10 Ways to Love and Support Others, Not Rescue Them

This week’s episode is all about finding the balance between helping and enabling, and how to give others the confidence to say “I can.” Support builds strength, rescue builds dependence so let’s discover 10 ways help them without holding them back.

Sometimes the most loving thing we can do isn’t fixing, rescuing, or carrying someone—it’s stepping back just enough to let them wobble, try, and grow their own wings. Let’s help them fly, not rely.

Transcript

Hey friends — welcome back or welcome for the first time. However you got here, I’m so glad you pressed play today. Whether you’re a longtime listener or this is your very first episode, thank you for showing up and giving yourself this moment and if someone sent this to you, then thank them for caring. Today I want to talk about something that is sometimes very difficult to do and that is to find the balance between helping and enabling, teaching others to fly without being their wings. While we think we are helping and protecting sometimes it goes too far and the support we give becomes the crutch that they can’t live without and they are too fearful or too set in the pattern to let go of it and find their own feet.

It’s a truth I’ve seen many time, in parenting, in friendships, in my own life experiences. When we do everything for someone out of love, or out of the urge to protect, something gets quietly shaped inside them, a sense that they can’t. They begin to depend. They feel insecure. They don’t get the chance to practice, to fail, to dust themselves off, and then to become confident through experience.

That’s a hard idea because helping feels good. It’s easier to take over. But ironically, the most loving thing we often can do is to step back, to scaffold, and to allow someone else the space to try, even when it’s uncomfortable for everyone involved. In today’s episode we’ll talk about why that matters, what happens when people learn they can’t (the psychological idea of “learned helplessness”), the science of building confidence (self-efficacy), and practical ways to borrow hope and strength from others while still allowing people to become their own rescuers. Now sometimes, we have to be more involved and protective, maybe to help someone due to mental illness, addiction or other significant problem but I’ll give you phrases you can use, small rituals to practice, and ways to hold them lovingly while they find their wings. 

Let’s start simple. When someone you care about struggles, your instinct is natural, help, fix, rescue. You want them to suffer less, you want to speed up their success, you want to keep them safe. That’s beautiful. But humans learn through experience. Confidence grows from doing. The person who learns to ride a bike becomes confident because they wobble, fall, and then get back on, ideally with someone there to steady the seat for the first few moments, but not to pedal the bike for them.

When we do too much for someone, we short-circuit that learning. We remove the friction that invites practice. Over time, the person can begin to expect rescue and stop trying to figure things out for themselves. They may start to doubt their own judgment. Their voice, the one that says, I can do this — stays quiet, and they start to listen more to what others tell them to do more than what they tell themselves.

There’s also a subtle dynamic of identity. We form a story about who we are from what we repeatedly do. If the repeated pattern is “someone else solves my problems:, then the story becomes I’m the one who needs others to fix things for me.” That belief can be hard to shake, and it quietly narrows our minds to what our possibilities might be...we become restricted and our wings get clipped.

And yet, we can be compassionate and still create space for learning. We can scaffold. Think of it this way, when a house is being built or remodeled, workers use scaffolding. That scaffolding doesn’t become the house, and it doesn’t do the building itself. Instead, it provides temporary support so the house can rise up safely and securely. Once the structure is strong enough to stand on its own, the scaffolding comes down.

That’s exactly how healthy support works in our lives. When we do everything for someone else, it’s like trying to be the house itself, we take away their chance to build, to strengthen, to stand on their own. But if we serve as scaffolding, we give them just enough support while they learn, grow, and build their own confidence. Eventually, they won’t need that scaffolding anymore because they’ll be strong enough to carry themselves forward. We can offer tools, encouragement, and presence without doing the task for them. That way, we make it possible for them to fail safely and to discover their own competence.

And the same goes in reverse—you, too, can lean on scaffolding when you’re in a season of rebuilding. Borrow strength, hope, or encouragement from someone else temporarily. But remember, the goal is always to become strong enough that the scaffolding can be removed, and you can stand tall on your own foundation.

