Caretaking & emotional caretaking

Caretaking and Helping are easily confused. Both have the same intention: we care about someone and we want them to feel better. But, there is a very clear way to figure out whether we are caretaking or helping: look to potential resentment. If we can see frustration around the corner by helping them, then it is a caretake.
If we will be annoyed that they do not take our great advice after we listened to them vent about the same person for the fifth time, then we are caretaking.
If we expect someone to read our minds so that we do not have to feel uncomfortable asking them for help, we are expecting them to caretake us.

Resentment:
Resentment starts off small, but grows exponentially larger over time. Resentment may be a mild annoyance or irritation that we can shrug off at first. Or we can talk ourselves out of being annoyed by understanding the other person’s perspective [Emotional Caretake].  Over time, the residual annoyances pile up and turn into full on anger or rage.

Resentment is to be avoided.
Melody Beattie warns Resentment eventually will destroy any relationship/ friendship. 
1. Resentment cannot be clearly gauged: we may think we are fine one day, and the next we are furious; we never know what will be the last straw that leads to the end of the relationship (“detaching out of anger”). This is also why we falsely think a relationship can handle more resentment that it can.
2. This is due to what I call "The Law of Resentment." It seems illogical, but it is incredibly simple:
    However resentful I am towards a person, they are at least as resentful towards me.*

In the "Detachment" chapter of Codependent No More Melody Beattie says the solution to avoiding resentment is to have healthy boundaries and to “Detach. Detach in love, or detach in anger, but strive for detachment" (pg 66).

I have described arguments in a relationship as taking a sledgehammer to a brick wall. Depending on the intensity of the argument/ the regrettable words spoken, it can be a tap to the wall, or several furious blows. With enough hits, any wall will come down. Resentment is the same. After all, what leads to yelling and arguing other than built up resentment?
A client came up with a better analogy: arguments are like cuts in a sail. A boat can continue to move forward with many rips in its sail. But as the wind continues to blow stronger, the smaller rips connect and turn into larger tears. Eventually the tears are too many, the entire sail is shredded, and the boat can no longer move.

Caretaking and Emotional Caretaking:
The simplest way to define Caretaking is to do something for someone who is capable of either doing that thing for themself, or they are capable of learning to do that thing for themself.
Caretake = “I have to do this for them because they can’t do it/ they’re not able to LEARN to do it.”
           "I do everything around here! This place would fall apart without me!"

Emotional Caretaking is based on the assumption that a person is either not capable of managing their emotions, or not capable of learning to manage their emotions.
Emotional caretaking presumes a person is not capable of telling me their needs and wants directly. Rather, I must mindread them.

Emotional Caretakes:
A) Walking on eggshells or tiptoeing around the truth to not hurt someone's feeling to avoid dealing with their strong emotional response/ harsh words. *This involves Mind Reading.
       “I have to watch what I say to them because they cannot handle the truth / they cannot (LEARN TO) manage their emotions.”

B) Mindreading is impossible. Don't get me wrong, some people are very intuitive and can be quite accurate at times. But mindreading is never more accurate than a person explaining what they are thinking and feeling. To expect someone to mindread us is to set ourselves up for disappointment. It can feel very scary to take a risk and be vulnerable enough to tell a person what we are thinking, feeling or hoping. But, expectations can only be met when we explain to another what it is we want or need from them. If we are upset that someone did not offer to help us, but we did not ask them for help, we are expecting them to emotionally caretake us. 
If we think or say, “They should know what I want after all this time!” (no matter how many years we have known them) we are expecting them to mindread, and setting ourselves up to be hurt.

I know that it does not feel this way, but I promise you there are few adults in the world who are not capable of learning to manage their emotions. OR, who are not capable of learning to do things for themselves. I also know that there are capable people (tweens, teens and adults) in our lives who will fight us and demand we (emotionally) caretake them. But, this is not empowering them to grow. Rather it is enabling them to stay stuck and inevitably resent us. If we love someone, we want them to continue to learn and grow and believe in themselves.

Why to stop CARETAKING & EMOTIONAL CARETAKING:
1. It DISempowers the person to learn and grow:
Ask yourself, “If the person cannot do this right now, can they really not learn to do it?” If they can learn, then we are caretaking them if we do it for them.
                                 
2. I AM PUTTING THEIR NEEDS/ WANTS AHEAD OF MY OWN. This is not healthy to do for any capable person (child, teen or adult), and ...

3. #2 Breeds Resentment, and Resentment eventually destroys all relationships.* The challenge with resentment is that it starts off small, but grows large much quicker than we expect it to because of the "Law of Resentment:" However resentful I am towards a person, they are at least equally resentful towards me.

*[See "The Law of Resentment" from 5/25/2022 for an in-depth explanation]