When Mental and Physical Difficulties Make it Hard to Help Others

I wonder if it is possible to care too much. This can seem a question almost too clearly wrong to even consider. And the answer is probably, no, but if the care that is given to others is not reflected in care given by yourself to yourself, with the same quality and space given to it, then there really could be a problem. And, if the care given to others is instead reflected by criticism and pressure put on yourself, then the problem is doubled.

When you give so much of your energy to serving others and then criticise yourself you are sending powerful messages to your mind and body about your self-worth in relation to others and these messages are not positive ones. Piling the pressure on yourself in this way puts your mind on high alert and this puts a strain on both your mental and physical reserves.

Of course, it is easy to point this out, but actually seeing and understanding that you are serving others while criticising and punishing yourself can be difficult to do, especially if this is a pattern of behaviour that you have built up over many years. It can start with an unfortunate incident, maybe in childhood, when an adult was unkind to you about your best efforts. If you were lucky, the adult realised their mistake and apologized, or you told your parents about it and they reassured you that you had done nothing wrong and that your efforts were really valuable. But often these positive follow-ons just don’t happen and the child can take a message into themselves that however much effort they put in to helping others it’s just not enough and never good enough. Without knowing what has happened you can take these messages on board at a subconscious level and start to treat yourself badly as a result. Over time it can become an ingrained habit. But it is not without consequences and can leave you mentally and physically depleted and unable to make the difference you feel passionate about making in your work, home-life or community.

It would be good if it was easy to put together the pieces of this puzzle and see clearly what the underlying problem was, but too often, instead we seek treatment for each individual physical symptom that arises, whether it’s problems with digestion, headaches, back pain, numbness, tingling or stabbing sensations in our bodies, or fatigue, and miss the bigger picture. We can also end up treating our mental difficulties in the same way, as separate problems which arise one by one, not realising they are intimately connected with our physical problems.

Confusing Symptoms Hide the Underlying Problem

It is as if your life has become a tangle of threads and the cause of all these symptoms and blocks to your progress in life is buried somewhere in the middle.

Maybe it’s time to start unravelling the tangle of worries and physical symptoms, to start to loosen the threads and carefully follow them back to the little knot at the centre. Untying this knot, we can begin to heal and finally start to make the progress we want in our lives.