There’s a formal psychological idea that helps explain what can happen when people repeatedly experience lack of control and it’s called learned helplessness. Originally described by researchers like Seligman and Maier in experiments with animals, the term refers to what happens when an organism is exposed to negative events that it cannot control; later, even when escape becomes possible, the organism fails to act because it’s learned that its actions don’t matter. This work formed the foundation for understanding how repeated uncontrollable events can lead to passivity.

In humans, learned helplessness is linked to feelings of hopelessness, reduced motivation, and depressive symptoms, essentially, the conviction that one’s actions won’t change outcomes. Modern reviews and clinical work show that the phenomenon is robust across species and has meaningful overlaps with depression and stress-related disorders. Thinking that you have no control can shape patterns and physiology in ways that are sticky and hard to reverse. When we do everything for someone, or when systems continually rob a person of control, we risk inadvertently teaching helplessness. People need predictable opportunities where their choices make a difference. Even small chances to exert control, making a simple decision, completing a modest task, strengthen the internal sense that I matter; my actions matter. Those small wins are the antithesis of learned helplessness. 

That’s the heart of the matter...we want to avoid modeling a world where our loved one learns that trying is futile. We want to create a world where effort produces feedback and where that feedback is visible. That’s how confidence is built. The decisive question to ask is: Does this action increase their capacity or reduce it? Does it help them or ultimately backfire and hurt them?Now many of you know that I get ideas for podcasts based on my own life and conversations with other but also when ideas are thrown in my path and this came up in a few conversations with friends this past weekend trying to figure out where the line was between being helpful and enabling but I also was recently reading a mystery type book called The Missing Half by Ashley Flowers and one sentence stuck out and I just read it this week so again, thank you Universe for putting this in my path. The book is about 2 sisters and how one was always taking care of the other because of the family dynamics and how the parents weren’t available for the care needed. At one point the now adult sister that had always been taken care of and mothered said something to the effect of “Did you always take care of everything for me because I couldn’t do anything for myself or was it that I couldn’t do anything for myself because you always took care of everything for me?” And that’s what we’re really trying to avoid and deal with today.

So to make this shift from helplessness to helpfulness, it helps to know how confidence develops. Psychologist Albert Bandura described self-efficacy, the belief in one’s ability to succeed in specific situations, and identified four primary sources that shape it: mastery experiences (actual successes), vicarious experiences (seeing others similar to you succeed), verbal persuasion (encouragement), and physiological/affective states (how we interpret our feelings and bodily cues). 

He found that mastery experiences are the most powerful. When people succeed, even in small things, they update their belief to I can do this. That’s why we want to give people tasks that are challenging but achievable. Vicarious experiences matter too so seeing a peer who looks like you succeed makes success seem possible. Verbal encouragement, honest, specific praise, nudges belief along. And finally, helping people reframe bodily signals (like nervousness) from I’m too nervous and I can’t to I’m excited and learning helps prevent your feelings from hijacking the outcome.

So, if your aim is to help someone learn to fly, you want to design opportunities rooted in these sources: tiny mastery moments, role models they can watch, the right kind of encouragement, and tools to regulate emotions. That combination builds real, resilient confidence.

Sometimes people don’t have enough inner fuel to start. That’s where borrowing comes in — borrowing hope, belief, and strength from community, mentors, or rituals. This doesn’t mean making them dependent on others forever. It’s about using social resources as temporary scaffolding while the person builds internal reserves. Hearing someone else’s beginning-to-end story of struggle and small wins is borrowing hope. It says: “If they could, maybe I can too.” They can borrow strength in the words you say to them as a few words at the right time can change a trajectory and short loving checkins can create gentle pressure to act. Helping them design small rituals can transfer courage and belief from you to them, for example, a two-minute pep talk before presentations, a family handshake before auditions, or a short written note tucked into a bag that says, “You’ve got this.” Rituals can reframe internal states and provide a dependable source of courage.

Remember, borrowed belief should be temporary and aimed at creating permanent internal belief. The final goal is that the person hears their own voice say, “I can,” not just yours.

But what about overhelping and cultural trends, where societal roles have created this model of intensive parenting. Research on overparenting (sometimes called “helicopter parenting”) and excessive rescue shows associations with anxiety, depression, and lower autonomy in young adults. When adults do too much for children — solving problems, shielding them from every discomfort, those children can miss important developmental tasks that build resilience and problem-solving skills. Research suggests that while well-intentioned protection can reduce short-term pain, it may increase long-term vulnerability. And honestly, the same can be said for helicopter helping of adults which can be just as tricky.

