❤️🔥 In Relationship With x 💙 Asian Mental Health Project | Unlearning the Savior Complex
Note on the session: This live session will be recorded and accessible to the facilitators, Kevin and Stephanie. They will use it to write a follow-up summary and post the recorded part of only their story on YouTube, to be accessible to folks who cannot attend the session live. Due to the privacy and protection of folks who attend the session, the rest of the recording will not be published or accessible at all.
—
Raise your hand if you’ve ever spent so much energy helping another that you ended up burnt out 🥺
Understanding how much to help your partner (or even your friends/colleagues/family) and what boundaries enable both of you to thrive is critical for a healthy relationship. The savior complex is complicated because you may believe that it is necessary, even honorable to help others, and that it’s acceptable at the expense of your well-being. While there are situations that call for making sacrifices in life, repeatedly putting others before you can come with a steep cost.
Savior complex behavior can look like:
👺 Fixing your partner’s problems when it is theirs to own
🛡 Seeking heavier conversation topics, so as to uncover problems to fix as the primary means to connect
⏳ Investing a majority of your energy to tend to someone else’s needs, at your own expense
As Asian culture can often revere selflessness, we must be mindful to identify and set healthy boundaries around how we help others, so we can all thrive.
Relational dynamics facilitators, Kevin and Stephanie will unpack these themes in this Brave Conversations session. We’ll specifically explore:
❤️🔥 Unpacking signals: Breaking down the stories that arise when we feel the urge to fix our partner
❤️🔥 Unlearning the complex: Choosing actions that honor both partners’ needs
❤️🔥 Tools for relating: Attunement by Relating Between the Lines
It’s safe to say that Kevin and Stephanie’s Asian experience has lots of complexity, and while their experience isn’t representative of all Asian cultures, their intention is to create a space to normalize having conversations about these themes.