“He can't do it without me. He has such problems! ”Or:“ I just can't let her down there. ”As a therapist, I often hear sentences like this. Quite a few of my clients are extremely helpful people - and that's exactly what they don't get along with. That sounds paradoxical at first. After all, helping others is a very beautiful and well-recognized social quality. And not only that: helpfulness makes you happy. Helping someone else triggers the same happiness hormones in the brain as a piece of chocolate. Why is that? So willingness to help is in itself a good and also a healthy thing. However, this no longer applies when we turn other people's problems into our own problems.