I’ve come to alleviate the suffering here on earth and I really want to do that. But how? How do you do that? Don’t you have helper syndrome? I just can’t take it anymore”
Struggling with the Helper syndrome
I look at him. There he is, a big giant guy. It seems as if he is carrying all the suffering of the world. “No honey, I released that helper syndrome a long time ago because I found out that it did not work. I was exhausted, just like you now and the other person didn’t get any better. I struggled quite a lot with helper the helper syndrome.”
With the helper syndrome, you maintain patterns
“Step by step, I could see that I was maintaining the patterns of the other person and of myself and that wasn’t very helpful. My own pattern was that I made myself bigger and the other person smaller. This resulted from my childhood in which I, as a child, tried to save my mother. She had a hard time dealing with an alcoholic husband who was aggressive when he was drunk. Something in me then decided that I would save her. Of course that wasn’t possible, I was only a child. That’s how I inflated my own ego and made myself bigger than my mother. I went through life with a lot of inflated air of trying to save everyone. Always thinking of someone else, always trying to fill the holes of someone else. However, I wasn’t happy with it myself and the worst thing was that it didn’t help the other person.”
I’m weak…
“Aha” says Maarten. “That’s where helper syndrome comes from. Now I get it. But if I don’t try to save those people, who’s doing it then?” “There are people who think they are weak and who think that others have to solve their misery. That is the other pattern” I explain. “They didn’t get enough love, attention and safety as a child or they were always kept small, so they started accepting that as their truth.
Isabelle
op 14 Dec 2020