Sometimes, everything goes off the rails.
A breakup. A professional crisis. A family conflict. A period of doubt. A loss of direction. A problem that seems impossible to solve.
And at times like these, we sometimes dream that someone will finally arrive with THE solution.
The providential man. Or the providential woman.
The person who will save the day.
Someone who would immediately understand what is happening, know exactly what to do and finally rid us of the problem.
The expression is particularly familiar in politics: the “providential man” is the saviour figure who emerges in times of crisis and onto whom people project the ability to resolve a difficult collective situation. Historian Jean Garrigues has notably studied the persistence of this figure in the French political imagination.
But we also create our own providential men and women in our relationships.
A partner who will fix us.
A manager who will solve every problem in the team.
A friend who always knows what to do.
A therapist who will heal us.
A coach who will finally tell us how to live.
And sometimes, someone is quite happy to take the job.
Welcome to the wonderful world of saviour syndrome.
What is saviour syndrome?
Let’s start with one clarification: saviour syndrome is not an official medical or psychiatric diagnosis.
The term instead describes a relational pattern in which someone feels a particularly strong need to help, fix, advise, protect or take responsibility for other people’s problems.
Helping is obviously not a problem.
Thankfully.
The problem begins when:
“I want to help you”
gradually becomes:
“I have to save you.”
And sometimes:
“I know better than you what is good for you.”
The saviour may then feel responsible for the other person’s happiness, decisions or even personal development. They give enormously. Anticipate needs. Offer solutions before anyone has asked for them. Step in. Take over.
And they may end up completely exhausted, wondering why nobody seems to appreciate everything they do for others.
This is beginning to smell slightly like a trap.
“I always want to save other people”: why?
Because being the saviour can feel rewarding.
And that is precisely what makes it subtle.
Being the one who helps can make us feel useful, competent, indispensable, generous or needed.
“Good thing I was there.”
“Without me, he would never have managed.”
“She needs me.”
“If I don’t deal with it, nobody will.”
It can also help us avoid something much more uncomfortable: accepting our powerlessness.
Because loving someone unfortunately does not give us the power to solve all their problems.
Sometimes the other person will make a choice we think is wrong.
Sometimes they will ignore our absolutely brilliant advice.
Sometimes they will suffer and we will not be able to remove their pain.
Helping also means accepting that the other person remains the owner of their own life.
Karpman’s Drama Triangle: Rescuer, Victim, Persecutor
This is where Transactional Analysis becomes particularly interesting.
Psychiatrist Stephen Karpman described in the late 1960s what is aptly known as the Drama Triangle, with three relational positions: Victim, Rescuer and Persecutor.
These are not three categories of people.
They are positions we can enter and move between during the same interaction.
Imagine:
“Leave it, I’ll do it for you.”
Rescuer position.
The person refuses your help.
You insist.
They get annoyed.
And after spending a huge amount of time on someone who may never have asked for anything, you end up thinking:
“After everything I’ve done for you!”
The Rescuer can then become the Victim.
Or the Persecutor:
“You never make any effort!”
And that is how a relationship that began with a perfectly generous intention ends in an argument worthy of a Christmas dinner that got a little too boozy by 11:47 p.m.
The problem with the saviour: helping can become infantilising
This is probably the point that interests me most.
To save someone, you implicitly have to believe that they need to be saved.
And this is where help can paradoxically become infantilising.
If I systematically do things for you, I also deprive you of the chance to discover that you are capable of doing them yourself.
If I make every decision whenever you doubt yourself, you never learn how to decide when I am not there.
If I systematically answer for you, I gradually occupy the space where your own voice could emerge.
The intention may be wonderful.
The result, much less so.
Doing something for someone is not always the same as helping them.
Sometimes helping means precisely not taking the wheel.
But what if I actually want someone to save me?
That is the other half of the problem, and we talk about it less.
Because the dynamic does not survive on the saviour alone.
When we are exhausted, lost or overwhelmed, handing our power over to someone else can be extraordinarily tempting.
“Just tell me what I should do.”
I often hear this from clients, and I completely understand the desire because… deciding takes energy, and so does living with uncertainty. But I have never been a fan of “ready-made” coaching.
So when we are going through a difficult period, meeting someone who seems to have all the answers can feel terribly reassuring.
That is precisely why we need to remain cautious around the providential man or woman who claims to know exactly what we need.
Coaching should instead provide perspective, knowledge, tools, hypotheses and sometimes a healthy dose of contradiction.
Ideally, it should gradually increase your ability to act without the coach.
A good practitioner is not “the person who will save the day”
You have probably gathered by now that I do not want to be your providential woman.
For one thing, it is not even flattering to me, actually. More importantly, it would mean delegating far too much responsibility to me.
Because a coach’s role is not to create someone who comes back asking:
“Martine, what should I do now?” at every crossroads in their life.
Quite the opposite.
The aim is for you to develop your powers of observation, discernment, understanding of your own patterns, relational skills and confidence in your decisions to the point where you need an outside person less and less to decide for you.
There is a fundamental difference between:
giving someone a solution
and
helping someone develop the ability to build one.
The famous dilemma of giving someone a fish versus teaching them to fish, although I am not going to let you “starve to death” either. (To understand that part, you’ll have to work with me.)
Helping without saving: the difference between support and taking control
You can help enormously without becoming a saviour.
Helping can mean listening.
Asking a question.
Providing information.
Offering another way of looking at the situation.
Sharing a skill.
Giving an opinion when it is requested.
Being there while someone is going through a difficult time.
Or simply asking:
“Do you want me to listen, help you think it through, or suggest solutions?”
That little question can prevent an absolutely phenomenal number of conflicts.
Because sometimes someone genuinely wants our help.
And sometimes they just want to be able to say:
“My colleague is an arsehole.”
Without immediately receiving a seven-step strategic plan to restructure their department.
Saviour syndrome at work: when helping becomes exhausting
The same mechanism obviously exists in the workplace.
You may know this person.
They pick up overdue files.
Correct other people’s work.
Solve every problem.
Reply to messages while on holiday.
Spontaneously train everyone.
Take on emergencies.
And regularly utter this fateful sentence:
“Forget it, I’ll do it.”
In the short term, this person can become incredibly valuable.
In the long term, they may become exhausted, frustrated and convinced that their colleagues are incapable of functioning without them.
And their colleagues may indeed end up taking less initiative.
The system perpetuates itself.
And I know what I am talking about because I have been that person, and I learned from my mistakes.
That is why this is particularly interesting in management: an effective manager is not necessarily the person who solves every problem for their team.
They may be the person who gradually builds a team capable of solving those problems themselves.
Leadership: do we really need a providential man or woman?
In an organisation, just as in an individual relationship, we may be tempted to look for the person who knows.
The boss. The expert. The charismatic leader. The person who will take charge and solve the problem.
The expression providential man historically belongs to political vocabulary and refers precisely to this figure who appears in a critical situation as someone capable of resolving it. Dictionnaire de l’Académie Française
But leadership built entirely around one indispensable person has a rather spectacular flaw:
it depends on one indispensable person.
Another model is to build autonomy, responsibility and competence around you.
This is precisely one of the ideas I explore in my Leader Instinct podcast, particularly through relational positions and the way we exercise leadership.
Listen to this episode of Leader Instinct
How do you get out of saviour syndrome?
Perhaps by gradually replacing one question.
Instead of:
“How can I solve their problem?”
try:
“What does this person actually need from me?”
Those are not the same thing at all.
And a few questions can quickly reveal a tendency to rescue:
- Did this person ask me to help them?
- Am I helping them, or deciding for them?
- Do I feel responsible for the outcome?
- Can I accept that they may reject my advice?
- Am I expecting recognition in return for my help?
- Do I regularly exhaust myself solving other people’s problems?
- If this person became completely autonomous tomorrow, would I be happy… or would I suddenly feel useless?
That last one is fairly reflective and may bruise your ego, but it is necessary.
And if it stings, that is probably a good sign.
Perhaps the purpose of helping is to become unnecessary
I do not believe the quality of support should be measured by the dependency it creates.
Quite the opposite.
Successful support should gradually give the person more power over their own life.
That does not rule out help, support or advice.
It simply means:
I can walk beside you without claiming to know better than you where your life should go.
And ultimately, whether we are talking about a parent, a partner, a manager, a coach or that famous providential woman everyone is waiting for to fix the situation, the principle remains surprisingly similar:
helping someone does not mean becoming their power.
It means helping them reclaim their own.