Search Results for: savior complex

October 21, 2010

Savior Complex Anyone?

Here’s a fairytale gone badly, as it sometimes happens in real life: There was once a little girl who believed that all good things will come to her if she is really nice and always helps other people.

She was always there for her aging parents; she even refused a dream job because it was in another town and she didn’t want to move too far from her parents. She would always help her friends, lend them money, give them advice and get them out of trouble.

Her colleagues at work could always rely on her and she would often get behind on her projects to give them a hand with theirs. She also had this affinity towards guys with serious problems (jobless, alcohol abusing, emotionally imbalanced), the kind of guys that desperately needed help.

After about ten years of doing this, she felt miserably. She wasn’t getting the love, appreciation and recognition she wanted, most people had started taking all her help for granted, her life did not look the way she’d hoped it would.

When I discussed with her in our first communication coaching session, focused on identifying the key social skills to improve, after about 15 minutes of conversation, bells started ringing in my head going: “Savior complex full throttle!”

What Is The Savior Complex?

The savior complex is a psychological construct which makes a person feel the need to save other people. This person has a strong tendency to seek people who desperately need help and to assist them, often sacrificing their own needs for these people.

There are many sides to a savior complex and it has many roots. One of its fundamental roots, in my experience, consists in a limiting belief the savior person has that goes something like this:

“If I always help people in need, I will get their love and approval, and have a happy life.”

This is of course, a nice sounding fairytale.

Houston We Have a Problem

Often, in real life, a savior will have such an unassertive way of helping others that instead of becoming grateful, they get used to it and they expect it. They feel entitled to receive help from this person, simply because they need it and they’ve always got it.

On top of this, always putting other people’s needs first makes a savior not take care of their own needs. So while they may feel happy because they are helping others, at some level, they feel bitter and frustrated at the same time.

Reframing Nobility

Here’s where things get worse: many people with a savior complex I’ve met, although they realize at some point that they have a savior complex and it is not worth it for them, they will not try to combat it.

They’re not masochistic; they have another belief that even if being a savior will not get them the recognition they want and will not make them happy, it is the noble thing to do. They believe they are somehow better than others because they help people all the time without getting anything back.

Do you have any idea how dim-witted this is? There is nothing noble in sacrificing yourself for others while you are starving at a psychological level. If our ancestors would have willingly done so 50.000 years ago, our species would be extinct.

If you think you have a savior complex or at least something close to it, I believe the best thing you can do is to face up to the practical consequences in has in your life. Being a savior is neither noble nor practical.

Learn to give and to ask for what you want, to help and to be helped. This is the healthy way to use your people skills and to interact with others.

Image courtesy of Eneas

Filed Under: Attitude, Psychology, Relationships Tagged With: , , , 33 Comments
December 6, 2015

Attracting the Wrong Kind of People? Here’s Why

Often in coaching sessions, and even in casual social conversations, I hear folks state with some exasperation that they have a knack for attracting the wrong kind of people.

By ‘wrong kind of people’ they mean the types that make their life worse, often much worse, instead of better: manipulators, codependent people, severe substance addicts, violent persons, total narcissists, perpetual complainers, constant criticizers, and so on. I usually refer to the whole bunch as toxic people.

It’s important to liberate yourself from toxic relationships with such types of people, but it’s equally important to be able to avoid getting into such relationships in the first place. And for this, you need to understand why you attract the wrong kind of people.

So, based on my confidence and communication coaching experience, as well as my personal experience dealing with toxic people, I’d like to offer what I deem as the two chief causes for this phenomenon, plus some advice for dealing with them.

You Have Strong Emotional Vulnerabilities They Can Detect  

A lot of individuals will stay away or break away from toxic people as soon as they realize how troublesome they are.

So to have relationships, toxic people must target individuals who are visibly emotionally vulnerable. These are individuals who care too much about pleasing others, or they can’t say no, or they have a savior complex, or they have low self-esteem, or some other deep-seated insecurity.

Such persons have a hard time staying away or breaking away from the wrong kind of people, because they’re very afraid of their disapproval, or they would feel very guilty afterwards. And toxic people are implicitly or explicitly aware of that. They sense they can have their way with such a person, so they jump on them like a lion on a gazelle.

Now, you can try to hide your emotional vulnerabilities, but sooner or later, toxic people tend to spot them. They have an acute mental radar for them.

So ultimately, your only real option is to identify your biggest emotional insecurities and work on overcoming them. You wanna close the chinks in your armor. Not only that it will keep away most toxic people, but it will also enhance your life in many other ways.

You may require some help. Emotional insecurities are not easy to overcome. If you can find and work with a good therapist or coach, I definitely recommend you do it. At a bare minimum, educate yourself about the psychology of emotions and the effective techniques to fortify yourself emotionally; then apply that knowledge on your own.

In particular, I suggest you check out this video presentation I created especially to teach others an effective method to overcome any emotional vulnerability and boost their social confidence, based on my years of confidence coaching experience. I’m positive that it will help you a lot.

And also, make sure you join my free social confidence newsletter to get more practical advice from me.

You Let Yourself Get Absorbed By Their Superficial Qualities

Toxic people are not all bad, especially when you first meet them. Lots of them have quite a few superficial qualities, which come out much sooner than their more profound flaws.

Some come off as very interesting and charismatic initially. Some always know what to say to make you feel good (as well as make you feel bad, as you may eventually find out). Some seem very nice and kind at first. And some appear highly confident and exciting.

