So, I Hear You Want to Help People – Ch. 10

I think this is a good time to go over the meaning behind this journal. As a matter of fact, now is a good time to take a break from the questions and go over the purpose of this so-called action plan.

So, you say you want to help people.
Is that right?
I think this is great.

But my next question is why?

What is your drive or your reason to reach out and help others?
Where does this come from? How did this begin?

My attempt to offer help to create a strategy and a plan of attack is based on the teaching of others. I am someone with experience. As such, I am writing this to you on a person-to-person level.
This is not to say that I am right or that my way is the only way to be helpful.
However, there is evidence that shows action plans are a great tool to have in your tool box.
It has been discussed and shown that Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is not only useful but successful when facing the hurdles of transformational change.

Whether my aim is clear or my examples translate well enough, or whether my words reach you with a level of understanding, either way, my aim is to offer a means to be helpful.
Anyone can do this. Anyone can help others and anyone can build an action plan or, in this case, anyone can help create a W.R.A.P.

My question remains.
You say you want to help other people.
Why?

I cannot answer this for you. I cannot say that your reasons are good or bad. Even if I could, no one has the right to say whether your purpose is right or wrong for you.
But, I can tell you that the mental health world is not overflowing with financial success or that you will make a dollar and a cent in this business.
But money aside, what else does helping people do for you?
If this has nothing to do with a career and if you only want to help, then why?

I cannot answer this for anyone else. However, as a person who understands loneliness, or as someone who was bullied, or as a person who lives with medicated resistant depression, and social and general anxiety disorders, not to mention that I am someone who was labeled and listed as a so-called statistic, and along with other disorders that do not need to be mentioned, I can say that I have my reasons as to why I choose to help others.

I never had someone defend me before. I never had someone to advocate for me, or someone who cared enough to listen to me.
By the way –
There are two types of listeners in this world. There are people who listen to respond and people who listen to hear what you have to say.

Which person are you?
Your answer to this is important and you need to be honest if you want to be helpful.

I sat in classrooms with other hopefuls who lived a tough life and somehow, they came through on the other side. However, their talks were long diatribes about “their” life and what “they” went through.
I remember listening to their stories of abuse and neglect. I listened to them cry or talk about their passion to help others; yet the only person they talked about was them.
Not the people they wanted to help.

I remember the disapproval from the classroom when I offered the notion that, yes, I understood their life was tough, but this aim to help other people cannot be about them.
This has nothing to do with them or their life or how they overcame the unthinkable.
While admittedly, there is something inspirational about the fact that people can and will improve, so long as they work to live and improve; still, there is this ongoing dilemma I see when people look to help others in need.
Stop talking about you. . .

One lesson we need to learn is someone else’s pain has nothing to do with us or how we learned to overcome our own pain.
No one will ever know what pain feels like to me. No one will ever understand what I see from my perspective and no one will ever experience smell, vision, sound, or touch from any of my senses.

I remember going through what seemed to be the worst of times. I was angry and alone. I was resentful and, in all fairness, I was looking for an excuse to either lose my life or go down in a blaze of glory — or at least so it seemed.
I remember sitting in a group session with a therapist who was leading the other member. And yes, I went off. I let it go.
I ranted and raved. In the end, the therapist looked at me with that annoying “therapist” look and said to me, “Ben, you complain that you have no shoes. But what about the man with no feet?”

This was a mistake on the therapist’s part.

I felt the rage boil over in my body and with all the rage of the devil himself, I screamed back, “Fuck the guy with no feet. He don’t need shoes. . .  What the hell does he got to do with me?
I offer this with the intended poor grammar and with the hope to somehow explain the sound of my New York accent and, as well, I offer this to show my contempt and disgust with life as I saw it.

I look back at who I was or how I spoke to people and with a semi-smile and shaking my head, I laugh and think about the person I was. No, I was not an easy person to help.
And no, there were not a lot of people who were willing to help me.

