Rescuing is carrying, not caring
Caring about people doesn’t mean carrying everything for them. The challenge is recognizing when support turns into rescuing, fixing, absorbing, or taking responsibility for what was never ours to hold.
In honor of the season of move-in, orientations, welcome weeks and months, after-work social hours, and axe throwing parties, I offer you the myth that to care is to carry on behalf of others (colleagues, programs, and institutions).
The variations of caring that turn into carrying that I hear often are:
You’ll make yourself available. Sign up for that extra volunteer slot or committee.
You’ll absorb their distress as you serve as their sounding board.
You’ll smooth over the conflict and rescue others.
If you care about people, you’ll anticipate their needs, soften their disappointments, hold their emotions, and sometimes even take responsibility for things that were never yours to begin with.
Plenty of those patterned responses overlap as trauma responses, neurodivergent masking, value-aligned caring, and definitely racialized and gendered. Raising my hand on all of those.
Carrying patterns can also start because you just want to be a good person and a good member of a community. White supremacy and neurotypicality teach us that our primary responsibility is to be good. Carrying is about being seen as and serving others as the Good Worker.
Over the last several years, we've seen the growing emphasis on mental health, well-being, trauma-informed practice, and mental health awareness in workplaces and educational institutions. We tell people to care about each other's well-being without necessarily giving them the training, resources, time, boundaries, or structural support to actually hold that responsibility. Were you just asked or assigned this invisible work because you seemed “good at it” or no one else would do it?
There are so many layers that it can be difficult to recognize when it tips over into: overing, rescuing, fixing, therapizing, and overall carrying (emotional, mental, energetic, resources).
Because suddenly, care has become carrying. This isn't what a healthy community requires. In fact, sometimes our attempts to carry one another actually prevent healthier systems from emerging.
Years ago, I used the Karpman Drama Triangle to help people recognize the roles of Rescuer, Victim, and Persecutor. What I found most useful was noticing how quickly we can move into reactive, anxiety-based patterns when something feels urgent, uncomfortable, or out of control.
Someone is distressed. We feel their distress. We rush to fix it. They become more dependent on us. We become resentful. They become resentful. They don't change. We become more frustrated. Then we work harder or try again because we make their stuckness mean something about our abilities. And around we go. Everyone ends up feeling less powerful.
How do we get out of the cycle?
By carrying less. Keep your care, but be really clear on when it’s care and when it’s carrying. Care allows everyone to move from responding and fixing toward choice and agency.
One of the ideas I took from the work that helped me shift out of these patterns is that responsibility isn't the same thing as taking responsibility for everything. Responsibility is our ability to respond. And we always have choices. And one of the big ones we will be talking about is knowing when something needs to be addressed at the systemic level rather than solved through your individual effort.
That last one may be the most important for deinstitutionalizing. Because if every institutional problem is solved by the most caring individual in the room, the institution never has to change. There is no work revolution if we all just keep taking on more and more until it kills us.
For this month, here’s your question: Is this mine to carry?
And here’s your mantra: Care without carrying. Support without rescuing. Resilience without absorbing.
