We Can't Rescue Someone Who Is Hurting Themselves, But We Can Pray for Them

"I should've guessed that you would only ever hurt yourself,

I should've guessed there's nothing I could do to stop you..."

I Should've Guessed, RAC featuring Speak

Truthfully, in life there is NOTHING we can do to stop someone else from hurting themselves, aside from prayer. We can surrender our powerlessness over the person to our Higher Power, and we can ask our Higher Power to help that person. Our Higher Power can do what we are unable to do. 

Too many codependents, even after years of recovery, still feel the need to rescue other needy people. We want to stop them from hurting themselves. We want to stop their drinking, or their drugging, or their sexually acting out, but we are powerless to do so. We feel caught between a rock and a hard place: If we try to rescue them, we will be falling back into our own codependent craziness, and if we let go of the deep desire to rescue them, we feel guilty. We feel like bad people.

We don't like to feel powerless when someone else is suffering. And yet, we aren't powerless. We have the power to pray. The real problem is that so few of us really trust our Higher Powers to take care of the person. We still think that only we can be this person's savior. And truthfully, that's all about us. We are still feeling the need to validate our worth by saving other people. We still want to be needed, and we are still thinking that we can earn the person's love by rescuing them. 

In reality, we've made these rescuing mistakes enough times to know that they don't work. We can't earn love. No one can, not even the Guardians of the Galaxy! And we are no exception. So why are we so anxious to make the same old mistakes again? It's called insanity. When we ourselves are suddenly feeling very vulnerable and needy, we easily glide into old codependent ways of thinking and acting, no matter how insane they are.

Rescuing, in particular, makes us feel empowered. Once we get into rescue mode, we feel less anxious and less vulnerable because we mistakenly think we have more power than the person we are trying to rescue. In fact, we've just given our power away to that person by taking our focus off of us and placing it entirely on them. We have now made ourselves a prisoner to what they think of us. After all, we're waiting on their approval so that we can feel needed and loved, no matter how false that love is.

Next time we feel the anxious need to rescue someone, we need to realize that our feelings aren't really about the other person as much as they are about us. The truth will always be that we CANNOT rescue another person or save them from themselves. ONLY THEY CAN DO THAT! So, we need to surrender them to our Higher Power, pray and trust that our Higher Power will help them to rescue themselves.

Then we need to turn our attention toward ourselves. There's a reason why we're feeling the anxious compulsion to rescue someone else. It means we aren't taking care of ourselves. So what do we need to do to make our lives manageable? Only we, partnered with our Higher Power, can take care of our needs.