Ep. 282 How to Help Without Rescuing So You Have More Energy and Less Stress in Midlife

What if the stress, anxiety, and exhaustion you’re feeling aren’t coming from helping others—but from carrying responsibilities that were never yours to carry?
If you’ve spent years being the reliable one and feel depleted,  you’re not alone.
In this episode, you’ll discover:

1. Why the urge to rescue often comes from your own discomfort—and how recognizing that can reduce stress and anxiety.
2. A simple mantra, Don’t Just Do Something, Stand There, that can help you pause before automatically stepping in and taking over.
3. How the Notice, Name, Tame, Aim process can help you tolerate discomfort, stay supportive, and stop carrying what isn’t yours to carry.

 Take 12 minutes to learn how helping differently can reduce stress, ease anxiety, and leave you with more energy for what matters most—you’re worth it.
Get your free: Don’t Just Do Something, Stand There tool:
Click:
mailto:mj@mjmurrayvachon.com?subject=Don't%20Just%20Do%20Something%20Stand%20There%20Tool
or
Email MJ:
mj@mjmurrayvachon.com
Subject Line:
Don’t Just Do Something Stand There Tool

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About the Host: 

MJ Murray Vachon, LCSW, is a seasoned clinician, educator, and host of the podcast Creating Midlife Calm, recognized by Maria Shriver as a “Listen of the Week.” Over the past 40 years, MJ has led more than 50,000 therapy sessions and developed the Inner Challenge mental wellness program and the Inner Challenge Master Class, practical tools for emotional regulation, self-awareness, and resilience taught for more than 30 years in junior high schools and at the University of Notre Dame for freshman football players. Through her podcast, teaching, and coaching, MJ helps people build calmer lives, stronger relationships, and healthier communities.

Creating Midlife Calm is a podcast designed to guide you through the challenges of midlife, tackling issues like anxiety, low self-esteem, feeling unworthy, procrastination, and isolation, while offering strategies for improving relationships, family support, emotional wellbeing, mental wellness, and parenting, with a focus on mindfulness, stress management, coping skills, and personal growth to stop rumination, overthinking, and increase confidence through self-care, emotional healing, and mental health support. 

Transcript

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW 0:00

In this episode, you'll discover how to be helpful and responsible without becoming exhausted

M.J. Murray Vachon LCSW 0:07

Welcome to Creating Midlife Calm, the podcast where you and I tackle stress and anxiety in midlife so you can stop feeling like crap, feel more present at home, and thrive at work. I'm MJ Murray Vachon, a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with over 50,000 hours of therapy sessions and three decades of teaching practical science-backed mental wellness

