If you often feel the urge to meet others’ emotional and material needs, you might be suffering from ‘Saviour Complex’

The need to be needed

If you often feel the urge to meet others’ emotional and material needs, you might be suffering from ‘Saviour Complex’

    So, you are someone who’s always helping others — by lending a shoulder to cry on, running errands or even offering financial assistance. And you enjoy a sense of purpose after ‘rescuing’ someone. But when you need help, there’s no one to return the favour. You feel used, but that doesn’t dampen your urge to help others. If this reads like the story of your life, you’re probably suffering from what is called the ‘Saviour Complex’. 

CASE STUDY Sonam Khurana (name changed), 25-year-old media executive, believes she suffers from Saviour Complex. “I always get attracted to men who are messed up. I feel I should love them, because they need care. But being in a relationship with such men has been bad for me. I end up feeling emotionally drained, stressed and messed up. Since I go out of my way to help them, they take me for granted. They also vent their anger on me, because they know I won’t react,” she says. 

WHAT IS IT? Saviour Complex is a deeprooted psychological conflict, in which you feel an intense need to save others. They often sacrifice their own needs to help others, explains clinical psychologist and author Seema Hingorrany.
    She recounts the case of one of her patients, a 23-year-old girl. As a child, she was denied love and attachment by her busy parents. On growing up, she started helping others whenever they needed her, often going out of her way.
    Consultant psychiatrist Dr Milan Balakrishnan calls this knight-in-shining-armour complex. Though such individuals feel happy to help, they get angry and frustrated when the other person becomes less needy. “I have seen wives of alcoholics who play saviour all the time. They may be unknowingly encouraging alcohol to fulfil their saviour complex needs,” he says. 

CAUSES Usually, people with Saviour Complex have a low selfesteem. They may have had parents who played opposite roles. While one may have been harsh, making them feel useless, the other may have played the role of a martyr and saviour. Gradually, it reaches a stage where their selfesteem needs are only fulfilled by helping others. There is a constant fear of rejection, explains Dr Balakrishnan.
    “It cannot be called addictive, but the pattern gets repeated in all their relationships, be it with friends or family. Slowly, it becomes a part of their personality. In my experience, men are more likely to suffer from the Saviour Complex. That could be because culturally, women in India have always played the sacrificial role. So, some men end up feeling the need to rescue them,” he says.
    According to Hingorrany, people who have faced feelings of insecurity during childhood or have undergone negative experiences may develop Saviour Complex as a coping mechanism. It helps them to stay connected with people and build emotional bonds — blessings they were denied as children. 

REPERCUSSIONS The most obvious is that people may take advantage of you. Also, crossing the limit in any relationship leads to negativity. It ends up being a one-sided relationship where one person is always the saviour, says Hingorrany. 

 
REMEMBER 

Dr Milind Balakrishnan suggests the following guidelines:

1. Awareness and identifying this repeated pattern in your relationships is first and foremost because without insight into the behaviour it cannot be changed.
2. Learning to love yourself you can take care of the emotional needs of others without being self-sacrificial.
3. Realising that your self-worth is based on what you think about yourself rather than what others think about you.
4. Changing their irrational belief that they will rejected if they don’t play the “saviour” all the time.

You don’t have to sacrifice your own needs to help others always