Feeling Guilty When Others Reject your Attempts to Help?

I realize some of my recent topics haven't been real good discussion material but I still enjoy getting input from the people around here so if you don't like it, go somewhere else

nah i'm kidding, your all cool


I don't know how many of you can relate to this, and it's kind of hard to explain but I'll try.

When I was younger and I would visit my grandma should would always try to give me money as I left, and I would try to decline but she would tell me that it would make her feel bad if I didn't accept it. At the time I really didn't understand but I think I've begun to know how she felt.


I think my reasons are a bit more selfish though. Because of the things I've done in my past I am constantly seeking redemption. And when I am able to do something for someone else it helps fill the emptiness inside of me even if only for a short while. So when I make offers to help someone and they decline I feel guilty like I failed at being a decent person. I realize I shouldn't be so hard on myself, but the damage I've done to others can never be repaid by a few token gestures.

Does this make sense? I mean I can't believe that even when I am trying to do something nice I see myself as being selfish. Maybe this will help people understand why it sounds like I am often preaching, because I really am much harder on myself than I am with the rest of you.

Well, I try hard not to feel too bad if people reject my advice/charity, the only problem is that when/if they regret denying it at a point in time shortly after it is given...I chuckle to myself while offering condolences for their mistakes. I try not to, because I know I'd feel bad to have the "I told you so" done to me, as it has been from my mom on quite a few occasions, but...it just seems a natural response as it's in my nature to want to help, and if my help is refused and things turn out badly, it's like "I'm not going to say it, but you know."


Typically, though, if nothing bad comes of it, I shrug off people not wanting advice/charity from me...I try to be independent myself and not accept charity when I can, typically when it's in the regards of "I have two days till I get paid, and people want to take me out to eat. If I can't pay for my own meal, cuz I work and should be able to pay for it, I will not eat."


Hopefully this helps you feel not so alone

I feel embarrassed/lonely/displaced when that happens to me. The worst time was when someone had told me I'd really helped them, and that made me feel good...so I thought it was okay. I thought I was helping. So I said something else to encourage them, and they blew up at me, telling me "just stop -- I don't know what you think I'm feeling, but you're not helping." They cut off contact with me and I never heard from them again. That's happened with a couple people...the only way I've found to get over it is to just forget it ever happened.

"I think my reasons are a bit more selfish though. Because of the things I've done in my past I am constantly seeking redemption. And when I am able to do something for someone else it helps fill the emptiness inside of me even if only for a short while. So when I make offers to help someone and they decline I feel guilty like I failed at being a decent person. I realize I shouldn't be so hard on myself, but the damage I've done to others can never be repaid by a few token gestures."

I think that's the hardest part of genuinely helping people; it's for them. It helps us, inevitably, but when we "help ourselves by helping someone else," it seems to me like more of a by-product than anything.

I'm probably not the best person to contribute to this thread because I haven't really figured it out, and it's mostly something I push out of my mind. Thanks for bringing this up, though; and if that helps, you've helped me today :) This is something I've avoided thinking about for a long time. I'm hypersensitive to rejection; I've had a lot of bad experiences with people, and I've felt very guilty for a lot of things I've done, so when there's even a hint of rejection, I take it way too seriously and tend to start having a panic attack or feeling really guilty, maybe as a habitual response.

One time I asked if I could help my friend do the dishes, and he got angry at me. He told me that; he just said when I offered to help with it, it pissed him off. I've heard "just stop" and "just leave me alone" so many times in my life, anything that remotely sounds like it kind of sends me into mental shock and that's when I tend to clam up and go off into "how am I ever going to make up for being such a horrible person" land. And I'm also genuinely afraid that I'm going to be severely punished for everything I've done, and that there's no way I can get out of it.

In a way, I think I have a tendency toward self-destructive behavior for that reason: I think I might subconsciously believe that by abusing myself, I'll be somehow reducing the severity of a punishment that would come from some outside force. Like doing this is a penance or something -- I'd rather subject myself to horror than have someone else do it to me. And I feel guilty for saying that, because it's like saying "please don't make me go through what I've made other people go through." It feels really selfish and when I think about it I feel like a coward, but what pulls me through is that I just have to face it, whatever it is -- can't run away forever, so I might as well work on preparing myself.

All I can say is it's really awful when you've actually done horrible things. This is one area where I don't feel like people understand me; it brings into play the balance of the universe, and it feels like, well if I got away with this, it wouldn't be fair. So to uphold my values I have to go by them myself, which means admitting responsibility and accepting the consequences of the things I've chosen to do. It's an awful feeling.

But yeah, I'm usually okay with offering help, and I'm used to people not wanting it. I'm fine with that. It's the outright rejections or hostility that really upsets me. Though it doesn't take much for me to perceive something as hostile when it might not be that severe -- this is probably just my hypersensitivity/hyperarousal in relation to those things.

I can kind of relate to your sentiment with that. I don't feel guilty exactly in this situation. I offered my help and would be totally willing to follow through with it. Even though I wasn't able to carry it out, I cared enough to offer.
If people reject my help, that's their choice and I'll respect that most of the time. Maybe they want to figure it out for themselves or have things under control. I want to ultimately respect them and their wishes. I'll be willing to help if they ask later.

That said I sometimes try to get closer to people through kindness and through helping them and in some cases I regret not having the opportunity to do so. Sometimes I see the rejection as a rejection of me, even though I know better most of the time.

In my opinion.....
First of all, you need to be comfortable with your past.

I am sure that you're such a wonderful person who puts other first and the world certainly needs more people like you. Try to answer this question: Would you be such a dedicated helper as you are now, if it isn't because of your past? Embrace your past.

And then.... people learn much more effectively from experience than just following the guidelines.

Just imagine that you're trying to teach a very tiny kid not to touch the hot burning pot. If they have no experience on what 'heat' is and what harm it could cause them.... All they need is just one single wrong guidance from others and they can easily get convinced to do otherwise.
Adam, Eve and the apple is the easiest example in this case.

Sun Tzu- the master of strategists:
Sometimes we need to take one step backward before we make a big jump forward.

Just wanna share my point of view. Hope that it helped a bit.