A self help book I read said to not rescue someone, rather don’t offer to help and let them handle it by themselves. So I tried this with the latest from my mother; a broken faucet issue she catastrophized. But, it gave me nightmares that night. In the morning, I transferred a few hundred dollars to her account as my contribution to help. She hadn’t outright asked me for the money. It’s just that she is in a situation where she has very little cash flow, so she harps on my sympathy whenever we speak. I coughed up the money to ease my conscience and to not feel traumatized. I have a long way to go to get to No is a complete answer.

P.s. The next time I called her she had no recollection she had even told me about the faucet and that I had helped at all. She again told me about the trauma of fixing the faucet, total catastrophizing, and zero memory of how i had given her the money to have had a professional handle the whole thing.