The Helper Trap

The year is 2026 and you are recently separated from active duty or recently retired. The day you swore you were going to burn your BDUs (Battle Dress Uniform) at the gate on the way out has come and gone. Now you are in the real world, still trying to figure out what you want to be when you grow up. The ACUs were never burned. They sit in an old duffel with the rest of the gear you tactically acquired or supply didn’t want back. Every once in a while, especially when international relations get a little spicy, you look over at that bag and remember the superhero who used to carry it.

The days and nights pass as you navigate your new life. Things might even be going well, but there is still a hole inside you. Something is missing. You do not really know what it is, but you feel it. As the weeks and months pass, you talk to your battle buddies less and less. It seems like every time you open social media or your phone rings at a weird hour, it is another notification about a life lost. Suicide. Motorcycle accidents. Cancer. Alcohol. Violence. Eventually you start wondering if the war zone was actually the most dangerous place you ever lived.

Then, during one of those late-night doom-scrolling sessions, you notice a photo a friend shared. A picture is worth a thousand words, but this one leaves you with a thousand questions. Why does that ruck have so many baggage tags? Who in their right mind wears shorts that short in public? Wait...they actually make crayons you can eat? By the time morning comes, there is only one question left: How do I become part of this?

You do the research, join the groups and sign up for the next Irreverent Warriors Silkies Hike. It is not what you expected. It is way freakin’ better. More than 200 veterans show up wearing tiny shorts, carrying ridiculous rucks, laughing, talking shit and somehow speaking a language you did not realize how badly you missed hearing. The leadership team gives a powerful speech before the hike and eventually one of them comes over and introduces themselves. Turns out you were both at Camp Bucca around the same time. Within minutes you are reminiscing about the VBIED attack at the main gate, mortar attacks and the time detainees tried to dig their way out. For a few minutes, you are not explaining yourself. You are just understood.

While you and the LC are talking, people keep interrupting. Someone needs the leader to answer a question. Someone needs help with registration. Someone needs directions. Someone wants advice. You notice something: people depend on this person. At the end of the day, right before everyone heads home, the leadership team says the magic words: “If you’re looking to get involved, scan the code and fill out the leadership application.” Hook. Line. Sinker.

Fast-forward a year or two. Now YOU are IW. You are the LC of your community. People know your name. People call you when there is a problem. New veterans look for you when they walk into an event alone. Your team asks you what the plan is. Sponsors have your phone number. HQ knows who you are. Every night, you give the mission everything you have. Weekends are consumed with tabling events and vet-togethers. During the day you are doing buddy checks. At night you are emailing sponsors. Your lunch break becomes IW time. Your evenings become IW time. Your weekends become IW time.

At first, it feels incredible. You have a mission again. You have responsibility again. People depend on you again. You matter again. Then something begins to change. You start noticing that other people do not seem to care as much as you do. You notice the LC who cut a corner, the volunteer who did not answer the message, and the person at HQ who could have handled something differently. You start keeping a mental list of everything everyone else should be doing better.

Before long, helping becomes carrying. Carrying becomes controlling. Controlling becomes resentment. Resentment becomes conflict. Eventually, you burn out. Then come the familiar words: “I can’t do this anymore.” “I’m done.” “Nobody cares as much as I do.” So you walk away. Not just from leadership, but from IW completely. The support system you spent years building suddenly feels poisonous. The people who once gave you belonging now become reminders of frustration, disappointment and exhaustion.

What happened?

If this story sounds familiar, you may have fallen into the Helper Trap. The Helper Trap happens when service stops being an expression of healing and starts becoming a substitute for it.

Irreverent Warriors can be incredibly powerful for a veteran who is struggling. We give you a mission. We give you responsibility. We give you authority. People depend on you. You matter again. Those things can absolutely be healing, but they become dangerous when we begin using the mission to avoid dealing with ourselves.

Being needed can feel a lot like being healed. Think about what happened. You were isolated, and then you volunteered. Suddenly people were calling you again. They wanted your advice. They asked for your help. They depended on you. For someone who spent months or years wondering where they fit after the military, that feeling is powerful. Maybe even intoxicating.

So you do more, and more, and more. Somewhere along the way, the internal message changes. At first, you volunteer because you want to help people. Eventually, you volunteer because people need you. If we are not careful, that can become something even more dangerous: you need people to need you.

That is the trap.

Because now stepping away from leadership does not just mean giving up a volunteer position. It means giving up part of your identity. Who are you if you are not the LC? Who are you if your phone stops ringing? Who are you if someone else runs the hike? Who are you if somebody else solves the problem? Maybe the hardest question of all is this: If nobody needed you tomorrow, would you still know who you are?

For veterans, that question cuts deep. The military already taught many of us to connect our value to our usefulness. Be dependable. Carry the load. Complete the mission. Take care of the person beside you. Never leave anyone behind. Those lessons can make incredible leaders. They can also create unhealthy helpers, because there is an enormous difference between walking beside someone and convincing yourself that you have to carry them.

Healthy service says, “I want to help.” The Helper Trap says, “They need me.” Healthy service allows someone else to solve the problem. The Helper Trap jumps in before they even get the chance. Healthy service develops other leaders. The Helper Trap gets pissed when someone does it differently. Healthy service can take a weekend off. The Helper Trap checks the Facebook group from the bathroom because apparently the entire mission might collapse during a 10-minute shower.

The truth is, you are part of the mission. You are not the mission.

That can be a hard pill to swallow for veterans. We were trained to carry the load, complete the mission and take care of the person beside us. Those instincts made many of us damn good service members, and they can make us incredible leaders in IW. But somewhere along the way, we have to learn the difference between helping someone carry their ruck and throwing their ruck on top of ours.

IW should make veterans healthier, not just busier.

Sometimes healing means leading a community. Sometimes it means volunteering at registration, handing out water or doing a buddy check. Sometimes it means showing up to a Silkies Hike, putting on your daisy dukes of freedom and being absolutely responsible for nothing except walking, laughing and talking shit with your people.

And sometimes healing looks like saying, “I don’t have the capacity for this tonight.” It means letting someone else solve the problem. It means turning your phone off. It means allowing another leader to make a decision you would have made differently and resisting the urge to swoop in like Batman in Silkies.

It might even mean stepping down.

That does not mean you failed the mission. It does not mean you stopped caring. And it damn sure does not mean you stop belonging here.

An LC is a role, not an identity.

You were a veteran before somebody gave you the title. You were part of the tribe before somebody handed you the clipboard. You mattered before your phone started ringing with everyone else’s problems, and you will still matter when somebody else answers those calls.

The healthiest helper is not the person who can carry the most weight until their knees buckle. It is the person who knows what belongs in their ruck, what belongs in somebody else’s and when it is time to drop the damn thing and grab a beer, or Liquid Death, calm down, and sit around the fire with the rest of us.

Because this tribe never needed you to save everybody.

We just needed you to walk with us.