You feel protective, want to rescue them
Within one meeting you've offered to take over their hardest task and to have a word with their boss.
Rule out first
They genuinely need help right now. You're their mentor or manager. A real crisis.
What could explain it
Dependent personality: They invite help and seem helpless, and over months you're doing more and they're doing less.
Learned helplessness: They've stopped trying and expect failure; your help doesn't change their effort.
Projective identification: The protectiveness feels urgent and not quite yours, as if you'd been handed their panic.
Codependency: The pull is yours: you feel this with many people, and you'd be a bit lost if they no longer needed you.
Grief (complicated, disenfranchised, anticipatory): They're mourning something real, and protectiveness is the fitting human response; it passes as they recover.
A next move
Hold back for a day and see what happens. They cope: you over-reached. They collapse or recruit someone else: dependence. You feel restless and useless: look at your own need to rescue.
If it’s you
What do I get out of rescuing them?