When Your Calling turns into a (World Saviour) Complex

By Dr Sea — World expert at failing to save the world

Rebel yell — photographed for Extinction Rebellion 2019 (Photograph by Ross Giblin / Stuff)

I have written about death and trauma brain and recovery in my first-ever Medium essay. It is a long and meandering tale through my childhood fantasy of becoming the female Jacques Cousteau, and how this bubble got brutally burst in my 20s. I felt that this Medium Writers Challenge tag deserved its own story. Less meandering, a bit more organised. More like my actual work.

My partner — not the Lord of the Rings guy I elf-stalked to Aotearoa New Zealand — but my fiancé, who is gentle and kind and wise beyond his young years has often turned to me, with a mixture of exasperation and admiration, and asked: “Why do you always have to care the most?” I usually stare at him in blank frustration — I honestly don’t know why. But it feels like an affliction more often than a blessing. That’s why it’s called a saviour complex. I’ve had to realise the hard way that I have turned my dream profession, my calling, into an actual, crippling complex.

I thought it might sound a bit preposterous calling myself the ‘world expert’ in anything. Even if it’s failing to do something that was always going to be too much for any one person to do. I felt I should show some of my credentials of failing to save the world. I acquired them in many different sectors, countries…