Giving Advice All The Time Is Emotionally Draining
By Sally Abbas
There has to be a link between giving advice to others and giving it to yourself; because the more advice you give to others the less room you have to give this advice to yourself. It’s like all the advice and emotional stress is being sucked out of you to the point where there’s no advice left to give. There’s nothing you could possibly say to yourself to cheer up. You have no time for yourself because you’re the friend with all the answers. The friend that lives life “perfectly” because your time is managed by the hour. You’re the friend that people claim to see as one who is living life exactly how it should be lived, but little do they know how much effort and drainage goes on when you have nothing left to give to yourself.
When you’ve had a lot of close friends throughout your life, you’ll reach a point where you’ve pretty much seen and gone through everything, but not in your own life, but through the life of others. You’ve helped a friend post-breakup and you’ve helped another friend find her way through a relative’s death. It’s the side effect of being the “go-to” friend, but in a good way of course. And when you get use to that lifestyle it begins to consume you, little by little. You find yourself caring more about your friends than you should have to; and yes, there’s a limit to how much you should emotionally invest in a friends life and I guess some of us learn that the hard way. We’re so caught up in putting each one of these friends on the right path in life, while we take the path that merely guides us nowhere. We have no idea where we’re going because we spend so much time helping others find theirs.
I guess it’s both a gift and a curse that some of us take other people’s mistakes and success stories too seriously. We think that if we perfect another person’s life, eventually we’ll get we want in return; and not from that person, but from life itself. Karma is a word used to show that bad actions always come back around, but is there a word to describe the good? Is there a word for a person who overly cares to the point that he/she forgets about himself? Because I, like many others I’m sure, fit into that category perfectly.
The sad thing is that this person has the answers for everyone but themselves. We’re emotionally drained because we’ve lived through so much and have seen so much. We’ve learned what to stay away from and what to take a step forward with and actually try. Even though this may seem like such a gift, it’s a curse that’s so hard to transition from. It’s impossible to wake up one day and only solely focus on ourselves. We try and try again, but at the end of the day when a friend runs to us for help, we continue to provide the caring aid we’ve been taught to do since that 5th grade best friend we had back in the day. Every time we try to transition we slowly are found back at square one because our friends will always see us as advice-givers; but that’s okay.
We need to learn that it’s okay. It’s okay to be that friend. It’s okay to be that friend because if we’re actually that friend to someone, then that means we’re doing something right in our lives. People see us as role models and as scary as that sounds, it’s okay. It’ll all be okay. If we’ve done it for so long then we can keep doing it until we have nothing left to give. The only scary part is that we’ll always have something to give. We’re always going to be drained, but that’s merely a friendly side effect of being a warm-hearted person.
We may get stomped on for this warm heart, and we may get taken advantage of. We may get over-used to the point that we might as well be thrown at a goodwill for a month or two and then picked up by a new “friend.” We may not always be treated the same exact way we treat others. If we’re lucky, we may have only 2-3 people in our lives that equally care about us as much as we care about them, but that’s life, for us at least. It’s always going to be hard and it’s always going to draining, but we’re also the type of people that have so much patience and hope. We wait patiently for our happy ending because deep down we know it’s out there somewhere. We’ll always slowly try to transition into caring about ourselves more and it’s always going to be the hardest thing we have to do.
It’s impossible to transition until you find that one person that helps you wake up out of this one-sided lifestyle. Someone who’s willing to show you that you too deserve to be happy and take chances, and that you can’t be there for everyone all the time. Someone that will remind you of the beautiful person you are, inside and out, because often you’re caught up in this one-sided life that you forget how much your body is draining with every line of advice you give.
When you find that person that wakes you up but also loves you for that caring nature, hold on to them; and hold on to them tightly; us over-sensitive and caring friends will never be able to survive this life if we don’t learn to balance our kind hearts between ourselves and others. But at the end of the day, it’s okay; something I will always have to repeat to myself and so should everyone that is outweighed by their caring nature. It’s okay to be over-caring. Hearts were made for the purpose of caring for others and loving others, and so what if our hearts are a little over filled? It may be a curse, but a curse that will help us live through this selfish world.