Are You Helping Them... Or Hurting Them?

This is something that’s taken me a long time to truly understand:

The way you help someone is just as important as the fact that you help them.

Read that again if you have to.

We often think of helping someone—or people—as this binary, black and white thing.

Where you’re either helping or you’re not.

But see, what is helping?

Is it offering advice? A pat on the back? Positive affirmations?

You know that feeling when your friend is crying their eyes out, and you don’t quite know what to say, but you sure would love it if they stopped crying?

Yeah, that’s kinda what I’m talking about.

‘Help’ is subjective and highly relative and nuanced.

And a lot of the ‘helping’ we think we’re doing is actually making it worse for the person we think we’re helping.

We’re burying them more in their pain.

We’re forcing them more into the role of being helpLESS. Of being “somebody who needs help.”

True help should be like comfortable clothing: you don’t even notice it.

It’s natural, organic, simple.

Not obvious, flashy, and demanding.

Do you see what I’m trying to say?

Have you ever been upset about something, and the last thing you wanted was ADVICE?

But that’s all it seemed anybody was able to offer? Because everybody was treating your pain like a problem to be solved?

That’s what I’m talking about.

A lot of the helping we think we’re doing is actually simply disempowering people even more.

You want to be there with somebody, not for somebody. There’s a big difference.

So, the next time you’re about to go and “be the helper,” I want you to consider this:

How are you helping them? Where are you standing in your mind when you go to help them?

If you’re busy being the helper, you force them into the role of being the one who needs help.