Why your “help” may not be helping.

Many of us are fixers, by nature or nurture, we often see someone struggling or in pain and we step in to help. (For clarity, in the current state of affairs, I am not talking about someone in pain by actual danger, physical brutality, etc. I am addressing mental states of pain from life happening.) A lot of us learned these behaviors by attempting to please our parents, teachers, and authority. It is a learned pattern of compliance though, not rooted in compassion and understanding to become better humans.

Unfortunately what you may think is helping may actually be counterproductive. Your help may enable the current situation, saying things like, “It’s okay, what you did was not that bad.” or “We know you didn’t mean it that way.” as examples of the attempt to protect the other person from blame, shame, and guilt. Or, your attempt may be to distract them from the situation at play, “Let’s have a night out and forget all this!” in hopes to override the pain by numbing it away.

Let me be clear, starving someone of feeling guilty about doing something wrong is absolutely the way to let it happen again, and again. Feeling guilt means you are not a complete a$$hat so FEEL that so you can learn from it. Shame has a lot of layers, and similarly must be felt and dealt with to grow. Numbing or freezing it out is not the answer even if it feels better momentarily it…