The Super-Helper Syndrome: A Survival Guide for Compassionate People

‘A fascinating insight into how and why we are compelled to help others even when we’ve got nothing left to give.’ – Amy Beecham, Stylist

‘This book is a powerful catalyst in showing helpers how to help themselves.’ – Suzy Reading, author of The Self-Care Revolution

‘It goes well beyond reminding us of the importance of self-care and digs deep into unconscious beliefs and thinking patterns. I’m very sure that everyone could relate to the Super-Helper Syndrome.’ – Carers UK

‘I wish this book had been available for me to read years ago. Besides explaining why super-helpers behave as they do, it’s given me a healthier mindset and allowed me to reassess what boundaries around selflessness can look like.’ – Martine Croxall, BBC Television journalist

There’s a type of person out there who is better at helping others than they are at looking after themselves. Maybe you’re one of them. Maybe you know someone who is. They are the backbone of the caring professions, giving strength to our schools, clinics, care homes and hospitals. But you will also find them in offices, gyms, community groups and charities – everywhere you look. There’s usually one in every family.

But these people, who do so much to help others, are struggling. Some face traumatic and distressing situations. Those in long-term caring relationships have no time to care for themselves. Those who are professional carers work prolonged hours with inadequate resources. Deeper down, beneath all of this, there is something else that causes helpers to suffer. It dwells in their psychology and the belief system that motivates them.

The Super-Helper Syndrome offers a new perspective on the psychology of helping. It offers support for people who want to adopt a Healthy Helper Mindset, including meeting their own needs, countering the inner critic, building assertiveness and setting helping boundaries. It’s only by doing these things that compassionate people can be most effective at helping others.

This book is for anyone who helps to the detriment of their own wellbeing. It’s for anyone who wants to support the helpers in their life. And it’s for anyone who wants to understand how helping works and to be better at it.

JESS BAKER is a chartered psychologist and associate fellow of the British Psychological Society. She started her career in healthcare before specialising in business psychology. She has delivered webinars from her loft in Shropshire to global audiences. She is an award-winning coach. Over a thousand women have been through her online Tame Your Inner Critic programme. She speaks at conferences and festivals and is a regular commissioned writer on the subject of wellbeing. She comments on leadership, psychology at work and mental health for magazines, newspapers and national radio. As an expert on the wellbeing of helpers she offers her services on a voluntary basis to charities.

ROD VINCENT is an Anglo-Irish chartered psychologist, a writer and a musician. He is an associate fellow of the British Psychological Society, and during his previous career as a business psychologist he helped to develop leaders in forty-one countries. He now mostly confines himself to walking the Shropshire Hills. His poems and stories have won prizes in competitions and been published in a number of literary journals including Poetry Ireland Review, Stand and The Rialto. His poems are also in the Iron Book of New Humorous Verse (Iron Press). He writes the lyrics and plays bass as one half of O’Reilly & Vincent.