Maybe this is why I decided that I wanted to help people. Maybe I know what its like to sit in a hospital, misunderstood, and meanwhile, some doctor comes in with a stethoscope around his neck and wearing a white lab coat and holding a clipboard in his hand.
He spoke calmly but with an absence of understanding. He asked questions, but to me, I wondered if this doctor knew what it was like to want to die or to be absent of pain.

I remember thinking, “this is who they send to help me?”
Really?

Maybe I decided to help because I needed to redeem myself. Maybe I chose to help others because I was told, “You have to give it away to keep it,” and maybe this is my way of giving what I have away.
But maybe at the end of the day, I want to remove myself from the burdens of shame. Maybe this is a way for me to pay for my sins or answer for the crimes I once committed.
Maybe helping others is my way of answering for the wrongs that could never be make right.

At the same time, this all subjective, and yes, this is all according to me.
But this is not about me.
Not at all.
However, I can say that there is nothing like seeing someone who wanted to die come through to another side, and more than wanting to live, I have to tell you there is no reward better than hearing someone say, I used to want to die all the time.
But not anymore.

The best practice to help someone is to listen.
You do not have to answer. You do not have to give the best-foot-forward suggestions or stuff a group of positive affirmations down someone’s throat.

Helping someone is not about saying the right thing.
Helping someone is about listening and allowing them to come to their own realization.

The heart can be in the best place, but please, and take this from someone who has not only called suicide prevention hotlines, but as a person who has answered phone calls like this as a specialist—we have to learn to listen. We cannot “fix” someone else and when someone opens up, then we have to listen and encourage them to speak more.

I never wanted to talk to people about my problems. I never liked when people would tell me, “Oh. But you’re so strong,” or “look at what you’ve gone through!”

I never liked hearing compliments when I was feeling sad or down on myself because, to me, this was too painful. More accurately, this was like alcohol on an open wound.
Purity stings. Get it?
Always looking for the right thing to say does not prove that you are listening.
And love from other people stings too, especially when you don’t have it in you to love yourself.

This is when we need to practice motivational interviewing which is something we will discuss in another entry.

But let’s get back to the question –
Why do you want to help people?

Is this pure?
Is this so people will like you?
Is this your way of receiving attention or is this something you can use to buy acceptance or buy a friend?
Believe it or not, these are all honest, fair, and common questions.

I can say that we need to be absent of ego.
But, ego likes to be noticed. Ego loves compliments and ego loves attention and to be needed and wanted and to be seen and to be invited and included and important to someone.

This is not helping others.
This is helping yourself at the expense of other people.
This is not charitable.
No, this is a trade or an exchange.
I give you this.
You give me that . . .
This is when we commercialize or sensationalize what we do for others—and we do this to be stroked or to be noticed or to be wanted or liked or loved, or as a means to be included with someone (especially when we think we are alone) this is how we touch the reward system in our brain.

I admit to the times when I allowed my ego to be involved. I admit to acting inappropriately or to being so self-absorbed that my help was about me – and not the person whom I was supposed to be helping.

This can be deadly.
Did you know that?
You have to remember that people are on the edge and thus, the self-centered need to be validated or touched or acknowledged can backfire, and ultimately, this can be deadly to someone who just wanted you to listen to them.

I have stepped away from some of my activities to become better as a person. Not to mention my ego needed to be shot down a few pegs and thus, I needed to get off from my high-horse—so that I could walk awhile and remember where I came from.

So, why do you look to help other people?
What does this do for you?

The best feeling I ever had was when I was creating programs and never noticed the accolades or the cheers.
The worst time I had is when I forgot my purpose and went back to the ideas of ego-based thrills and thinking that, somehow, this was about me.

I want to help people.
I want to honor my passion and achieve my goal.
Someday, I want to sit down in a chair at my own facility and be thankful for all the poor lessons that I was taught.
I want to thank all of my bad teachers because they are the ones who made me better—not worse.

So, you say you want to help people.
Good.
Now go out and find your reason WHY?