The Dark Side of “Just Trying to Help”

When unconscious urges override the truth of connection

I had someone I love slap a solution on my life like a band-aid I never asked for.

Over the phone, I mentioned something I use in a daily ritual; they mentioned something they use in theirs.

They offered to send me some of theirs, and I said I was happy to leave it with both of us loving our own choices - basically the exact same thing, just different forms.

They said: “I know you’re happy with yours, but you should try mine…you’ll love it.”

I replied: “I love what I use. I’m good, thanks.”

They pushed: “I’ll send it anyway, just in case.”

I said: “Really. No need. Please don’t.”

And the next thing I knew…I had a notification of a delivery of the exact thing I never asked for and didn’t want.

It’s wild how many people believe that helping is inherently loving. But helpful doesn’t mean welcome, and well-meaning doesn’t mean wise. When help is unsolicited - when it steamrolls over someone’s clear “I’m good” - it stops being generous and starts being performative.

It’s no longer about love. It’s about control.

Too many people confuse caretaking with connection. They don’t realize their chronic over-giving is a trauma pattern in disguise. It’s not generosity - it’s a form of unconscious domination. Anxiety masked as care. Control, shrink-wrapped in a bow called “just trying to help.”

It’s what people-pleasing looks like in high-functioning, capable, high-responsibility overachievers - when they confuse sacrifice with service, fixing with connection, and helpfulness with being lovable.

And while they’re busy offering what they think is love, something quietly fractures on the receiving end…because being treated like a project instead of a person leaves a mark.

It felt like loving a fantasy of who I might be if I followed their checklist. Or who they would be if they made my choices.

A lot of people - especially the ones trained to be nice, needed, and productive - have no idea they’re not actually listening. Because real listening isn’t just politely pausing while you reload your next suggestion.

Real listening informs what happens next. It’s the container for connection.

But when your identity is hitched to being helpful…when you’re moving so fast that silence feels threatening…when you never got the chance to meet your true self because you were too busy being useful to survive…

You start imposing fixes to problems that don’t exist. You become the self-appointed saviour of people who never asked to be saved.

That behaviour kills connection. Fast.

If you keep offering what no one asked for, don’t be surprised when the invitations stop coming. Not because you’re unlovable, but because the space you’re taking up was never yours to fill.

We live in a culture that praises performance over presence, confuses being needed with being known, rewards fixing over feeling, and doing over being. There’s a whole generation of us “self-abandoners” - raised to be useful, productive, pleasing; trained to be competent and helpful - trying to love others before ever truly meeting ourselves.

When you’re move too fast to hear a “no,” you’re not with the person in front of you. You’re with your projection of who they’d be…if they just let you fix them. You’re with your own reflection, your own ache to matter, your own fantasy of who they could be…if they just took your advice.

That’s not intimacy, that’s intrusion in polite packaging. That’s your ego, dressed up as generosity. That’s not connection - it’s performance.

Real connection doesn’t perform. It doesn’t hustle or insert itself. It doesn’t override, impose, or assume. Real connection listens deeply and without agenda. It respects timing and honours space and knows when to speak, and when to stay beautifully, powerfully silent.

Until you stop inserting what you think is best, you’ll keep missing the sacred simplicity of someone saying, “I’m good.”

Trust that love doesn’t always look like doing. Sometimes, the bravest, boldest act of love…is staying still.