The problem is that you may be engrossed and reeled in by these qualities, only to discover a boatload of flaws lurking out of sight as you get to know the person better. Only by then, they’re already your boyfriend or girlfriend, spouse, house mate or good friend.

This usually happens when you let somebody’s superficial qualities trick you into thinking that’s all there is to them. You only see them through the lens of those strengths, failing to consider there are parts of them you have not yet discovered, which may not be as virtuous.

Thus, in or order to avoid attracting the wrong kind of people, you wanna adopt the mindset that people are often not what they seem at first. And you must always bear in mind that toxic people in particular often come off as very appealing initially.

Coming from this mindset, have patience when meeting new people and do not rush into any kind of serious relationship until you get to know them better. Take your time, observe people’s communication model, and don’t let the initial exhilaration dictate your actions.

These are the two causes. One pulls the wrong kind of people towards you, and one pulls you towards the wrong kind of people, which in turn pulls them even closer. I think you can see how this dynamic can create a lot of complications for you.

So it’s important to apply the above advice and work on overcoming these two factors. It will completely change the quality of your relationships. When you posses the self-confidence to evade toxic people and you don’t let eagerness lead you to misjudge people, you create the possibility of amazing relationships in your life.

Filed Under: Psychology, Relationships Tagged With: , , , 1 Comment
August 5, 2015

You Don’t Owe This World a Thing

I am psyched about the upcoming Batman vs. Superman movie. I loved the recently released trailer, which I must have seen a dozen times so far.

There is one scene in particular in this trailer that caught my eye. It’s the scene where Martha Kent, Superman’s adoptive Earth mom, tells him: “Be their hero, Clark. Be their angel, be their monument, be anything they need you to be. Or be none of it. You don’t owe this world a thing. You never did.”

To me it’s obvious that many comic book movies are moving in a new direction with the message they’re sending. And, personally, I love this new direction.

Some years ago, comic book movies like Spider-Man used to tell us that “with great power comes great responsibility” and try to instill in us the idea that we have an obligation to use our strengths to help, even save, humanity.

Now the message is shifting towards what I see as a more rational and mature message, which suggests that we are free to do what we want in life. Thus, we should use our strengths to help others if that’s what we want to, but we don’t have an obligation to do that. I’d like to talk about why this idea makes a lot of sense and why it’s useful to live by it.

superman

Our Existential Freedom

This emerging idea in comic book movies that we are free to choose our own path in life can trace its roots in the thinking of prominent philosophers such as Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Camus and Sartre. I have no doubt that film directors Zack Snyder and Christopher Nolan, who are responsible for the current wave of Batman and Superman movies, are drawing some inspiration from these guys.

The ideas of philosophers like Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Camus and Sartre were grouped in a philosophy known as existentialism. The main premise of existentialism is that life is intrinsically meaningless. It has no objective meaning or purpose, and our notions of good and evil are subjective as well.

This lack of objective meaning can be a source of dread, but it’s also highly liberating and empowering. Because it implies that we have no preset obligations in life; that we are free to give our life whatever personal meaning we want and live it in alignment with that meaning.

I find this existential perspective quite accurate. One could even say that “man is condemned to be free”, as Sartre puts it. But it’s not too bad of a sentence, considering how valuable the freedom to live how we want is.

Of course, we are born in society, which brings upon us a set of basic obligations, as part of a basic social contract in the absence of which society would not be able to function properly. But this is a very basic contract, with obligations such as not killing, not stealing, not beating people up. Beyond that, I don’t buy into anything else as a given obligation in life.

Overcoming the Savior Mindset and Living Freely

Many of us have been educated to think otherwise though. Parents, teachers, religious leaders, and many old-school superhero movies have taught us that we have some sort of immense duty towards other people. We have to help them, fix their problems, save them from difficulty, and generally be very nice to them.

I think this idea is simply unsubstantiated. Why do we have the duty to help others? No sensible reason is ever given. Sure, helping others will improve their life, it can also benefit us eventually, and it’s wise in many cases. But that doesn’t mean it’s an outright obligation.

Also, in practice, this idea backfires in horrible ways. As a confidence and communication coach, working frequently with men and women who live feeling they have a strict duty to help others, I witness this all the time.

Such individuals become pathological people pleasers. They always put others first and sacrifice their own needs for them. But they never feel like they’ve done enough for others and they constantly feel the heavy pressure of obligations. Ironically though, they often get very little in return when they need help, and they are often seen as insecure, clingy or needy, which is why they frequently have very few real friends.

One way or another, their bottomless sense of obligation towards others brings them much frustration and disappointment.

Again, this is not to say that helping others doesn’t make practical sense sometimes, because you will get help in return when in need, or that it cannot feel very good at times, even if you get nothing in return. It’s just not an obligation. Martha Kent is right: you don’t owe this world a thing.

If you’re used to thinking and feeling that you owe this world something (maybe, a lot), as well as acting accordingly, it’s gonna take some work to change this mindset. You’re gonna have to dig into your beliefs system and make some crucial changes there. But this is doable, and definitely worth doing.

If you wanna learn how to change your beliefs effectively, free yourself from the burden of a strong sense of obligation and radically improve your social confidence, I suggest you watch this special presentation, where I discuss just that in more detail and share some of my best advice.

Also, join my free social confidence newsletter, where I share regular advice on this topic. The help is out there. You just have to grab it and use it.

Filed Under: Attitude, Inspirational Tagged With: , , , Leave a Comment