None of Us Are Saviors of the World

Codependents tend to be rescuers. At some point we developed the idea that we are the savior of most everyone in our lives. Certainly in my own codependency, I have been a master of care taking other people, attempting to fix all of their problems, doing difficult things for them that they should have been doing for themselves, and ultimately attempting my best to save them from themselves and their own addictive behaviors.

Even after 22 years of recovery work, I can still fall into the “I am the Savior trap.” So I am learning to draw a fine line between helping someone vs. attempting to save them. First off, I know for fact that I can’t save, or even help someone who refuses to first help him or herself. When someone isn’t acknowledging their addiction, or they are balking at working their Recovery program, I see their behavior as a big red flag. The same is true if someone is constantly blaming other people for all of their problems or for the fact that they have addiction problems.

In these situations, I know there is nothing I can do to help them other than to love them enough to pray for them. A woman came to me one day and laid all of her issues on me. She sobbed, she complained, she played the helpless victim. No one is the helpless victim unless they choose to play the role. It’s a choice. So after I finished listening to her, I told her I wanted her to do two things to help herself: 1) talk to her pastor about building a better relationship with God, and 2) find a good therapist.

A month or so later, I received a call from the same woman. Immediately, she began ploughing through the same sob story she had told me in my office. It was obvious nothing had changed. So I interrupted her and asked her if she had spoken with her pastor and if she had found a therapist. Her answer was “No. I just can’t do that.” So I said “Well, I’m sorry but there’s nothing more I can do to help you, aside from praying for you to start helping yourself. I can’t continue listening to the same story you told me before because that would simply be enabling you to stay stuck in your ‘poor me’ story.”

And that was the truth. I couldn’t help her in any way until she first chose to start helping herself. Listening to someone complain about the same thing over and over isn’t helping them to do anything beyond staying stuck in their victim mentality. We cannot rescue a person who isn’t willing to help themselves. The best we can do is place them in God’s hands and pray that God will motivate them to begin helping themselves.

We are playing savior when we start doing for others what they need to be doing for themselves. We aren’t helping them. We are keeping them stuck in their addiction and victim mentality. So now, if I see someone is helping themselves and they have a situation they can’t quite solve on their own, I will offer a helping hand. But I will no longer do for others what they need to be doing for themselves.

I am not the savior of the world. And neither are you.