5 signs you’re addicted to helping + how it affects your love life + bank account!

You know that feeling when something someone says just ZINGS you and you feel like they are talking to you and only you?

Awhile ago, I was de-cluttering my home while listening to the fabulous Mona Lisa Schultz, intuitive medical advisor on Hay House the other day and she was talking about stresses on the body, specifically the adrenal glands, allergies and hormonal imbalances. I was half listening if truth be told but the phrase that caught my attention was: “Overcoming the need to serve and help people 24/7 can be likened to overcoming a cocaine addiction. It triggers the same responses in the body.” Hot. Damn. Guilty as charged. As she went through the list of medical issues, I saw the underlying root of the pain I had experienced in my body over the past 20 years. It wasn’t just environmental or just my diet or exercise routine. It was an overwhelming addiction to helping and needing to be needed (accompanied with the guilt that came when I said NO or tried to put limits on it) that was causing my body to go out of whack. Ovarian cysts, Interstitial Cystitis (bladder dysfunction), allergies since I was young enough to walk. The list went on and I decided to take it a step further and see how this misplaced need to help all the time affects our love life and relationships. After doing some inventory on my own relationship history and looking at the issues that my clients continually come to me with, there were 5 signs that kept popping up. See if you can recognize any of them in yourself.

5 signs you may be addicted to over-helping:

1. Most of your waking life is spent responding to other people’s needs other than your own.

2. When you aren’t helping someone you may feel guilty, inadequate or unworthy.

3. You tend to respond to other people’s pain and feel responsible for their suffering, especially when you feel good and they don’t.

4. You’re the first there to help out a friend who is in crisis or drop all your plans to help, even when your body is screaming for rest and relaxation.

5. As a result, you usually end up feeling too exhausted to follow through on your own plans but have a hard time saying NO.

How Over-Helping Affects Your Love Life + Finances: (Direct from my own experience  btw!)

• You may attract men or women who you need to “fix” or rescue. (that never works but we think it does and then we are surprised when they up and leave after being healed!)

• You send an energetic signal to others that you ARE unworthy of being a priority and thus you prove yourself right that you are unworthy if you aren’t helping… (totally false, but overhelping sets you up for this!)

• You may feel more like an unpaid therapist or mother vs. a cherished woman in a relationship.

• You may feel used (sexually, financially, energetically) but discarded emotionally.

• You can be attracting players, psychic vampires (people who just take your energy and leave when they’ve had their fill), or partners who are good people but have a closed heart and are unable to give to you in the way you need, especially intimacy.

• Your decision-making abilities may be clouded and you won’t be able to hear your intuition calling out “red flag!” because you’re so busy trying to rescue or help someone else first. This may cause you to doubt yourself and fosters a general sense of insecurity.

Ready to change your pattern? Here are a few things you can do to start:

If you said YES to any of the five in each category (or all of them if you’re like I was!) please don’t beat yourself up. It’s okay!

• The first step is to recognize what is happening and talk to yourself with the love and respect you would a young child who is learning something new. When you recognize it, you are on the right track to making a change that will positively impact you and all your relationships.

• When the need to over-help or over-extend comes up, notice where it lodges in your body. Close your eyes and breathe white light into that space. Let yourself feel the discomfort and the feelings that come up without needing to “fill” it with food or action. Let it be okay that it doesn’t feel comfortable. (It gets easier!)

• Affirm: “I am worthy and loveable just as I am. As I give to myself, I am able to give to others.”

Your Turn: Have you been over-extending yourself? How has it affected your health and your relationships? What is ONE thing you are committed to do to change up the pattern? Let us know in the comments!

Diana Dorell
Intuitive Relationship Coach and Master Healer

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