Like I say though, often you won't really know if what you are doing is a good thing until you look back on it and you see that the person you helped has moved forward. Some people just don't want to be helped and no matter how much effort you put it, you're not helping. But it's really difficult to see that while you're in the midst of it.
Just keep doing what you're doing while you have the motivation to do something. Get what you can out of the experience - the energy I got from helping other people even just to find their smile in the midst of something they felt they couldn't get out from under was enough to say that today I did good.
And take it day by day.
It probably does, but not in the way you might expect - takes you out of despair, but not out of the burnout.
I keep this cartoon in my bookmarks, because it says it better.
How good it is depends on a person and their ability to understand help as opposed to owning other peoples problems. It can be easy to get sucked into all that and make things worse.
Assuming all that is reasonable, I find helping others energizing. And it exercises skills that may be getting dull or increasingly hard to relate to.
FWIW
Do you consider this to be a good thing? Doing the same now, and wondering if it’s okay.