Vachon Imagined

The exhaustion of the giver becomes apparent when we are depleted and have nothing left to give. Exhaustion forces us to look back at all the giving we’ve done, the sacrifices, the reaching out, the times we gave when we were already empty.

Giving is beautiful, but sometimes it becomes attached to an identity: the person who wants to be needed, seen, appreciated, or saved through saving others.

I am naturally thoughtful. When something positive comes to mind, I tend to say it. That’s a beautiful outfit. I loved the way you described that experience. I was thinking about you. These impulses are natural. We notice people. We appreciate them. We express what we feel.

But when giving becomes dominant, we can stop noticing what is actually happening. We may miss when someone doesn’t want us around, takes us for granted, or simply tolerates our presence. We may keep giving because we are more attached to being the giver than willing to see the truth of the relationship.

And sometimes we give because we don’t want to feel what someone else is feeling. Their pain touches something in us that is difficult to tolerate, so we rush in to fix, soothe, rescue, or overshadow the experience. We make sure what is hard isn’t felt and what is unbearable isn’t known.

But this can be a detriment to the person we are trying to help. When we are always stepping in to fix, to give, to soften, or to rescue, we can prevent another person from learning self-control, accountability, and the ability to move through discomfort. And sometimes, without realizing it, we are protecting them from feelings we ourselves have never learned to tolerate.

This is where giving needs to be examined—not through judgment, but through honesty.

Why am I doing this? Am I giving because I have something to give, or because I need to be needed? Am I helping them, or am I trying to make their pain easier for me to bear?

All of us exhaust ourselves. Simply being human takes energy. Even being alone with ourselves can be exhausting because it requires us to be gentle with ourselves when we feel afraid, rejected, or under attack.

Giving is wonderful. Receiving is wonderful too. But when they are no longer balanced, something in us becomes distorted. We can become prideful, deaf, unwise, and undiscerning.

Balance is found through honesty and accountability.

We don’t need to become less generous. We need to become more discerning about where our generosity belongs.

Giving should never require us to abandon ourselves or prevent someone else from learning how to stand on their own.