I’m a Caregiver or Rescuer & It’s Burning Me Out!

Internal Family Systems Card from the deck “Inner Active Cards” by Sharon Eckstein

For many children that grew up in alcoholic homes or those that were raised by compromised parents (due to mental illness or any other disease), they take on the role of Caretaker or Rescuer naturally and have a hard time breaking out of this role in adult life. What’s wrong with caretaking or rescuing you might ask? Nothing really! The only time that it tips over to being more difficult is if the role takes over your life or consumes you in such a way that makes living unbearably stressful or unenjoyable. It can also be problematic if your own needs are not getting met. In this article, I’ll outline how this role gets set up and then a bit of the work to undo these patterns.

The background

Adult Children of Alcoholics and others that grew up in dysfunctional family systems often end up feeling overly responsible for what’s occurring in the house. For example, they may feel they caused their parents’ drinking, mood swings or angry outbursts. A child can then grow into feeling responsible for their parents outcomes and do everything they can to twist themselves into a version of themselves that’s more acceptable or even helpful. They back-burner their own needs and turn towards caring for their parents. Many Adult Children had to clean up after drunken parents, take siblings to school, fix their own meals when they got home from school, becoming little adults quickly so to speak. They became little adults in kid bodies.

Sometimes, this may transpire in a subtler way, such as learning to care for a parent’s emotions regularly following marital conflict or learning to stuff their own emotions because they would take up too much space in the already chaotic home. Any which way you cut it, it was learned either overtly or covertly that one’s role was the caretaker or the rescuer.

The impacts

Later in life, this can impact the Adult Child in various ways:

1. They may continue to rescue or try to save addicted or compromised parents, spouses, friends, anyone really!

2. They may become overly resentful, judgmental, critical, harsh with those that appear weak or like victims

3. They may have difficulty enjoying their own lives, having fun and relaxing, especially when on-guard for other people’s problems, chaos and meltdowns

4. They may have trouble knowing and asking for what they need or receiving help themselves

5. They may get guilt feelings when setting boundaries, standing up for themselves or putting their needs first

6. They may have feelings of sadness, misery, fear or anxiety for repetitively feeling put in these situations

   Then some positive results and outcomes:

7. Adult Children can be incredibly kind, caring and compassionate!

8. Adult Children will actually pick you up from the airport!

9. Adult Children can often be really successful at their endeavors in business or friendship because of the level of responsibility they can feel towards others or outcomes

10. I’ll just add in another, that’s personal— I tend to have a soft spot for Adult Children because they are often very trustworthy, great listeners, and you just feel like they’re with you, usually in a non-judgmental sort of way, because they know life can get hard

So what do you do?

Therapy, meetings, support, meditation, loving friends, oh my! You can start to undo patterns that aren’t working for you and keep the ones that are! It’s great to care for people— you get to decide if you can or cannot help them out in that moment. There are many positives to the Caretaker/Rescuer role. Other things that could use some work in therapy or other working modalities may be:

1. You will start to get to know this part of yourself better

   In therapy, you can start to explore and get curious about this part of yourself. When did it develop? Did it have to take a job on for your system? Can you get to know it, see it and hear it? Just by starting to view this part of yourself in a different way, you may start to understand its function and hopefully develop more compassion towards it. This type of work is often credited to Internal Family Systems developed by Richard Schwartz.

2. Learning to set healthy boundaries with others

   It can be difficult at first, but standing up for one’s self and saying No to what you can and cannot do, or setting limits around how you’d like to be treated, is an essential part of the process of healing. Just because it can be uncomfortable doesn’t make it wrong! This doesn’t mean building walls with others or cutting them off necessarily (this would need to be discussed further), it just means having the separation and distance necessary to feel healthier and more comfortable over time.

3. Starting to understand your own needs and asking for them

   You can start to make contact with your own body and mind to understand your own personal needs. This can also be difficult at first and takes practice, but you can turn your attention inward and internally to start to discover these needs. The other part of this practice will be putting them into words or going out to get your needs met directly.

4. Don’t bite off more than you can chew

   If you begin to feel too much stress, anxiety or resentment, this is probably an indicator to go back to #1: setting boundaries or beginning to delegate the care to others that can help.

5. Learn what you like and start enjoying these things

   When you start to set limits, find breaks and separate from the caretaking role (gently and gradually), you will begin to find the things that have nothing to do with caring for another or meeting another’s needs. You may start to find moments, people and activities that are purely enjoyable, fun and carefree.