You Can’t Fix Them, but You Can Fix This
Sometimes you just can’t help it. Your friend or partner keeps bumping their head against the wall over and over again. You can’t stand by and do nothing, so you try to fix it . Spending hours in deep analysis of their problems, you dish out the most practical and logically sound advice they swear they’ll take, but never do. The cycle continues round and round, but it’s no longer just their cycle. It’s your cycle now too. If you’re in a relationship and are being promised someone will “change for you,” that change will be as brief as those words. Finding yourself in this situation can often feel as helpless as being on the other side of it. Before going into what to do, it’s important to understand exactly what to stop doing.
Breeding Ground for Resentment
By constantly trying to fix someone’s problem, you may actually be hindering their growth and ability to finally fix it themselves. As you feed their victim, you take on their burden while imposing your way of doing things. Even if that way is 100% correct, you are positioning yourself above them and run the risk of instigating backlash and rebellion as you give advice from the high road they aren’t ready to take.
We all have to take responsibility for our own actions, but until that decision is made, there’s nothing anyone else can do. You may think they’ve hit rock bottom, but that’s your idea of rock bottom. You keep throwing them lines filled with answers, but if the other person doesn’t bother asking the right questions, everything falls on deaf ears.
Breaking the Cycle
Instead of trying fix, just be. Be there and make sure the other person knows that your door is always open. Be there as the support to their journey, but let them be the leader. If the situation is toxic, give the person space. This doesn’t have to be done in a dramatic or mean spirited way, but it must done. While you didn’t cause the problem, you are now part of it.
By helping, you are enabling.
By fixing, you are breaking.
At a certain point, freedom is the only way. Freedom from the situation, from the cycle, and maybe from the person. This is the time to look inward, but not to shower in the blame or negativity for the experience, but to become aware of your own emotions. You must look at the triggers that this situation is pulling inside of you ask why. What pain are you forced to face and why is there pain at all? You may logically understand this person needs space, but yet you refuse to give it. You claim it’s because you want to help them, but what is the real reason for this venomous codependence versus the one you tell yourself?
Betting on the Future, Betting on Yourself
In economics, there is a concept known as “sunk cost.” These are costs that have already been incurred, cannot be recovered, and thus should have no influence on future decisions. If you bought a $15 movie ticket, but then a friend offers you a free ticket to a concert, the price of the movie ticket is irrelevant. You cannot get it back and should only decide based on what you want to see more.
In matters of the heart, this is never so simple. We are psychologically prone to hold dear that which we invest in, even if it is hurting us. At the end of the day, it comes down to attention and where we choose to focus it. Replacing anxiety and blame with curiosity about our own experience is the key to freedom.
Betting on the future means betting that they’ll change, but accepting that they maybe won’t at the same time. Betting on yourself means not allowing yourself to be 6 feet under anyone else’s dirt. The longest relationship is the one you have with yourself. Forsake that for too long and you cease to exist.
Unlock Your Potential
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