I believe that it is important to not sacrifice ones own health in order to help others. When the oxygen level in the airplane drops the parent is advised to put on the mask first, because if they pass out how can they help the children? When learning how to help someone drowning, the most important thing is to not try and save them while they are in a state of panic. Why? Because they might pull you down with them so that you both drown. How can a doctor, a physio or a nurse help anybody if they are sick at home?
"You can help a thousand but you can't carry 3."
If you are continuously sacrifising yourself to the point of breakdown you suffer from masochism and you need help. Subconsciously you believe you need/deserve to suffer and/or this habit is so strong it owns you.
Every inhibitory person is a masochist, because early in life failure and frustration become his habitual lot. He is not comfortable when things are going well, because they are going against the grain. He is always looking for trouble, and if he can't find it he manufactures it. He makes the worst of everything, and his biography is the story of a man's struggle to be a failure.
Masochistic reactions are a comment on the past. They may seem ridiculous at times, but they are perfectly valid neural connections.
Man is "against himself" and has a "drive to self-destruction" and "an unconscious desire to retain his neurosis" only when he has inadequate reaction patterns. He attracts trouble
and constantly repeats his errors because he has acquired no other methods of coping with his environment. When he says, "I don't want to let go of my troubles," what he really means is, "my troubles [habits, that is] won't let go of me - because they are habitual." It is a fact worth repeating, and a truism of epic proportions, that habits have a tendency to remain habitual.
- Andrew Salter "Conditioned reflex therapy".
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