@Sarah Molli Indeed, feeling the need to fix everything comes with feeling very intensely all of the discomfort, agitation, tension and 'fill in the blanks for other feelings" that come with it. Usually the need to "FIX" has more to do with stopping all of the uncomfortable feelings.

@Rubin Prophete thank you for sharing. This applies to more than one of the threads we discussed in this community: this current one on our feelings about other people's behaviors and the one on Hope vs Expectation. I would like to invite some refection on this event. The first is what "need" were you responding to by reaching out. The surface level is concern for their well-being, but I'm wondering if there is a deeper need in relation to yourself. When we ask ourselves "What need am I trying to fulfill, what value am I trying to fulfill in doing 'X'?" Answering this question tells us more about what we were looking to get out of the interaction. It may be fulfilling a role of a concerned family member; bridging the gap between myself and a family that I feel has strayed away from one another; reconnecting; playing the role of the reliable relative; etc. It could be any one of these, something completely different or even a combination or hybrid of several needs/values. Knowing this helps us better understand what we are looking for. I second thing to check in on is what am I feeling? Not what story is being stirred up by my feelings, but my raw authentic feelings: Tension, Tightness, Heaviness, Burning, Warmth, Clenched, etc. What you are feeling is truth. What it means is something entirely different. Why is this important? We often (and very quickly) connect the story with the feeling, and then we react to the story and not the feeling. When we do this, we often further the same feelings, which in turn reinforce the story. There are no solutions in this, and we end up living a very rigid and unauthentic experience. The downside to this is that we tend to do this so much in our lives that we have a hard time differentiating between familiar and authentic. We create a numbing effect to our body's wisdom and remain stuck in the narrative. This creates a repetitive loop where we experience the same types of interactions with so many people. We get quite literally caught up in self-fulfilling prophecies.

@Rubin Prophete We can also explore the relationship between what we were hoping to get out of our actions versus what we were expecting. Expectation is very rigid. It is like the story we have about ourselves, others and the world... it is what is going to happen or supposed to happen. Expectation can be dangerous because we were all raised on expectations. We were expected to know how to behave and act, how to listen; we were expected to succeed, to do better, to know better. We heard the word "expect" thrown around a lot. So it's completely normal that we start to apply expectations to others around us. The downside to this is it very rarely turns out as we expected (unless we become superbly pessimistic and then we end up expecting the worst -- and playing a role in helping it turn out that way). When we hope for something, it allows more space for a pleasant surprise. Hope starts off with accepting things as they are and not a change. Hope allows for the status quo to remain while giving space for something different. Hope is flexible, loose and easy. It is light and connecting. Hope doesn't rest in consequences otherwise - expectation does. Expectation is rooted in "If not, then..." Hope is "Sure X, but maybe..." We easily fall into this trap because we don't have much modeling of anything different. I'm wondering if you can connect to this type of experience with your situation and if reformulating it in line with Hope vs. Expectation and applied your own feelings to it instead of the story, if this would change your lived experience.