The anxious need to be helpful

Sometimes our stress and anxiety drives our helping response. What to do when your anxiety drives you to intervene beyond reason, plus a few notes about resisting the anxious urge to solve it all.

Nov 06, 2023

Listen while you read:

You notice someone struggling. You have this urge to jump in and help them.

You start to think… Here’s what I would do. I know how to make this better. Should I say something? Do they need my help? What does it say about me if I do nothing? I’m a good person, and I just want to help make things better. This person is struggling and I think they need my help. Yes, they do need my help! I should do something about this!

This is all well and good, but let’s get clear about something.

Sometimes our desire to step in and help isn’t as helpful as we think it is. Sometimes our impulse to help is actually just our own anxiety at work.
Sometimes our urge to fix, solve, or help, is an attempt to alleviate our own anxiety.

Our lives are filled with inherent stressors, uncertainties, and discomforts, which makes our anxious impulse to be helpful by offering advice or an opportunity for relief a noble cause.

The anxious need to help comes from a good place.

We want to be helpful. We want to alleviate the struggles of those we care about and, in some cases, even complete strangers. And we want to feel needed by those we love and care about. In our quest to be seen as the best versions of ourselves, we want to be good helpers by contributing to the wellbeing of others.

As good helpers, we spot problems and we solve problems. That’s what makes an effective helper, right?

Well… sometimes.

The anxious need to help

If you've ever found yourself offering sunscreen to a stranger on a cloudy day at the beach, then you know just how far this anxious desire to be helpful can go. We're all guilty of our “sunscreen moments”— those times when we jump in with solutions, thinking we're doing someone a favour, only to realize later that maybe, just maybe, they were perfectly content with SPF 0.

Yes, sometimes it is good to provide the quick fix and offer up our solutions. But what happens when our desire to help stems from our own anxious need for the discomfort to be gone? Why do we struggle to let other people find their own solutions and come to their own conclusions? Why is it hard for some of us to resist the urge to solve every problem we notice? And why is it that we sometimes cannot resist being the sunscreen dispenser in other people’s lives?

This well-intentioned urge to fix, solve, and help is sometimes driven by our own fears and worries. Our anxious need to fix can also get in the way of building close relationships, particularly when it leads to overstepping boundaries, creating mistrust, or unintentionally undermining the autonomy of others.

We’re in a cultural moment that calls on each of us to show up for ourselves and show up for the people we care about. I want to explore the origins of our anxious desire to solve everyone’s problems, talk about why it is sometimes more helpful to resist the reflex to make everything right, and finally examine when “helpful” behaviour is, in fact, unhelpful.

The origins of our anxious need to help

The anxious need to be helpful often stems from a combination of personal and social factors. Our compulsion to help might first be rooted in our own discomfort with witnessing the struggles of others. It’s human nature to want to ease suffering, but this can sometimes lead to an overzealous need to take over and provide solutions, especially in situations where solutions aren’t required. When we notice things going wrong, many of us give in to our impulse to make things right. Doing something feels better than doing nothing.

When we find ourselves with a problem in our midst, especially if we see a clear-cut solution, we may be more inclined to offer our guidance or force our solutions upon others. We may be more likely to do this if we’ve seen the same problem play out before: We spot a problem. We want to help. We know a solution. We step in to give advice.

Or, when anxiety is involved: We spot a problem that makes us feel anxious. We want to help in order to alleviate our own anxiety. We know a solution that would work for us. We step in to offer the solution that makes us feel less anxious. The challenge here is that not every problem makes people feel the same way. This is why solutions aren’t always welcomed and people don’t always want advice; problems aren’t the same size for everyone and not everyone feels the same way about them.

We also live in a culture that values problem-solving and immediate solutions, which can reinforce the expectation that it's always our job to step in and fix things. This causes us to make urgent assumptions about what others need and what they’re looking for. Instead of asking people what they need, we make an assumption, we step in to help, and sometimes we even end up solving other people’s problems when it is better for them to solve it themselves.

Resisting the reflex to make everything right

As a therapist, I see this pattern happening in relationships quite often. Whether it’s a parent-child relationship or a relationship between friends or partners, I notice an interesting paradox: We have a desire to help but we so often fail in our attempts at being helpful. When we don’t know what to do, it is common to help someone the same way we would like to be helped. Herein lies the mismatch. We don’t usually help others the way they wish to receive help, we tend to help others the way we want to be helped.

