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.

This book will help you…

To profile your own helping habits.

You’ll discover whether you, or those around you, have experienced any elements of the Super-Helper Syndrome.

It provides activities that support you to avoid or overcome the Super-Helper Syndrome and to adopt the Healthy Helper Mindset.

AND when you order your copy, you can join The Super-Helper Syndrome Book Club and get access to these additional bonuses:

It offers support for people who want to adopt a Healthy Helper Mindset. This includes meeting their own needs, building assertiveness and setting helping boundaries.

It guides the reader towards countering the inner critic with mindful self-compassion. It’s only by doing these things that compassionate people can be most effective at helping others.

This survival guide 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.

People who do so much to help others are struggling. In their efforts to help wherever they can they typically overstretch themselves. 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 lurks unnoticed. It dwells in the psychology of the helper.

Until recently this phenomenon that has gone unnoticed and unnamed, but it has now been highlighted by chartered psychologists Jess Baker and Rod Vincent.

The book includes a range of content aimed at helping the reader to be as compassionate to themselves as they are to others:

Whether you’re a professional carer, already volunteer your time, care for someone at home, or if your colleagues, patients or service-users depend on you, you’ll find psychological support and practical advice to help you become a healthier helper and establish stronger boundaries.

“The book made me think”

The Spotlights made me read, stop and think. By no means am I a super helper, but the book made me think about the person on the receiving end of well intentioned, but probably not well received help.

“Full of wisdom and compassion”

The book is full of wisdom and compassion. I found the suffering of unhealthy helpers in Chapter 3 extremely moving and it was at this point I really began to understand the enormity of what some people go through.

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 is now doing his best to rebalance that carbon footprint by confining himself to walking the Shropshire hills.

Rod’s 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.