So timely. This is a message that I need implanted into my brain and heart and soul, deeply and fully. It has been one of the biggest aspects of my healing journey, slowly and very painfully coming to this realization. I have had to completely re-work the way I see myself as a human because of this message. I have seen myself as loving, helpful, someone who would do anything for anyone. A huge part of my journey that did the final job of vaulting me out of this view was my reading on the enneagram. When my personality type at a lower level of health "helps" others, it isn't from a place of purity. It's from a place of getting my needs met via helping others. And that is truly dishonoring of others, their own capacity, their own wishes, their own journey. When I am not healthy, I impose myself on others, believing myself to be good and loving, when I really am not in the truest sense of love.
Some of the most loving things I have now finally done in a state of much better health is to speak very hard and painful words to those I have loved. Words that could end the relationship with me. Words that could hurt them (but not harm them). Words that took incredible overcoming of fear for me to speak. And that is probably the most empathetic thing I have ever done.
One thing that helped me more fully integrate the message you are sharing is to consider how I have been as a mother with my children. I have known from the beginning that the end goal was raising young adults who didn't rely on me, independence/interdependence, fully launched adults. My love for them allowed me to watch them struggle....learning to dress themselves, learning to comb their hair, learning to make friends, learning sports, learning time management, learning responsibility in their new jobs, learning how to leave home and move far away. I have always been by their side, ready to help, in what capacity felt appropriate or necessary at the time. But I would have considered it deeply unloving to simply take over for them, do it for them, and not allow them to figure out how work through the struggle and into competence. (and I've noticed recently that when they are irritated with me, it is inevitably me offering help that they didn't ask for)
But yet I didn't apply this to some of my adult relationships. I took on the symptoms. I took on the dysfunction and consequences. I didn't allow the PD adults in my life to face what they had wrought, to reap what they had sown. Somehow I felt I could take all that sorrow into myself and prevent the end results of their behavior. Until it nearly broke me. And now I am finally, belatedly, allowing them the opportunity to grow. Or not.
I see this as a boundary issue. When I am fully formed, fully aware of who I am, what I stand for, what I welcome and what I must keep away from me, then this becomes nearly effortless.
I also see this as meeting a need within ourselves. This can happen when we need to be the ones who "know", the ones who can heal others, the ones who can help. I think when it's about a need within ourselves, it becomes dangerous to us and others. When it's truly about what the other person needs, then I believe it can be healthy and clean.
These words are ugly for us on this board to hear, but I believe you are describing the essence behind enabling and codependency. Now that I'm finally moving away from this way of being in the world, I finally see that MY work is to hold a space of love and compassion while the other person does their own work, only stepping in when asked or when appropriate.
Thank you so much for sharing and starting this discussion!