Guest Blog Post - Mel Toth Part II - On Taking Care of Others and Feeling Worthy

Around age ten, I learned that I am very good at taking care of people. I think was a caretaker long before that but had no conscious awareness of it. My best guess is that this started when my baby brother was born, three months before my third birthday.

Here’s a story my mom liked to tell about that time. One morning while my parents were sleeping, I decided I would change the baby’s diaper. He was sleeping across the room from them in his crib, protected by bars and a railing far higher than I could reach. I solved this problem by scooting over on my toddler ride-along toy and climbing up on top of it. I can still see the whole room, the sun shining bright through the windows, me looking down from above him and reaching in to unfasten the diaper. Then, I got in a shit ton of trouble.

I don’t remember what woke my mom but I clearly remember being yelled at by her. I remember her scolding me about how dangerous it was to stand on top of a toy on wheels. I remember trying to explain that I was helping. Though I have many memories of my mother’s yelling, none predate this.

How strange, and perhaps even prophetic, that the first thing I ever remember getting in trouble for was trying to help. 

When I think about childhood memories, I gauge my age upon where we lived. (By the time I left for college, we had lived in eight different houses, but that’s another story.) I know we lived in the apartment to which my brother first came home until I was five. I remember being obsessed during those years with a Little Golden Book called We Help Mommy, and often being called Mommy’s little helper. I remember my job at dinner was to make the salad and that duty remained mine until I moved out on my own.

I hate making salad. 

What was I responding to that made me so bent on helping? Was it a natural urge or a reaction to something or someone? Was my mother so frazzled by my brother and I that I could sense her need? Or was I simply so connected to her that I could not differentiate her needs from mine?  

The latter is undeniable. To say that I was attached my mother as a toddler and little girl would be a gross understatement. I was obsessed with my mother, could not bear to be away from her, wanted only to please her and could easily sense how to do so. Add some good old God-fearing Catholic guilt to that equation and you have the recipe for one fearful, compliant, good little girl who loves to help.

I think I’m good at taking care of people partly because I want someone to take care of me. 

I think taking care of people feels like a sensible, necessary thing to do because it’s so easy for me to feel other people’s feelings. 

I think so much of my care-taking has unconsciously been about alleviating my own discomfort at feeling other people’s feelings so deeply.

When my seven-year-old self learned that the Golden Rule of life was to treat others the way I wanted to be treated, I took that seriously. This, more than anything else I learned from my religious training, became a code of honor. As an adult it has often baffled me that people in my life don’t understand what I need because it feels like I’m showing them all the time. But what I know now is that unlike in writing, in relationships, telling is often better than showing. This was/is confusing though, because what about actions speak louder than words, the other adage I learned so well as a child? Where is the balance between showing and telling when it comes to letting people know what I need?

What I learned at home and at school was that being an adorable little helper was a reliable way to ingratiate myself to adults. Eventually I grew out of adorable, but I could always win favor by being helpful. 

The jump from helper to people-pleaser was not a long one. 

I think what I was learning every time I received praise and rewards for helping was that my value came from what I could do for other people. I don’t think I ever understood that I had inherent value and dignity just because I existed. For all my Catholic school lessons on being a child of God and how much Jesus loved me, what I held onto were the lessons about rule-following and sin and punishment. I held onto the words I repeated at so many masses: “I am not worthy to receive you but say the word and I shall be healed.”

I am not worthy. 

I am not worthy.

I am not worthy.

Except when I am helping others.

So I helped. At home I helped my mom, at school my teachers. As I got older, I helped my friends by doling out advice and life philosophy during our daily lunchtime group therapy sessions. When I finally had a real boyfriend, naturally, I helped him too. The foundation of my self-worth was based on what I could do for others; I might as well have been building a house on quicksand. 

Because what happens when helping starts to hurt?

What happens when you realize the distorted message of “I’m helping you because I want you to help me” is not working?

What happens when it feels like helping is the only valuable thing about you but you don’t have the energy to help anymore?

A lifestyle of helping and pleasing people not balanced with self-love and self-care and knowing what pleases me has not been sustainable. Nothing has made this more abundantly clear to me than my practice of teaching yoga. Yet this understanding is itself a conundrum; knowing the truth is not the same as living it. 

You can find Mel on Facebook at @meltothyoga.