Jack Neel explains why helpers and healers struggle to cut toxic people out of their lives. They're drawn to high-conflict, needy people because they believe they can fix them, then repeat the same harmful patterns. The key: check if the other person has the capacity to heal before you try.
This is really hard. It's really scary to cut someone out of your life, especially if you're a helper. Because the kindest, most beautiful people in the world are helpers and helpers. Their entire self narrative is about service. There are three different types of people. People with a hero self narrative. So they had challenges and mistakes and they overcome. And they are very high achievers. Victims had challenges and mistakes and problems, couldn't overcome, see themselves as very unlucky. And healers, healers or helpers are all. Their entire life is dedicated to helping others. They are typically in careers of service and they are taken advantage of high conflict, seek those people out. And so what happens is they get into a conversation like that where they're like, what's good? And they go, oh, nothing's good. Everything's been bad. I'm sacrificing, I'm struggling with it. And the helper goes, let me fix it. Can I help you? Can I support you? I can fix this person. Heroes will be like razor cutting this person out. This is not my person. But my poor healers, they pick these people over and over again. They get into the same horrible friendships, they get into the same romantic relationships. They pick the same terrible bosses because a part of them is like, I could fix them, I could help them, I could change them, I could heal them. I love that you want to help and heal people, but you have to make sure they have the capacity to heal.
