neediness

I saw a post today that said, "I poured everything I had into you, and you were still empty".  It made me think about people I've known over the years that I just couldn't seem to do enough for.  Every problem I helped them to solve gave rise to a dozen more.  Every favour I did was met with a hand outstretched for more.  After awhile, some of them found themselves doing without me.  I just couldn't keep feeding into their needs.  I learned a new word, "enabler".  Learning what that meant helped me to see that sometimes, my "help" was actually a hindrance.  These people were being enabled by my help to keep needing.  Does that mean we shouldn't help people?  Of course not.  It did, however, cause me to think of something I had written on my blue print, the paper you get after CBT treatment has reached a certain point, and which outlines how you will be able to take care of yourself in the future.  I wrote down that I would learn to help people within reason.  The reason I wrote that was because I do tend to smother the ones I love, and I love alot of people.  I tend to take away their independence a bit by trying to meet every need they may have.  All that does is create a person who needs.  The needs then never end, and it becomes a vicious, downward spiral.  Now, I didn't create every needy person that came into my life, but someone did.  Someone had to start them down that path.  Things that I've been going through lately have been reaching a point where they needed to be started down the path of being resolved, and I've been having a difficult time getting onto that path.  When I read that, I suddenly took a new look at myself.  For me, the journey down the road of neediness began when I was young.  We were always the poor relatives.  We were clothed in hand-me-downs, and ate what we could grow on the farm.  I never felt deprived, and there are quite a few people in that condition in this world.  But we started going to school with the rich peoples' kids, and suddenly, I became the poor kid.  I became the charity case.  As I got older in that environment, I learned about social stature, but we'll save that for another blog.  I grew up, moved out, got a job....but then I got married.  I married a needy man, a man who had been taught to need from the day he was born, and he sucked me right down in with him.  Why?  Because I had already been primed for that.  I had already, without realising it, seen what need was.  I didn't have a clear picture of it in my head yet, but the idea was there that some people were unfortunate, and I felt responsible for filling their needs, sympathising with them because of how I'd been made to feel in that school.  I didn't yet clearly understand that I had become needy, and that I expressed that need by helping others to fill theirs.  It was a bit co-dependent, I suppose.  When my marriages broke down, in each case, I had given so much to the marriage, had put every resource I had into filling my husbands' needs, that I had no resources with which to help myself.  I had to rely on the charity and kindness of others.  Both marriages were a repeat of that cycle, and each one was worse than the first.  The second marriage was so violent and abusive that I was required to flee again and again, each time without resources, each time needing to beg for help.  I forgot what it was like to work, to pay my bills, to do anything for myself.  I became needy.  Now, there are current needs that I have which are legitimate.  We do all have legitimate needs.  However, what this statement caused me to wonder is if sometimes in life, we let neediness become a habit.  It can become so deeply ingrained into us that without realising it, we lose the ability to think for ourselves.  We lose the ability to do things for ourselves beyond the reasonable.  Sometimes we all need help.  Due to illness or disability, some of us will always need a little more help than others.  Sometimes, though, what we need is to take a step back and look at what we've become in life.  If all we ever do is ask for help, why is that the case?  Is it really a need or has need become a habit?  If it's really a need, then so be it.  Life can be difficult, and we all need help from time to time, no matter how high up in life we may be.  If it isn't, maybe it's time to develop some new habits.