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW 0:31

Welcome to the podcast. On Monday, we talked about the stress and exhaustion of always being the responsible one, the person who keeps taking on other people's plates. And over time, all that spinning can leave you emotionally exhausted and irritated. Your Inner Challenge was to notice the cost, the cost to your sleep, your emotional state, and your dreams for yourself. As you paid attention, you may have noticed something else. The moment you decided to put down a plate that actually belonged to someone else, a child, partner, work colleague, you may have started to feel uncomfortable. The plate wasn't spinning, but your mind was. You may have started thinking, "Maybe I should just give them a quick reminder. I'll just check in to see how it's going. Maybe I should do it. I don't think they'll be able to do it as well. That's what we're talking about today. Today's follow-up episode is actually a lesson I had to learn myself, especially when I became a parent. I didn't really think of myself as a fixer. I came from a long line of kind, caring helpers. Helping felt loving. Helping felt right. One day, my husband and I were walking behind our 15-month-old son. He stumbled and fell. I gasped and started moving towards him. My husband calmly said, Let him do it." I looked at him like he was crazy. Of course, I was gonna help this toddler. After all, I was his mother. But that moment stayed with me because the real question wasn't, "Can my son get up?" The real question was, can I tolerate watching him struggle long enough to find out?" In this episode, you'll discover why letting other people struggle can sometimes feel more uncomfortable for you than it does for them. How the urge to rescue is often connected to distress rather than responsibility. And a simple mantra: don't just do something, stand there. That can help you slow down so you're actually supporting others in a healthy way On Monday, we talked about the cost of always being the responsible one. Today, I wanna talk about why it can be so hard to stop and what to do when the discomfort shows up. Let me start by saying the obvious: being helpful is a good thing, but doing what is someone else's responsibility or privilege to do, even when it's hard, even when it's inconvenient, can get in the way of them developing the confidence and skills that carry them through life. And often, not at first, but down the road, it can hurt your relationship with one another This happens in families, workplaces, and sometimes even friendships. Let me give you an example. One of my clients was working on staying in her lane with her adult daughter. For most of her daughter's life, she had been forgetful, forgetting her lunch, her dance shoes, gym clothes. You get the picture. You probably have even been there, and Mom put on her cape and came to the rescue because that's what good moms do. Now, her daughter was a college graduate with a professional job. One morning, she left home without her computer. She texted her mom, "Can you bring it?" Mom lived 20 minutes away. Not a huge deal. She could save her daughter the embarrassment. But my client was tired, physically tired, emotionally tired. This was her one day a week to work from home, and now she had to get dressed and drive across town. Then she remembered a mantra we had created together. Don't just do something, stand there." It made her laugh out loud, so she texted her daughter, "Sorry, I can't." Those three simple words, they sound so easy, but if you're relating to this podcast, you know that it was in that moment her real struggle began. Her stomach was in knots. Her chest began to feel heavy, not just in the moment, but all day long. She had to actively stop herself from checking on her daughter. Her mind started making up stories. What if her coworkers think she's irresponsible? What if this creates a problem? What if she's embarrassed? And then came the catastrophic thought: What if she loses her job? After work, her daughter called her about something completely unrelated, and my client spent the entire conversation waiting for the computer story. Finally, she asked, "Did you get your computer?" Her daughter casually replied, "Oh, yeah, I went and got it at lunch. No big deal." And just like my son, she got up like most of us, if someone will do it for us, we're usually happy to let them. And that's often what happens when we stop doing for people what they can do for themselves. So what do you do when you decide to not be helpful, to not fix, to not rescue? What do you do with that knot in your stomach, the tightness in your back, the stories in your head, the urge to text, call, remind, fix, or check in? This is where distress tolerance comes in. Distress tolerance is a fancy psychological term for something very simple. Can you feel uncomfortable without immediately jumping in to fix it? Take a moment. You know what this feels like You're doing your life, you see a need, and your whole body urgently wants to jump in, just like my client. But my client was tired of being overextended, tired of doing for others what was theirs to do. But if she wanted something different, she needed to learn how to move through her distress instead of her fantasy solution is that those in her life would just automatically start carrying their weight Ironically, she actually needed to learn to carry her own weight. The distress she felt inside when she stopped and thought about what she really wanted to do in those moments How did she do this? She used notice, name, tame, and aim. First she noticed, "My stomach is in knots. I'm worried. I want to fix this." Then she named it, "This is anxiety. This is discomfort. This is hers to do, not mine." Then she tamed it. A few deep breaths, a little bit of walking and swinging her arms, talking herself through it, reminding herself that her daughter was capable. And finally, she aimed, not by rescuing, but by staying with her decision, allowing her daughter the opportunity and responsibility to solve the problem herself. Doing this allowed her to keep her energy and focus on the tasks of her own life, not her daughter's. Let me be honest. When you feel that urge to jump in and fix, there isn't really a stress-free way to do it, and this is where understanding a little science can help. When you rescue, fix, remind, or jump in, your brain often rewards you with a small hit of dopamine, a feel-good chemical. Your brain loves quick relief. It loves to feel useful. You love to feel better. But when you choose to not jump in, you have to sit with the discomfort. You have to stop the urge to move forward and remember the mantra, "Don't just do something, stand there." And you and I both know that can feel really counterintuitive and this is where science can help again. Many emotions begin to decrease in intensity if you can stay with them, breathe, and ground yourself for about 90 seconds. So for my client, the choice became this: 90 seconds of distress or an hour of driving across town followed by lingering irritation and resentment. As she said later to me, "I had to keep going back and regulating my own feelings and mind. It took effort, but in a weird way, it made me feel proud of myself, like I was doing something for me." Either way, you're gonna feel something, so why not lean into the healthy discomfort? Because one discomfort helps you grow, and the other keeps the pattern going, the same pattern that leaves you tired, resentful, and carrying things that were never yours to carry. Which brings me to this tool: don't just do something, stand there. Before jumping in, ask three questions. Am I being asked to help? And if the answer is yes, take a second and clarify. What kind of help do they actually want from you? Advice? Support? Or do they want you to do it for them? Sometimes people want a solution. Sometimes they want a sounding board. Sometimes they simply want to be heard. And often, they want someone to do what is their job Step two, is this my job? Not can I do it, not would I do it better, but instead, is it actually my responsibility And step three, can I cope with my distress? The last question is usually the most important because your distress is often the driver to your behavior. Often the hardest part isn't their struggle, it's your discomfort while watching it. Helping and rescuing are not always the same thing. Sometimes the most helpful thing you can do is tolerate a little discomfort long enough to let other people see what they're really capable of. If you'd like a copy of the Don't Do Something, Just Stand There tool, send me an email. I'll put the link in my show notes. In this episode, you've discovered that letting other people be responsible is often less about their ability to handle life and more about your ability to tolerate the discomfort of not stepping in. And when you learn to slow down, pause before rescuing, you give other people something that is so valuable, the chance to discover what they're really capable of. And you give yourself something valuable, too, a little more peace, often a lot more time, and a little less responsibility for everyone else's life Now that's gonna make you feel lighter. Thanks for listening, and I'll be back on Monday with more Creating Midlife Calm.