Written by Sam Mishra, The Medical Massage Lady
Sam Mishra (The Medical Massage Lady), is a multi-award winning massage therapist, aromatherapist, accredited course tutor, oncology and lymphatic practitioner, trauma practitioner, breathwork facilitator, reiki and intuitive energy healer, transformational and spiritual coach and hypnotherapist.
Ernest Hemingway once said, “In our darkest moments, we don’t need solutions or advice. What we yearn for is simply human connection—a quiet presence, a gentle touch. These small gestures are the anchors that hold us steady when life feels like too much. Please don’t try to fix me. Don’t take on my pain or push away my shadows. Just sit beside me as I work through my own inner storms. Be the steady hand I can reach for as I find my way. My pain is mine to carry, my battles mine to face. But your presence reminds me I’m not alone in this vast, sometimes frightening world. It’s a quiet reminder that I am worthy of love. So in those dark hours when I lose my way, will you just be here? Not as a rescuer, but as a companion. Hold my hand until the dawn arrives, helping me remember my strength. Your silent support is the most precious gift you can give. It’s a love that helps me remember who I am, even when I forget.”
This quote certainly resonated with me when I first read it. Having been a nurse caring for the dying in their final moments, I know that the greatest fear patients would have was dying alone, without that last piece of human comfort. Having dealt with depression for over 30 years and PTSD for at least 16 years, I’ve had a few moments in my life where I have sunk so much lower than I ever thought possible, self-harming when I had a nervous breakdown at 19, and sitting on my living room floor with a bottle of vodka and a few packets of sleeping pills when my children were gone. All I wanted, and what I really needed, was just the presence of someone who could show me that I wasn’t alone.
Upon reflection, I am well aware that I seem to find it impossible to say no for fear of not being liked, something I have started to really try working on, and my resources are constantly running pretty much at zero. I spend much of my life in fear, struggling to make decisions and torn between the perfect idea in my head of what it means to be compassionate and being stuck in the fawn stress response that causes me to repeatedly self-sabotage. So in an attempt to prevent others from manipulating me, which they do anyway, I manipulate myself by presenting a version of myself that isn’t necessarily my true self. Yes, I believe I have always been a compassionate and empathetic person, but my rescuer role has become a need for control, and the crazy thing is that control is what I have tried so hard to get away from following the years of abuse I experienced.
My people-pleasing is the result of conditioned self-protection and the need to control outcomes, created through a narcissistic and emotionally unavailable parent, an abusive marriage, and the inevitable fear and shame that come with those experiences. For too many years I have been contained in a compulsive cycle that has been more detrimental to me than those I have tried to fix, taking away their capacity to hold themselves accountable.
As much as this human connection that Hemingway spoke of is vital to how we navigate our way through life, overcoming challenges and processing trauma, so many of us fall into one of the 3 archetypes that Stephen Karpman, a psychiatrist, described in his drama triangle. Certainly in the transformation workshops that I run, people-pleasing is one of the patterns that people bring up the most. While we often employ the tactic of people-pleasing to avoid conflict, it actually creates dysfunction, causing us to fall into toxic, co-dependent relationships. So why do so many of us fall into these people-pleasing and fixing behaviours?
Karpman’s triangle lays out a dynamic that we often demonstrate in our relationships, both with ourselves and with other people, and it often starts with our own inner critic, how we treat ourselves, and a fear of rejection. The difficulty lies in the fact that we don’t realise that we are falling into these behaviours until they have become a habit. So many of us bring painful experiences from the past into new relationships, projecting them onto our partner, and this can lead to conflict, resentment, and complete breakdown of the relationship. We then repeat this toxic pattern, wondering what is wrong with us and why none of our relationships work.
Karpman described 3 main archetypes that arise from childhood issues, such as lacking a model of a healthy, functional relationship, and these learnt experiences may find their way into a new relationship when you are an adult. Social conditioning, learning as a child to live with shame, or however many times we have been compliant in order to get love, all fill ‘the bucket of shame’ that one of my training providers talked about. We fall into behaviours such as people-pleasing without any real awareness that we are doing so, and every time we do it, the bucket fills a little more, and before long it will tip, and we are reminded that a part of us was damaged.
When we become aware of exhibiting people-pleasing behaviours, or any of the other archetypes put forward by Karpman, we should examine the unconscious decisions that we made that led us to this behaviour. More often than not, these patterns come about as a result of unconscious trauma responses that we are not even aware of, and if we do not use these coping mechanisms consciously, we risk losing sight of who we really are. Karpman’s archetypes are a form of persona, masking the vulnerability or humanity that we feel unable to share. We yearn for intimacy with others, but fear rejection so much that we avoid letting our guard down, and as a result we unwittingly avoid that human connection that Hemingway spoke of.
How do we know if we have a rescuer personality?
