“Kindhearted People Get Tired Too”

Shira Haas

Sometimes, kindhearted people like myself get tired.

Tired.

Tired of being good.

Tired of being a nice person.

Tired of just being there for everyone and letting yourself run ragged.

I had written down, “Take my kind heart that my granny gave me, cut it out and give it to someone special.” My heart can only take so much more.

When I feel exhausted from helping everyone out, it gets really tiring on my mental health. I recently read something about a “Savior complex” : A “savior complex” is a psychological attitude where someone believes they are responsible for assisting or rescuing others, even if it’s harmful or unnecessary, often stemming from a need for validation or a desire to fix perceived problems. Here’s also what I found:

• People with a savior complex may be driven by a genuine desire to help, but their actions are often rooted in a need for validation, a desire to feel important, or a way to cope with their own past traumas or insecurities.
• Behavioral Traits:
• Individuals with a savior complex may exhibit:
• Over-identification with others’ problems: They may become overly involved in the lives of others, often to the point of becoming enmeshed.
• Difficulty setting boundaries: They may struggle to say “no” or to limit their involvement, even when it’s detrimental to their own well-being.
• A tendency to rescue or fix others’ problems: They may feel compelled to take control of situations or people, even when those individuals are capable of handling things themselves.
• Seeking recognition or praise: They may seek validation for their actions, often becoming disappointed or upset when their efforts are not appreciated or recognized.
• Potential Consequences:
• Burnout and resentment: Constantly trying to save others can lead to exhaustion and resentment, as well as neglecting their own needs.
• Damaged relationships: Over-involvement can strain relationships with loved ones, as they may feel suffocated or controlled.
• Enabling unhealthy behaviors: By constantly rescuing others, individuals with a savior complex may inadvertently enable unhealthy behaviors or patterns

While a lot of these are true with me, I really want to help, but I feel like I’m over used, and only asked when someone needs something. My empathy kicks in (I’m autistic) and I put everyone over me. I know that I never want to come off selfish, and yet, if I want to do things on my own, or be on my own, or get something for me, I am selfish. People say, that “It’s ok to be selfish every now and then.” But, I really feel like sometimes, I just wanna do things on my own.

I know that I’m married and I know that marriages are not always easy, trust me, trying to navigate the ways of marriage. I also have RSD:

Rejection sensitive dysphoria (RSD) is a condition characterized by an extreme sensitivity to perceived rejection or criticism. Individuals with RSD experience intense emotional pain, anxiety, and self-doubt in response to even minor social slights or setbacks.

Symptoms:

• Intense emotional reactions to perceived rejection, such as anger, sadness, or shame
• Exaggerated feelings of self-doubt and low self-esteem
• Difficulty regulating emotions, leading to outbursts or withdrawal
• Fear of being criticized or judged
• Rumination on negative thoughts and experiences
• Hypervigilance to social cues
• Avoidance of social situations or activities where they might be rejected

When I was younger, I was bullied a lot and I had very few friends. I spent a lot of my time, couped up in my room, writing stories ( a lot of them I don’t have anymore- my mom threw a lot of them out), and acting them out (I wanted to be an actress when I was younger, obviously, never got to that point), but, I felt heavily rejected, and just never “alive.” I still don’t feel good in this world. I hate everything about me: My body, my size, my autism, and everything else. But one thing I don’t hate, is my heart, cause I know that I’m a good person, sometimes, even too good, as some has said. Some ask me why I’m so nice to others, even if they are rude to me, yell at me, or fuck me over, and I answer with this: “If I died tomorrow, then what would be the last memory you have of me?” My grandpa used to tell me this and I really see where he was coming from.

I’ve never felt good about myself, because again, I was heavily bullied, and yet, I’m usually people’s first call when they are needing something.

I am there, cause I don’t have people there for me (not many anyways). I can’t go to my mom (she’s a narcissist, so she’ll make my worries all about her), so I can’t go to her, and then my in-laws, I don’t want to bug them. So, if I’m going through a lot, I have to deal with it on my own, usually do. My diaries, if you read them, you’d think, “Wow, she’s really fucked up,” Or “Wow, she’s got some serious depressive issues.” I just handle all my sadness on my own, and I know I shouldn’t. Before you say, “You should get help! Professional help!” I am. I have a therapist, who is lovely, but even when I talk about my feelings, I feel so ungrateful, and yet, she said, “Your feelings are vaild,” but somehow, I don’t feel like they are. Why complain, when I have an apartment to go home to, a husband, a lovely doggo, and clothes and stuff? Yet, when I am trying to help other people out, or anything else, my husband gets mad at me, or I get exhausted from doing it all. Several times, I’ve had to cancel my own doctor’s appointments, to take other friends to theirs. Appointments that I know I’ll have to wait a while to reschedule, and yet, that’s me, putting everyone else before me.