Addressing our own anxious urge to help everyone and helping people the way they want to be helped are two essential components of fostering healthy relationships and respecting an individual’s autonomy. Here, it is crucial to recognize that not all problems require immediate solutions and it is not our job to erase everyone’s discomfort. Sometimes it is best to let other people arrive at their own solutions and conclusions. Other times, it is helpful to ask people what they need. Empathy, active listening, checking in, and offering support as needed are often more valuable than jumping in with advice or immediate assistance.

Sometimes doing nothing is not helpful either. If you feel like you want to intervene, but don’t know what to do, start by asking: What can I do to help make things better? If they don’t know what they need from you, you can also try asking the opposite: What can I do so that I don’t make things worse?

Picture tossing a ball back and forth. In both of these scenarios above, asking these questions allows you to toss someone you’re trying to help the metaphorical ball and hear what it feels like for them to hold it. Otherwise, you run the risk of holding onto their ball, assuming what it feels like to hold it, and choosing a solution that doesn’t fit with how they’re feeling.

Identifying unhelpful "helping" behaviours

Sometimes, our attempts to be helpful can backfire and hinder rather than help. To avoid falling into the trap of unhelpful "helping" behavior, consider some of the following signs and scenarios:

Offering Unsolicited Advice: Giving people unsolicited advice, especially guidance they didn’t ask for, may be experienced as patronizing or dismissive of the other person's knowledge and capabilities. Instead of assuming everyone needs your guidance, ask if they would find it helpful to hear your perspective.

Overstepping Boundaries: Pushing solutions or taking control of someone else's problem without checking in with them may lead to strained relationships. Forcing solutions onto other people may be experienced as a boundary violation. Instead, check to see how they’re doing, what they would find supportive, and what exactly they do and do not need help with.

Denying Autonomy: Not allowing someone the space to make their own decisions, even if they make mistakes, can be counterproductive in the long run. Letting people action their own outcomes gives people the freedom to choose their path. Instead of trying to control the path, let people determine what they need.

Rescuing: Constantly swooping in to save someone from their problems can prevent them from developing their own problem-solving skills and independence. Instead, let people learn from their experiences, even if it means they stumble along the way or do things differently than you would.

Minimizing Feelings and Experiences: Telling someone to "just relax" or "it's not that big of a deal" may seem helpful, but will likely make someone feel invalidated or unheard. Instead, believe people when they tell you how they’re feeling and listen to them. Listening goes a long way.

Pity, Sympathy, and Validation Overload: Sometimes we think it is most helpful to give someone an extreme amount of pity (such as: “Awwww, you poor thing!”), or sympathy (“That sounds so hard!”), or over-validation (such as: “Wow, your life really is so hard, I don’t know how you do it.”). When this is our only form of helping, it may feel dismissive or lacking awareness of the real challenge being experienced. Instead, liste n and ask questions so you don’t find yourself giving ineffective solutions or irrelevant advice. Better yet, you’ll also prevent yourself from over-validating the wrong parts of the story.

The most helpful question to ask

In situations where you don’t know what to do, I find it most helpful to ask this one, simple question: Do you want to be helped, heard, or hugged? This question gives people the space and choice to determine what they actually want or need. I call them The Three H’s of Helping. It gives us, the helper, a clear vision for what someone may find helpful during tough moments. Sometimes we want supportive actions. Sometimes we just need someone to vent to. And sometimes we just need a good old-fashioned squeeze.

We should remember that the anxious need to be helpful is a common inclination, and it usually comes with good intentions and a desire for the people we love to be in a better place. In order to be better helpers, it's essential to recognize when our well-intentioned efforts may be doing more harm than good.

Resisting the reflex to make everything right, allowing people to come to their own assistance alongside our unwavering support, and identifying the unhelpful helping behaviours are crucial steps towards fostering healthy relationships and respecting an individual’s right to choose.

In my view, true helping means being there for someone, guiding them as they choose their own path to resolution, rather than stepping out in front of them and forcing them to choose the path or outcome we think is best.

Just tying to help,

Jake