Sarah Not Helping People Month
Today feels like the first day of school and the first day of the holidays all at once. I’m beyond excited. And here’s why: for the next month, starting as of right now, I am Not Helping People.
🧡🧡🧡
Backstory:
I’ve doing a lot of trauma work recently on my pathological need to be famous and adored and change the world or be worth nothing. And how that is rooted in gifted kid burnout and perfectionism, but also parentification. My whole life, people pleasing and looking after people and doing things for people and impressing people was how I attempted to gain and keep love. It was the only way I knew how to feel okay about myself. So growing up and finding myself unable to live up to those sky-high standards of being all things to all people on a global scale has felt like…well, like I will never be good enough to be loved. (It doesn’t matter that I objectively AM loved, because traumatised brains are gonna brain.)
And I’ve never unlearned these beliefs and behaviours, because I never actually stopped doing them. Everything I do, even the stuff that seems self-oriented like writing a book or a musical, comes with the unspoken end goal of “and this will help lots of people and then they will love me.” My life revolves around emotional labour for other people, and I never put my own oxygen mask on first, meaning the only reason I don’t step up to help is that I’ve already burnt myself out on helping. And getting into advocacy as a career has only reinforced this. No wonder I’ve been in autistic burnout most of this year.
Recently, my therapist has been encouraging me to grieve some of these dreams of stardom. He sent me an article on the topic, and it said “when a door closes, a window opens”. And I said lol, FUCK off. But later on, crying out of compassion fatigue, these words tumbled out of my mouth: “I’m so *fucking* sick of looking after people all the time.”
And I felt horrible.
And then suddenly, I thought;
…
….
…….
Well, what if I didn’t?
What if the door that closes and the window that opens is just…not doing that for a while?
No people pleasing. No being everyone’s therapist on demand even when they don’t expect me to be. No spending all my time on advocacy and support groups because I feel like I owe it to the world. No writing and creating for the attention and benefit of other people. No doing things for other people I’m not up to doing because I’ll feel guilty and worthless if I don’t.
Just Not Helping. Just for a month.
And with the time and space and emotional energy that’s left in the absence of all that work, maybe I’ll find out what I actually want to do. Heal some of that trauma. Discover who I actually am. Because I’ve never really given myself the chance to do that before.
And maybe at the end of the month I go back to helping as much as before, or maybe I find ways of helping that aren’t rooted in trauma, or maybe I find an entirely new way of living that is better for me. Who knows? But that’s why it feels like the first day of school and of the holidays all at once. This isn’t just a holiday, it’s also a test. It’s trauma work and it’s a big fat OCD exposure. And for me, it feels mindblowingly radical. Completely audacious. Like the thrill of lining up for a rolercoaster. I have no idea what’s going to happen, because I’m about to have an experience I have never had before.
I am about to offer myself the chance to know what I want.
Not what I was trained to want.
What I *want*.
🧡🧡🧡
TL;DR: If you need advocacy, emotional labour or an ear with feet in the next month, I must regretfully ask you to seek it elsewhere, because I’m taking a break from helping work to do trauma work. That said, I’m excited to find new ways to engage with my loved ones that don’t revolve around support-swapping!
