"Just say NO." A growth exercise that's easier said than done.
It's hard to say "no" to someone you know is in need. It's difficult to watch em suffer, while knowing in your heart you'll be trampling all over your own healthy boundaries, if you engage in your compulsion to fix, help, guide or rescue em from their pain.
Compulsively helping others is also a way of conveying that you have no trust or faith in their ability to help themselves! How would YOU feel, being on the receiving end of someone routinely intervening with you this way? Might it feel diminishing, and undermining to your sense of competency and worth?
I have to practice reigning myself in, every single day of my life. It doesn't come naturally to me. It would be easy for me to get sucked into assisting all others. I'm damned good at it... but in the final analysis I have to force myself to grab on tightly to Me, instead of them~ and this is how ya break yourself of pathological codependency traits.
I literally wrote the BOOK on Codependency and its dangerous, narcissistic underpinnings. My book speaks to how being a Super-Giver undermines not just us, but others, as well. Nobody wants to look at the dark side of being a helper, fixer or rescuer, but I assure you, there are self-serving ‘payoffs’ that attend these behaviors.
Look into, “DO YOU LOVE TO BE NEEDED, OR NEED TO BE LOVED?” and see these behavior patterns for what they really are, and learn how they’re fostered in us as we grow into adulthood. NOBODY pops out of their mother’s womb, as a rescuer/fixer personality. This trait was long-cultivated in us from infancy onward, and has to do with how adept our mother was at giving us what WE needed as infants and small children, in order to feel truly adored.
Does it feel good to turn people away or just NOT help? HELL no! But real growth means doing things that are NEVER easy or comfortable. The question that begs to be asked therefore, is AM I REALLY COMMITTED TO DISMANTLING AND HEALING MY DYSFUNCTION?
Because here's the deal, folks: If you keep doing what you've BEEN doing, you'll keep getting exactly the same result. Growth and change demand that you do what feels uncomfortable and foreign to ya~ otherwise, it's not development...
it's just you telling yourself you're "evolving," which is a lot closer to being a masturbatory experience than you might wanna realize.