When I look at my latest entry of my diary, I wrote :

“This is all I’ll ever be, a failed author, a failed actor, a failed wife, and a person who barely can hold down a job, how the hell am I going to be a good mother?”

I feel like a failure. A failure in my parent’s eyes. I miss my grandparents, who would hold me tight, telling me I’d be alright, who protected me from the world. When they died when I was 17 (I lost both literally a month from each other), I was on my own. I was on my own, when my parents neglected me to take care of my brother, who was, at the time, having several serious mental health issues, and who became violent. I was on my own, when I tried to hold onto a penpalship with an actress, and that went off the rails, when I didn’t understand about boundaries and social cues or anything (I was not diagnosed with autsim then), and that really made me lose faith in myself. I was on my own when I cried so many tears and still do about them (my grandparents) and I just wanted to feel safe again. After they died, I wasn’t safe, I never felt safe again.

I’m 33 now, and I just feel like I need them more than ever.

My personality and my “kind heart”- came from my granny. She was the kindest person I knew. She really went above and beyond for people, more than I ever could. But she wasn’t disabled, so she could make her own decisions.

I cared so much for her and yet, when she died first in June, my heart shattered, I knew that I needed to hold onto grandpa more, and then, I lost him in August. My world changed that day. I was on my own.

My heart, though I’m kind, and loving, gets heavy and tired.

I wrote down not too long ago: “The blood I can feel pour from my heart, I just wished that it would bleed out of me.” I am called, “Too Much.”

“I am too much, I cry too much, I want so much, I just want to be able to make my own decisions, and yet still have a loving marriage.”

My own sense of worth, is not much. I really don’t care if I live or die tomorrow, it’s on that front.

When I was younger, I always prayed that my heart would stop beating, because, apparently, I felt that I was the words that all the girls were calling me: Freak, weirdo, creep, and the ultimate one, monster. I used to bang my hands against my bedroom wall, until they were bruised, so I could be “punished” for making people feel that way. My granddady once caught me doing it and said, “Honey, you’ll break your hands!” I said, “Good, that way I won’t have to hurt anyone else!” He sat me down on my bed, and looked at my bloddied and purple hands, and said, “Honey, you don’t hurt people, you’ve never ever hurt a single person.” I asked then why was I called those names and told I was a freak and a monster? He told me that those girls were jealous of me, and that they were jealous of my kind heart and soul.

“Your granny raised you to be a good woman and so have I,” He told me. He got something to wrap my hands up to make them feel better.

“Do you feel better when you bang your hands?” I slowly nodded.

“Why?”

“Cause, I am trying to beat out the bad, I apparently have in me.” He took my wrapped my hands in his and his eyes, were almost filled with tears, and said, “Honey, you don’t have any bad in you, and that I know.” I nodded.

I had to learn this throughout my life. I know that in 2009, when I was going through loosing the both of them, grief took over me, and I became bitter and resentful. Don’t ever do this, it doesn’t help.

When I began therapy last year, I had to unpack so much and I still do, cause I feel so much. In my life, I always say that not a lot of good things have happend to me, and I’m still trying to find my place in this world. I feel out of place, even with my own writing, I feel that I have failed. My writing, is just ehhh, average, and I’ve been trying to make it better.

With the telling of my grandday’s story, I’ve been told by some “It’s such a heavy subject! No one will read it!” I just want someone to read it and maybe appreciate it.

With my own sense of storytelling, people tell me I can tell a great story, and yet, I can’t seem to …write it down properly.

“Your stories are all the same!” I’m told. Well, I like to tell stories about real people, they’re always the best to tell. I know that all seem the exact same, but I try to write about things that are important to me.

My kind heart, as I’ve been told I have, “is gold.”

I’m like her, my granny, in every single way possible, and I know that I am and I’ve always been happy that I turned out to be like her.

But like she said, “Sometimes, kindhearted people get tired too.”