I keep getting a set of vocab words mixed up. Tips?

That’s a really good start then!
For me the magic sentence is - 助けてください! it got stack in my head watching a skit so that way I remember that 助ける is to help and 助かる is to be helped which helps (oops unintentional meta) with similar verb pairs.

You can find a lot of excellent info in The definitive Guide to WK’s Transitivity Pairs that was made by @whipmywillows who already answered you here in this thread :woman_facepalming: