How to Know If You’re Being a Caregiver or a Caretaker

Helping others is key to building relationships and community. The same signs of care that build a relationship can be used to tear one down, though. This is just as true in the workplace as in the neighborhood.

• Doing a simple task for your coworker can be helpful if they’re overloaded, or it can be a nuisance if you’re doing it to control the output.
• Offering a shoulder to cry on is a huge relief if tears are already coming. Responding to emotions that you assume others feel, even before they tell you or show it, is suffocating.
• Lightening an employee’s workload for a while to help them cope with issues in their home life can keep them afloat. Avoiding a candid feedback session for someone who isn’t pulling their weight because of the discomfort it’ll cause lets them keep getting away with it.

There are dozens of good articles describing the differences, from the outside-looking-in, between a caregiver — someone who helps others in their weak or vulnerable moments — and a caretaker.

That doesn’t help much when trying to track whether YOU are being a caretaker in the moment.

Here are some things to keep track of while you’re trying to help other people. If you notice one of these distinctions while saying or doing anything for others, you’ll be able to check in with your intentions and change your behavior.

A caregiver is someone who steps into the role of giving care to others who need help.

Things you’ll see, hear, and feel when you’re being a caregiver:

• Their need is demonstrated outwardly. The other person has said that they’re struggling, or they’ve shown it in an obvious way.
• The other person has asked for your care/help, or they so desperately need it that a request can’t even be made. (For example, someone having a panic attack or locked in terror while getting reamed by their boss.)
• As a caregiver, you only help until help isn’t needed any more. Then you stop and let them handle things on their own.
• A caregiver respects other people’s boundaries. This looks like asking permission to help and accepting “no” when you hear it without pushing back or trying new angles to get them to say “yes”.

A caretaker manages other people in order to placate their own empathy or discomfort.

Things you’ll see, hear, and feel when you’re being a caretaker:

• You assume that the other person needs you. You don’t bother to check whether others need help because you’re motivated by avoiding your own bad feelings. Stepping in to do things for others is a way to focus on anything but yourself.
• You impose care upon the other person. If the other person tries to resist or reject your offer, you personalize it with deeply hurt feelings. You will usually feel the urge to make yourself a victim or start punishing the other person for “being rude” or “pushing away”.
• You want to give care until you feel self-satisfied (which is rare), or you until you’re so energetically drained that you start to feel resentful toward the other person for “taking so much from you” (which is common).
• You frequently cross boundaries while satisfying your own need to feel “valued” (which really translates to feeling “that you’re a valuable person”).

Taking these distinctions together, we see that a caregiver’s experience is focused on the situation and the other person’s dignity. A caretaker’s experience is focused on their fears and feelings.

Said another way:

A caregiver gives comfort to others when others need it.

A caretaker takes comfort from others when the caretaker needs it.