Reply to Changing a rescuer-victim relationship

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]In the grand scheme of possible character flaws, this is a great one to have.  You want to be helpful, sometimes to the point of not encouraging the helpee to be empowered to come up with their own solutions.  But you’re wanting to help your friends and family, and have a lot of empathy, and that’s fantastic.

Since the urge to help is so strong, what about working with a counselor on what language and discourse to use to help others in an empowering way?  Trying to turn that off will make you feel like you’re not being you and it’s a great trait to have.  The language should just change, right?  So that you’re helping them come up with their own solutions rather than you coming up with them for them?  A therapist does this all the time and can help guide you in how to interact with others in crisis or need in a strengthening way. [/quote]

This is not an empathetic behavior, and it is not a "great one to have."

Empathy is the effort to understand where someone is coming from, and a willingness to accept their perspective as at least one possible reality. Advice is not an act of empathy. I don't know where people get this idea. Maybe if you are very, very good at empathizing, and someone actively solicits your advice, then your advice will be made better by your empathy. But unsolicited advice is an act of judgment, which is the opposite of empathy. You cannot empathize with someone in the same moment that you are telling them "you should do this instead."

What you are talking about is sympathy, which is when you feel bad for someone else. Sympathy is an inherently distancing emotion.

Some people engage in sympathy-seeking behaviors. OP's friend might be doing that when she "talks like a little girl." Sympathy seeking behavior can be hard to resist -- if people act helpless or aggrieved and keep asking you for help, it can be hard not to fall into a rescuer role.

However, some people offer sympathy when someone is actually asking for empathy. If someone says, "I just need someone to listen" or "I just feel alone in this", that's not sympathy seeking -- they are asking for empathy. If instead, you offer sympathy in the form of unsolicited advice or mothering behaviors, it can create this rescuer-victim dynamic even if the other person never viewed themselves as a victim or asked for rescuing.

It's hard to know how the dynamic is working here, but what OP needs to do is focus on her own behavior, recognize how she might be triggered by her friend, and set better boundaries. The advice should stop immediately, and OP should practice actual empathetic responses like "That sounds so hard" or "I'm sorry you are going through this."

So many bad interpersonal dynamics could be addressed by a better understanding of empathy and sympathy and how to express them.[/quote]

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