“I Don’t Trust You to Handle This.” What Your Actions Might Really Be Saying

If someone you love is in pain, or not dealing with a situation in the way you think they should — are you able to stay with them even when you can’t change what they’re experiencing?

Or do you try to fix it?

It was a question I asked myself this week after a conversation with a client brought it into focus.

She was thinking back about her husband’s illness and lamenting how she had handled it.

“It could have been different if I had only done xyz,” she said.

“I felt powerless that I couldn’t change the situation. I couldn’t heal him. If I had the opportunity right now, if I could have him back for one more year, I would do better.”

She knew he was suffering, she knew he was in pain. Yet, she remembered thinking, “if you could just see what I’m trying to show you, your life could be different.”

That was the moment that struck me.

She loved him deeply. Of course she wanted his suffering to end.

But there was another layer underneath it: the powerlessness of not being able to make that happen.

I think this is something many of us experience with the people we love.

Your child is struggling and you can see what might help.

A friend keeps making choices you wouldn’t make.

Your partner is hurting and won’t do the thing that seems so obvious to you.

You move toward helping because you care.

And sometimes, without realizing it, you’re also trying to relieve something happening inside you.

The fear. The helplessness. The frustration of watching someone make a choice you believe is hurting them.

The pain of knowing you can’t make another human being see something they aren’t ready to see.

Helping can come from genuine love and care and become entangled with our own difficulty tolerating feeling what someone else is going through.

And when that happens, the more we try to help, the more distance or friction we can inadvertently create.

Because imagine what it can feel like on the other side:

I don’t trust you to handle this.

I know better.

You need me to manage you.

That may be the furthest thing from what you mean.

But it may still be what the other person experiences.

Audio Edition​
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​For many women, helping, anticipating, caretaking and taking responsibility for other people can become so familiar that we barely notice when care has tipped into overfunctioning.

And I don’t think the answer is to stop helping.

The work is being able to stay in contact with yourself while someone you love is struggling, so they get more of your intelligence and care, and less of your anxiety.

Because when you can stay with your own fear, discomfort or powerlessness, you have a better chance of discerning what the other person actually needs from you.

They may need your help and support. They may need your perspective. Maybe they need you to sit beside them while something is hard.

And they may need the dignity of finding their own way.

So the next time you feel yourself moving instinctively into fixing, advising, managing or trying to change someone’s experience, get curious about what’s happening inside you too.

Can I love someone deeply and stay with them even when I can’t change what they’re experiencing?

What happens inside me when I don’t help?

Am I helping because this is genuinely what this person needs — or because I need relief from my own discomfort?

There may be several things happening at once.

That’s what I explore more deeply in this week’s Audio Edition.​

Love and Blessings,

P.S. I’m not suggesting it’s never right to help someone. Of course there are times when we need to step in, protect, intervene, offer guidance or take responsibility.

The more you can recognize what’s happening inside you, the more clearly you can discern when your help is actually needed, when intervention is appropriate, and when love may require giving someone room to find their own way.

This week’s audio will help you explore that.

P.P.S. If you’re a woman who recognizes how easily you can become the one who helps, carries, anticipates and takes responsibility for everyone around you, next month my first cohort of Blossoming Lotus begins.

It will be a beautiful, revelatory space with other capable women exploring some of these same edges — care, responsibility, power, relationship, receiving, boundaries, and what it means to remain connected to yourself while deeply connected to others.

Hit reply with the word “Blossoming” and I’ll be in touch with all the details.

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