Do you suffer from virtuous giving?
Helpers beware! There’s a dark side in the dynamic of helping that sits in the blind spot, plotting your over-work, burn out and relationship breakdown. And here’s why it’s so dangerous: when it takes control, a part of you will feel good and righteous in your suffering.
Its name? Virtuous giving. If you are in a helping profession - a consultant, lawyer, coach, therapist or advisor of some sort - you will know that helping and giving meets a personal need, and it’s easy to be seduced into giving too much and feeling that we receive too little.
If you want to understand this dynamic and how to stay in a place of good health, read on.
Let’s take the case of Sam, a senior associate in a consultancy firm. They work long hours helping clients solve their problems, striving to meet their billing targets, giving up much of their time to support junior members of the team. At home they do most of the domestic chores while their partner, George, focusses on their business start-up. Sam is feeling the strain and wants their employer to provide a PA to help at work. “If I pass my billing targets I’ll ask” they tell themself. Arriving home after a long day to find the washing up waiting to be done, Sam turns to George in a rage, “I’ve washed up every night this week. Must I do everything?” Speaking to friends at the weekend, they confide, “I’m thinking of quitting my job and leaving George. I’m just not being given the support I need. I’m worth more than this. I deserve better” Being friends, they nod in support.
Beneath it all, Sam is suffering from a classic case of virtuous giving. For them, giving and self-sacrifice are worthy, while asking for support is not the done thing. In effect they says to themselves,
“I will only ask for help once I have given so much that I feel entitled to ask.”
This makes them unable to meet their needs fully, because their capacity to ask only arises once they have over-given. Even when they speak up, they soon slip back into the same cycle, because they have to earn their entitlement afresh before they can ask for help again.
Those who give a lot in relationships often blame others when the relationship breaks down and speak from a place of virtuous judgment: “I gave so much, and got little in return!”. In fact, it is often the other way around. Their own need to give is hostile to relationships because it puts their need to feel entitled above the need of others to give freely. In this way they cling to an illusion of superiority.
In effect, they say to others, “Better that you feel obliged to me than I feel obliged to you”.
People running this kind of pattern often find it hard to receive support when it is freely given, because they need to have earned their entitlement to receive. Yet in earning their entitlement through over-giving they create a sense of imbalance which can be challenging for others to cope with, whether in work or personal relationships.
If you are a virtuous giver, this is a hard message to take in. But consider this: imagine being in a relationship with another virtuous giver. If you were to truly honour their needs you would allow yourself to fully receive their giving, and yet in doing so you would quickly feel burdened by the imbalance. Unless you could find a way to give more back in return, the relationship would be in trouble. The over-giving would be its downfall.
So how can generous helpers and givers avoid these dangers?
The first thing to say is that helping and giving are beautiful things and a necessary part of all healthy relationships. What we need to be mindful of is maintaining a healthy balance of exchange, a healthy balance of giving and receiving. Sometimes this means learning to set boundaries to give less. But often it means learning to make receiving our friend, so that we can maintain balance by receiving more.
How can we do this? Here are four practical steps you can take right away:
First, open yourself up to receiving and practice receiving without over-giving in return.
If you receive a compliment, try responding with a simple “thank you”, and nothing more, instead of diminishing the compliment with false modesty (such as “oh its nothing” or “no, really, anyone else would have done the same”). If someone helps you out, try and delay a while before returning the favour, rather than giving back straight away. Practise gratitude: journal each day 5 things you are grateful for. These are all ways of opening ourselves up to the giving of others. In this way we dignify others’ needs and learn to value our own.
Secondly, reframe your view of receiving by acknowledging that when you receive from others, you are supporting their need to give.
Just as you need others to receive your giving, so they need you to receive theirs. In this way you can befriend receiving and giving as loving twins, neither complete without the other.
Thirdly, practise self-care for self-care’s sake.
All too often, helpers and givers only look after themselves when they feel they have earned the right to do so by working to exhaustion or over helping to the point of resentment. Instead, practice regular self-care as a simple act of kindness towards yourself. In this way you can befriend receiving as an expression of love which is deserved without needing to be earned, simply because you are worthy of love.
Fourthly, be aware of growing resentment.
Resentment arises when giving and receiving is too far out of balance. Be honest and attentive to your own feelings and listen to others. If you sense a growing resentment, nip it in the bud with this simple question: “What do you need?”
By practising being better receivers, we become better givers and more skilled at helping. Ultimately, ensuring we maintain a healthy balance of giving and receiving is an act of self-love. And as Ru Paul so beautifully puts it, “If you can’t love yourself, how in the hell you gonna love somebody else?”
Amen to that.