Who are compulsive carers?

Some people- especially those who end up growing up before their time due to certain circumstances in their family of origin- feel duty bound to play the role of the responsible care taker or pleaser in the family.

These individuals often complain that they feel exhausted from playing this role for most of their lives, and end up feeling resentful of having to play this role. They often believe they have no other choice but to play this role. In therapy such clients often present with chronic depression and anxiety, have poor or none existent self care practices and feel they are not very good at expressing their anger. In fact, some of them may not be aware they are angry, others feel guilty about having angry outbursts and struggle to understand where it’s coming from. They feel unable to stop their compulsive need to look after others, and end up feeling very exhausted and burnt out.

Now the question is: why do these individuals feel the need to look after others at the cost of foregoing their own needs?

The following reasons might help us understand this better.

Is it because this is their way of indirectly looking after a part of themselves?

The compulsive carers have learnt to focus on others’ feelings and distress early on in life. It may have been the only way they felt they could be valued in their family, by being the people-pleasing, responsible child. Is the compulsion a distraction from facing their own pain.

Or is the compulsion to look after others a distraction from addressing what is really painful inside them?

Like a sleep deprived mother of an infant with colic, they feel they have no time to take a break. Keeping their focus elsewhere serves as a good distraction and adds to their sense of helplessness, making them feel like martyrs.

Is compulsive care giving an identity?

Another important thing to think about is may be this unconscious compulsion forms a large part of their identity. Who are they if they stop being the carer? The role also imparts a certain glow to their character, one which makes them feel good about themselves. Without this sense of purpose and importance in others’ lives, what would their life look like?

The question remains, how does someone with a compulsion to look after other people turn the love and care towards themselves?

The answer must lie in firstly developing an understand of where and when this became part of their identity.

How their default position of being the carer no longer serves them in adulthood.

How repressed their anger is, and the anger they have learnt to turn inwards can be directed towards the right people or circumstances. This doesn’t mean they would pick fights with family members or friends, but the anger and its appropriate direction must be established.

Since anger has a bad reputation many people feel they have to swallow theirs. But anger is a positive energy if it’s used in a healthy way to address an injustice.

Once an individual has worked on expressing their anger through developing a voice for themselves and expressing their needs, their need to look after others might feel like less of a compulsion because they now recognize they are doing this at the cost of their mental health.

All of the above is a process. A yoga practitioner once said that self love is a process. Starting to identify what might be unhealthy ways of relating to others is the first step in this journey.