The rescuer personality type feeds on a rush of cortisol and the ingrained desire to be needed; it is how we connect with others, feeling a sense of loss or abandonment when others become independent of us because our mission is attached to their sense of self. Do you constantly prioritise the needs of others above your own? Do you enter relationships with the hope of fixing the other person, like a knight coming in on his horse to save the day? Do you tend to latch on to those who are vulnerable, possibly in the victim mentality, because they want to be needed, enabling them to forego accountability and responsibility for something that they are able to do themselves? If any of these sound familiar, it is likely that you are in the rescuer archetype.
Many of us have difficulty when it comes to saying "no" to people because it makes us feel guilty, or we worry that they will think we are being selfish, so we end up agreeing to things that we don’t want to do in order to seek the approval of others. We need this approval because we have low self-esteem, neglecting our own needs and apologising and accepting the blame for things that aren’t our fault. This personality type is often the compassionate and empathetic overachiever who radiates so many positive qualities, yet they can’t see those qualities in themselves.
Why do we fall into the rescuer archetype?
Many of us don’t understand why we are people pleasers; we simply think of ourselves as kind people, but the root cause often stems from childhood and is connected to 3 interconnected factors: insecurity, perfectionist tendencies, and low self-esteem. Whether it is due to a lack of affection, bullying, being a parentified child, or some other form of conditioning, we develop perfectionist tendencies of how things should be and fail to place any value on our own needs because maybe nobody else has. This means that we grow up constantly seeking validation from the outside world, fearing rejection, and needing to be accepted. When nothing we did as a child was ever good enough, we then felt like we must always do more to make people happy.
Previous traumatic experiences are also a common cause when we fall into the fawn stress response, pleasing others to avoid experiencing further abuse. We may help others purely to give someone what they need, but if we do it to make ourselves feel valued to override all the times our abuser told us we were worth nothing and that nobody would ever love us, it can only lead to a negative behaviour cycle.
The rescuer role can be linked back to childhood, and it is common to see these people-pleasing behaviours in those who were forced to take on the role of an adult as a child due to neglectful parents or other circumstances. Parentified children adopt the role of rescuer in future relationships, leading to guilt and resentment of the responsibilities that they feel they have had to take on. When we’ve had narcissistic parents, who in some way have made us feel unsafe, we have tried to protect ourselves during childhood by pleasing the parents so that they don’t get angry, and we do this to survive.
A rescuer's personality may even shift into the role of a persecutor because they allow resentment to build, shifting back into the role of a rescuer in order to maintain the relationship. This is a trait we commonly see in narcissistic abuse.
People-pleasing can be damaging because rescuers unconsciously seek out those who are vulnerable and need assistance, creating co-dependency between the two. They feel essential to their partner's survival. So what happens when there is nobody left to save? What happens to our sense of self-worth?
It can also be painful to hold space for someone to reach their highest potential and watch them not use it, but we must allow others to have their journey, because that is where they need to be in that moment. It is perfectly acceptable to step out to let them have that moment. Sometimes, when others ask for help, perhaps we should ask ourselves, “Am I helping to strengthen or weaken this person?”, or “What insecurity within myself am I feeding by trying to help?”
It is so easy to fear becoming the villain by putting ourselves first for once and not fulfilling what we have done in the past. Perhaps it is better to be perceived as a villain and not be contained within Karpman’s triangle than to be perceived as the knight in shining armour and stuck inside the people pleaser identity. We can be close to a human being, treating them as resourceful and complete, showing them that we understand their predicament, but trusting that they have the solution, and we will support them without any expectation.
The negative side of rescuing people?
First and foremost, the rescuer relies upon having a person to save, a problem to fix, or a conflict to resolve, and the appreciation that they receive from doing this feeds their own sense of self-worth. It gives them the attention and acknowledgement that maybe they never received as a child. Rather than looking within themselves to find the answers, the people pleaser looks to their external environment for solutions to their own pain, essentially seeking out others in order to change their own situation, but of course, these methods are only temporary, and eventually the other person will become independent and move on without you. When there is no longer any kind of reward or validation for helping another person, we once again decline, and our own vulnerability takes over. Through people-pleasing, we find the solution to the problems of others, instead of finding a solution that works for our own issues, avoiding our own pain in the process. There is nothing wrong with doing things to help others, as long as we truly don’t expect anything in return.
When you prioritise making others happy to win their approval at the expense of your own emotional well-being, this can impact you in various ways. One of the most noticeable effects is that our resources become so worn down that we become anxious and start to suffer from excess stress, which, as we know, is one of the biggest factors in many health conditions. When the resources run thin, we can become frustrated that we are constantly helping others but seem to receive very little back; this builds resentment because our help starts to feel like an obligation. When we constantly feel obliged to do something and use up all our resources in doing so, we no longer feel motivated or have the energy to work towards our own goals, so life can start to stand still.
People-pleasing can also impact our relationships because when we suppress our own needs, we lose sight of who we are and may be seen by others as inauthentic because we’re accommodating everyone else but ignoring ourselves. Any time personas come into play, it is very difficult for people to get to know who you really are. When people see how giving you are, they also start to take advantage, either consciously or unconsciously, because there are no boundaries in place, and this makes them more dependent on you and builds resentment. The self-sabotaging cycle continues, reinstating that belief in us that we are not good enough and need to work even harder for people’s attention.
