Assertiveness for Earth Angels: How to Be Loving Instead of Too Nice by Doreen Virtue Read Free Book Online

someone who’s capable of rescuing him- or herself, this is called enabling . It means that you’re taking away someone’s opportunity to grow and learn.
    An example would be a mother who still does her teenage son’s laundry and cleans up his room and makes his bed when he’s quite capable of doing all this himself. He would also benefit by learning how to take care of his environment.
    Or think of the parents who complete their child’s science project, even though the child would learn new skills by working on it alone with minimal adult supervision.
    Some Earth Angels rescue strangers. They meet a new person whom they pity, and they offer outrageous help, including opening their house to a recent acquaintance to live in rent-free, loaning or giving money to an individual whom they barely know, spending hours on the phone offering advice, or driving a virtual stranger to appointments.
    Rescuers believe it’s their job to fix others, and they believe that they’re uniquely qualified to do so. If they don’t help, no one else can! This gives them a sense of meaning and purpose, and also can feed into egocentric feelings of specialness.
    In addition, rescuing allows you to focus more on other people’s problems than on your own (deflecting your energy away from fixing your own life).
    Professional Victims Beware of “professional victims.” Earth Angels have a compulsion to save people and so are a lock-and-key with those who exploit them, and who insist upon constantly being rescued. Although you know that everyone is a child of God, you must also acknowledge that some people choose to live disconnected from God’s guidance. They take advantage of others, including nice people like you.
    Professional victims will make you feel flattered and special, as they explain that you’re their only hope. They’ve singled you out especially because God “told” them that you’d fix everything for them. So you take a deep breath, agree to help them, and think, I’ll figure out how I can help as I go along , since you have no idea what to do at the time. You also wonder how you’ll keep your own life in balance while taking on the Herculean task of rescuing yet another person.
    So you do your best to lend a hand, but the professional victim lets you know that your help doesn’t come quickly enough or isn’t good enough. Surely there’s more you can give to this poor victim? Somewhere along the line, you reach a breaking point or a loved one points out that your rescuing behavior is unhealthy.
    When you stop rescuing professional victims, they get angry. Very angry. And they then begin attacking you with verbal threats, rude posts on your social-media page, or harassing phone messages. In fact, while you’re rescuing them, they attack you for not doing a good enough job of it. You’re never doing enough for them. If they’re unhappy, professional victims will say that it’s your fault.
    So the next time you get the compulsion to rescue someone, pray for guidance first. Professional victims have endless drama and bottomless-pit needs that can never be filled. They’re ungrateful for the help they get, and in fact they criticize it.
    You’ll never feel satisfaction while rescuing a professional victim, because they intend to suck and drain you dry. (We’ll talk more about how to identify and handle these toxic relationships in Part II.)
    Rescuing Addiction
    Addictions are always an attempt to fill an inner emotional emptiness with something outside of ourselves. The addiction momentarily makes us experience those delicious feelings of safety, love, and peace—just as we did prior to the original trauma (see Chapter 1 ).
    You feel like a hero when you rescue someone, which is a sensation that temporarily boosts your self-esteem. This feeling is very strong if you believe, Only I can help him. He’s counting on