So whether you’re parenting, managing, or loving someone through a hard patch, consider whether your help is scaffolding toward independence or softening the lessons that produce competence.

Here are 10 practical approaches you can use (in parenting, friendships, or workplaces) to support people in building competence rather than dependency.

1. Scaffold — then release.
   Offer support that’s temporary and gradually reduced. For example, instead of filling out a form for someone, sit next to them and say, “Let’s do the first one together and then you can try the next.” When they do the second, fade out. The ‘gradual release of responsibility’ gives immediate support while ensuring the person can continue.
2. Break tasks into micro-wins.
   Big tasks feel overwhelming. Break them into bite-size steps (5–15 minutes each). Celebrate each completed step. Experiences, even small ones, accumulate.
3. Teach the skill, don’t just give the solution.
   If someone asks for help with a problem, ask: “Which part do you want me to help with — brainstorming ideas, making a plan, or taking the first step?” Offer tools and frameworks rather than the finished answer.
4. Use empowering language.
   Replace rescuing phrases (“Let me handle it”) with coaching phrases: “What’s the first step you could take?” “What do you already know that could help?” “If you could imagine trying, what would that look like?” Those questions direct attention to the person’s capabilities.
5. Normalize failure as data.
   Reframe mistakes as information. After setbacks, ask: “What did that teach you?” Model curiosity and experimentation rather than judgment. This reduces shame and encourages future attempts.
6. Provide role models and stories.
   Share stories of people who started small and built competence, share your own stories and let them know we have all been there, we are all learning by doing, falling, and getting back up with knowledge and experience.
7. Set boundaries around help.
   Make agreements: “I’ll support you with X, but I won’t do Y.” Clear boundaries protect your energy and signal that the other person is responsible for their learning.
8. Make encouragement specific.
   Instead of saying “Good job,” say, “You made a plan, showed up, and tried something new — that’s huge.” Specific praise links action to outcome and reinforces the learning cycle.
9. Teach self-talk.
   People often adopt other people’s narratives about themselves. Help them craft internal phrases that are realistic and generative: “I can take one step,” “I don’t know this yet,” “I can learn.” Those small scripts change behavior over time.
10. Design safety nets, not catch-all rescues.
    If someone is about to take a risk, offer contingency plans rather than taking the risk away. “If this doesn’t work, what’s the backup?” That reduces fear and allows practice.

So let’s put this into practice. As you are going about your days next week, pick one relationship where you catch yourself doing things for someone because it’s faster or easier. It might be a child, a partner, a parent, or a colleague. For the next seven days, try this structure:

1. When they ask for help, pause. Ask one coaching question: “Which part would you like me to help with?”
2. Offer a tiny scaffold (sit with them through the first 10 minutes, give a single suggestion, or teach one micro-skill).
3. Set a short timeline for stepping back: “I’ll help now, then I’ll check in tomorrow to see how it went.”
4. Give specific encouragement tied to action. “You outlined three steps — that’s a great start.”

Watch what changes. Notice not only how they respond but how your relationship shifts. You may feel uneasy. That’s normal..when we were cave men and women, we had to help or we could be be left out in the cold literally so not jumping to help can trigger that ancestral response. But courage grows in both of you when you do less and teach more. Let them learn to fly. Give them the wind beneath their wings rather than holding the wings for them. Jay Shetty said something to the effect that you are not supposed to climb the mountain for someone, you are supposed to remind them they have legs. Trust that people often surprise us, and themselves, when given the space to try. And if they need you, be there to steady the first steps, not to replace them.

If this episode resonated with you, share it with someone who’s in the middle of learning, help to remind them you are there for them but they can and should be there for themselves. If you’re comfortable, share with us one small way you’ll step back this week. Thank you for being here today for yourself as well as for those you care about. Thank you for the compassion you carry, and for the courage it takes to let others grow. Let’s keep helping without enabling, let’s keep supporting without carrying, and let’s help each other keep growing and building confidence, little by little, peace by peace.