How to move away from the rescuer archetype
When we have personality traits that have developed in childhood due to social conditioning, it is really hard to just change our personality, but there are some things we can do to try to help others in a healthier way that empowers them and doesn’t enable our own insecurities. Possibly the greatest thing we can do for ourselves is self-care. Often, when we are caught up in a stress response, instead of fixing others to make us feel better, if we just find ways to redirect our minds temporarily, we will often calm down and be in a position to cope with our own trauma enough that we don’t look to our external environment. Breathwork and mindfulness are perfect examples of such distractions.
For me personally, I can say that taking on the role of a transformation coach and helping to empower others to help themselves has not only helped others to take accountability for themselves but, in the process, has fed my need to help others, but in a healthy way that has also made me address the things that have caused me pain.
Obviously, we can’t suddenly change lifetime behaviour overnight, but we can start with small things like expressing our opinion more or saying ‘no’ if necessary by text if that seems more comfortable than in person. These may be small things, but they will start to build your confidence so that you can set some personal goals for yourself. When you know what you want to achieve in life, you can prioritise your time and set boundaries to help you get closer to your goal. Setting boundaries is particularly difficult for those with unresolved trauma and can take a lot of practice, but again, it’s ok to start with small adjustments.
Trauma can also make us prone to making excuses for other people’s behaviour and defending ourselves, but when we defend ourselves by stating our reasons for doing something, such as saying no, we give people the opportunity to invalidate our reasons, whereas if we are more direct without any justification, it is harder for someone to argue and push us back into compliance. Healthy relationships work both ways and require compromise, so there should be some give and take, and if there isn’t, you should consider that you may well be in a co-dependent relationship. When people ask us for help, it is perfectly acceptable to take time to reflect on their request and work out if you are being manipulated or taken advantage of. Research has shown that better decision-making happens when time is taken to consider the options.
Managing our behaviour, however, always means that we must come back to ourselves, and using positive mantras can help to give us a much-needed boost and remind us to focus on our goals.
Finally, we must remind ourselves not to do anything for others that they have the capability to do themselves. Referring back to the quote by Hemingway, we don’t need to have the solution or prevent others from addressing their own pain by fixing them; we simply need to be present with them, to give them the courage to work through their own challenges. Simply listening and offering options without making the problem our own can be enough to validate others and ourselves while filling the void that a lack of validation as a child left inside us.
Conclusion
When we find ourselves in a dysfunctional relationship, our roles may change, often switching between archetypes in a very short period of time as a way of negotiating to get what we want. We should remain cognisant of the role we are playing so that we can hold ourselves accountable and address not only the emotional and thought patterns that push us into that role but also identify the root of where they come from.
When we are able to step out of the triangle and be present, without the need to fix everyone, we feel less stressed and less drained. These archetypes are learnt behaviours, and we are often taught to rescue and help others, but we can also learn not to do this. This doesn’t mean that we are no longer kind or considerate to others; it simply means that we evaluate our motivation behind the behaviour if there is a fear of rejection involved.
By releasing our need to control others’ opinions of us, we step away from transactional connections and create authenticity and build human connection based on trust. In doing this we feel less resentment towards others, and we are validated by our own opinions. If others can’t handle our authenticity and truth, do we really want them in our life?
Read more from Sam Mishra
Sam Mishra, The Medical Massage Lady
Sam Mishra (The Medical Massage Lady), is a multi-award winning massage therapist, aromatherapist, accredited course tutor, oncology and lymphatic practitioner, trauma practitioner, breathwork facilitator, reiki and intuitive energy healer, transformational and spiritual coach and hypnotherapist. Her medical background as a nurse and a midwife, combined with her own experiences of childhood disability and abuse, have resulted in a diverse and specialised service, but she is mostly known for her trauma work. She is motivated by the adversity she has faced, using it as a driving force in her charity work and in offering the vulnerable a means of support. Her aim is to educate about medical conditions using easily understood language, to avoid inappropriate treatments being carried out and for health promotion purposes in the general public. She is also becoming known for challenging the stigmas in our society and pushing through the boundaries that have been set by such stigmas within the massage industry.
References:
Karpman, S.B. (2014) A Game Free Life. San Francisco. Drama Triangle Publications
Miller, R. B., Greene, B. A., Montalvo, G. P., Ravindran, B., & Nichols, J. D. (1996). Engagement in academic work: The role of learning goals, future consequences, pleasing others, and perceived ability. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 21(4), 388-422.
Set, Z. (2019). Potential regulatory elements between attachment styles and psychopathology: Rejection sensitivity and self-esteem. Archives of Neuropsychiatry, 56(3), 205-212.
Vangelisti, A. L. (2011). Interpersonal processes in romantic relationships. In M. L. Knapp & J. A. Daly (Eds.) Handbook of interpersonal communication (4th ed., pp. 597–622). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage
