S2 EP295 – When Caring for Someone Hurts You: What’s Truly Loving?

Hi and welcome to the Inner Bonding Podcast. I’m Dr. Margaret Paul, and today we’re diving into a deeply important topic – what it means to be truly loving in a relationship with a friend, family member, or partner, that is emotionally challenging or even damaging.

You may care deeply about someone. They may be ill, and they might have come from a traumatic background. They might be your partner, your best friend, or your parents or other family member. But what happens when caring for them means you’re being emotionally abused – or even physically threatened? How do you know what’s truly loving to yourself and to them?

This episode is for anyone struggling with guilt, helplessness, and confusion when love and pain are tangled together. We’ll explore this through the lens of Inner Bonding, and as always, I’ll guide you toward the loving adult within you – so you can make decisions from truth, not fear.

Let’s imagine – or perhaps remember – a situation like this:

You live with someone or have taken responsibility for someone you care deeply about. Maybe they’re your partner. Maybe a best friend. Maybe they are your parents. Perhaps they’ve suffered deeply in life. Perhaps they have chronic illness or disability. Perhaps they’ve been abused in the past.

And when they’re triggered, they become emotionally unstable – angry, irrational, sometimes dissociative. If they come from abuse, they might be suffering from Complex PTSD and have flashbacks, projecting on to you their childhood abusers. They may say cruel things, blame you, call you names, accuse you of abandoning them… and then not even remember it afterward, which often happens when someone is triggered into their wounded self.

If you try to protect yourself by going to another room, they say you’re abandoning them, and they get more agitated. And if you stay, you are torn down emotionally, maybe even threatened physically.

This is a very real situation. I’ve worked with people in this position – especially women – who were taught that love means sacrificing themselves. That compassion means endurance. That helping someone means tolerating abuse.

This is not loving to you, but what is loving to both you and the person you are caring for? 

My friend Sally was taking care of her father who had Alzheimer’s. He was an alcoholic and grossly overweight and had no intention of taking loving care of himself in any way, and he was demanding and critical of her. She worked full-time and had a helper with her father when she wasn’t home, but she spent the rest of her time taking care of him. It was only when her own health started to fail that she finally found an assisted living facility for him and moved him there.

But this didn’t change much for her. She felt guilty if she wasn’t there when she had free time because this is what he wanted. Her guilt came from believing that she was responsible for his feelings and wellbeing, while completely ignoring her own. I felt sad for her and concerned about her health, but since she was my friend and not my client, I didn’t have the open arena to advise her, and when I tried to support her in taking loving care of herself, she acted as if she understood but kept right on sacrificing herself.

It was only after he died that she realized how much she had been giving herself up and how much this was affecting her health. 

Her situation isn’t unique at all. 

One of my clients, Kate, was helping her narcissistic mother with her estate after her father died. Her mother sometimes acted like a caring mother, but at other times she was verbally abusive to Kate. Kate used the situation to learn more about being loving to herself while still being there for her mother, which is what I want to address in this episode.     

In Inner Bonding, we ask in every moment:

“What is loving to me – and what is loving to the other?”

But let’s be clear:

Loving never means self-abandonment.
Loving doesn’t means tolerating abuse to avoid someone else’s pain.
Loving doesn’t mean enabling dysfunction to feel needed or worthy.

It is not loving to your own inner child to repeatedly be hurt, shamed, or terrified.

And it’s often not loving to the other person to enable behavior that disconnects them from responsibility, healing, or growth. But sometimes they can’t help it. Sometimes they are too unhealed from their own past abuse to not get triggered into a flashback and project their abuse onto you. Sometimes they have had a stroke or have Alzheimer’s and can’t help it. And sometimes, like Kate’s mother, they have a personality disorder and are not at all open to taking responsibility for their own behavior. 

Discovering what is loving to you and to the person you are taking care of is a process. So what does a loving adult say or do in a situation like this?

Over the years of working with people who are caregivers, and at times caregiving myself, I’ve learned a lot.

One thing I know is that when someone acts out, they are generally coming from fear. People don’t act out from their loving adult, but when someone is triggered into fear, they are operating from their wounded self, trying to feel safe from a very young wounded part of them. So the last thing you want to do is trigger more fear. 

If you are in actual physical danger, then you need to find another option other than taking care of the person yourself, which I will talk more about soon. But much of the time the abuse coming at you isn’t physically threatening – it’s emotional abuse such as yelling at you and blaming you, name-calling, or threats. When this is the case, there are two loving things you need to do.

One is to make sure you are not taking personally what they are saying and how they are acting. It’s not at all about you, and if you can remember this, then you won’t get hurt by it. You won’t take it in as meaning that you are somehow not measuring up. You will realize they are projecting their wounded self onto you and are not able to see you at all.

Not taking it personally will help you to be compassionate with yourself and with them. Even if you don’t take it personally, it’s challenging, so you need to be very compassionate with both yourself and with them.

This is what Kate learned to do with her narcissistic mother. Her mother was never physically violent, but she was often emotionally abusive, and Kate learned that her mother’s criticisms and blaming has nothing to do with her. She realized that her mother’s young wounded self was projecting on to Kate her own wounded self, and Kate learned to not take it in. She was mostly able to stay present as a compassionate loving adult with her mother, which gradually improved their relationship. When Kate felt tired or overwhelmed by her mother, she learned to take brief breaks to regroup. 

If it gets to be too much and you find yourself starting to sink into your own wounded self, then you need to take a brief time out. You can say to the other person, “I will be right back in 5 minutes.” People in that young wounded state can get even more panicked if they are left alone, so letting them know you are not abandoning them is very important. They will likely not panic if they think you are just going to the bathroom or getting something to drink or eat rather than actually leaving them. If fact, if there is a tendency toward violence from childhood abuse, they are more likely to act out physically if they feel alone and abandoned. The feeling of helplessness is too much for them and they might do anything to try to control not being left alone.

So two things you can do to take loving care of yourself is to make sure you, as a loving adult, are not allowing your inner child to take the other person’s behavior personally, and to lovingly disengage for very brief periods if you start to feel overwhelmed. 

A third thing you might try doing is smiling at them with love, but you can’t fake this, or they will feel manipulated. It might not be easy to feel your love for them when they are acting out, but if you remember who they really are in their soul, you might be able to feel your love for them. Love is powerful. Love heals. If you can genuinely smile at them with love, and hold their hand or soothe their brow, they might start to calm down. Love takes away fear and if they are at all open to feeling your love and comfort, they might be able to move out of their wounded self.

Another thing you can do if they are not in a flashback from complex PTSD and do not have a tendency toward violence, or if they don’t have Alzheimer’s, you might be able to speak up in the moment, compassionately setting a boundary. Here is an example of setting a loving boundary that speaks your truth with compassion:

“I love you and I care deeply about you. I know you’ve been through so much, and I want to support you. But when you’re yelling at me or threatening me, I feel unsafe, so I need to disengage for a while. When I step away, I’m not abandoning you. I’m caring for myself so that I don’t shut down or collapse inside. I can’t stay in the room when I’m being emotionally abused. That’s not good for either of us. I’m here for love and connection, not conflict or fear.”

You can say this only when the person is not in a rageful state. That’s the only time this message can land, if at all. But even if they never understand it, you might need to say it – for you.

And you must follow through. Loving boundaries are not threats. They’re sacred commitments to yourself. But you do this only when you know for sure that they will not harm themselves or try to harm you.

Now let’s talk about what’s happening inside you in these moments – especially for those of you who grew up parentified, abused, or in homes where love was conditional or dangerous.

When someone you care about gets upset, your inner child may feel:

• Guilty
• Terrified
• Responsible
• Frozen
• Desperate to fix them

Your wounded self might say, “If I disengage, I’m a bad person.”

But your loving adult says something else entirely:

“Sweetheart, I see how afraid you are. And I’m here. I’ve got you. You didn’t cause this, and you’re not responsible for their pain. I won’t let you to be harmed again.”

You need to practice turning toward your inner child and becoming the safe, steady, protective presence you never had. And that sometimes means walking out of the room for a period of time. 

However, if things escalate, safety is the priority. So let’s be real. If your friend or loved one becomes physically violent or emotionally unhinged, you must put safety first. Even if they’re disabled. Even if they’re sick. Even if they’ve had the hardest life imaginable. Physical abuse is never justified.

You may need to:

• Call a support person
• Contact a domestic violence resource or adult protective service
• Leave the home entirely

Staying while in physical danger is not loving to you or to them. It’s self-abandonment masked as loyalty or caring.

You may wonder:

“But isn’t it cruel to walk away from someone who’s suffering?”

The truth is: it’s not cruel to walk away from abuse if you cannot manage the emotional abuse because you are taking it personally, or if there is the danger of physical abuse. It’s cruel to yourself to stay in it.

And enabling rage or physical violence keeps your loved one from ever facing his or her own healing work- if that’s possible for this. When we shield others from their consequences, they never have to choose change.

Love doesn’t fix people. Love invites them to grow. And most people, regardless of being ill, have the choice to do their inner work. We always have that choice, other than with a stroke or Alzheimer’s or dementia.

When you know someone well, such as your partner, you can often tell ahead of time if they are moving into their wounded self. Another loving action is to learn to speak up in the moment before any abuse starts, before it escalates into full-blown rage. 

Speaking up in the moment takes practice, but it can often shift the dynamic between you and your loved one. But this is true only if they don’t have Alzheimer’s. It’s obviously completely different if they are not able to even be aware of what’s happening.

Speaking up in the moment might be saying something like, “You seem upset. Do you want to talk about it?” or “Are you anxious or scared right now? I’m here and I’ve got you.” 

If your friend or loved one wants to learn to take some responsibility for their feelings, they can learn to ask for help before going into a meltdown. Let them know that you would far prefer for them to ask you for help for their feelings rather than dissociate and rage. If they are willing to learn to take some responsibility for their feelings, they can learn to tune into their feelings before becoming dysregulated and going down the rabbit hole. But this might happen only as you learn to speak up for yourself in the moment you see them become triggered.

However, it’s important to accept that you are not their therapist or their savior. You are their friend or loved one, and you cannot take full responsibility for them. 

My client Catherine has been a caregiver for her parents for many years. When her beloved father became ill and her angry mother was in the early stages of dementia, her parents had enough money for her to hire a caregiver. But this didn’t give her much relief, because she still had to make sure their medication was renewed and delivered, and because her mother was so critical and controlling, caregivers kept quitting. She finally made the hard decision to put them into an assisted living facility – the best one she could find. But her mother kept calling dozens of times a day, yelling at her for one thing or another. She finally decided to stop answering the phone so much. She had to struggle with her false beliefs about being a bad daughter, which had been drilled into her from childhood, but she started to feel better and things with her parents went better as she slowly let go of taking total responsibility for them. It wasn’t easy, but her health is better for it. 

So if you’re listening to this and you see yourself in this story… please know:

You’re not selfish for learning to take loving care of yourself.
You’re not cruel for needing some space and some peace.
You’re not abandoning someone when you take some time for yourself.

Let your loving adult speak. Let your inner child feel held. And let your higher guidance lead you out of the guilt and into the light of real love.

It’s helpful if you imagine a cone of the light of love coming into you and imagine that you are in a bubble of light with a mirror on the outer edge, reflecting off any negativity. Remembering that you are the light will help you stay connected with your higher guidance, so that you can tune into what is loving to you when your friend or loved one acts out. This will help you remember to not take it personally and to have compassion for both yourself and your friend, family member, or partner, and remember that compassion without boundaries becomes enabling, while boundaries without compassion becomes punishment. Wise love holds both.

There is no doubt that being a caregiver will challenge you to grow in many ways if you accept this challenge. If you see yourself as a victim of the situation, then you will miss this opportunity this offers you to grow as a spiritually connected loving adult. 

I hope you accept this challenge, because there is so much to learn.

Thank you for being with me today. If this episode speaks to you or someone you love, please share it – and as always, keep doing the beautiful work of Inner Bonding.

I invite you to join me in my 8-Week Home Study Inner Bonding Course to learn to love yourself, heal relationships, and connect with your spiritual guidance: The Inner Bonding 8-Week Course. This course will give you the tools to take loving care of yourself when being a caregiver for other.

I’m sending you my love and my blessings.