Helping A Friend The Best Way We Can
December 22, 2007 | In Connecting With Others |
Table of contents for Friends
Has anyone ever said something so profound to you it made you stop and think for a moment?
Photo by joguldi
Years ago, before I met my husband, I was involved in a relationship that from the outside - apparently - was obvious was not the one for me. One day, I was talking about us and how others judged the relationship, when the woman I was speaking with said something very wise. She said, “No one understands the relationship like the ones who are in it.”
Although it turned out that others were right, he was not the one for me, they didn’t know the exact reasons why. It wasn’t as simple as he didn’t make me happy; there were times he did. I wouldn’t be the person I am today if I hadn’t gotten a lot from that relationship. Since then, I have been reminded of these words on multiple occasions. And not just in romantic relationships either, although these can be the most complex. Just as others didn’t understand my relationship, I can’t completely understand theirs either. Even with my closest friends I don’t know all that’s going on. They can tell me a lot, but hearing is not the same as being in their skin.
Knowing How To Support, Not Rescue
For those of us who find it easy to empathize with others and want to reach out to everyone in pain, this lesson is a difficult one to learn. We often feel the need to help in any way we can and feel we are not being a good friend if we don’t.
Since I’m a woman, I’ve read lots of women’s magazines, many of them full of articles on how to maintain emotional closeness without getting lost in the other person’s feelings. I come away feeling like I’ve learned something, but then when a friend is having a crisis, I forget all these words as I rush to help. But really, these articles do have the right idea - we won’t be doing us, or the other person, any good if we simply rush in to fix things. Instead, we have to find that balance between lending support and rescuing.
It Can Be Done - But We Need To Know Our Strengths
Although it’s not as easy as it sounds, there are people who have figured out how to do this: Oprah Winfrey and Jimmy Carter come to mind. Do they have some extraordinary power the rest of us don’t have? I don’t believe they do. I believe they have mastered the art of looking at any situation and knowing the best way for them to lend assistance. Not the best way for you or I perhaps, but what works with their strengths. And if they can do it, so can we.
My strengths are in listening, offering a different perspective, and being honest without being tactless. Maybe your strengths are finding humor in any situation, or knowing how to give great shoulder rubs. Maybe you simply have an extensive movie or video game collection that is great for a distraction. Whatever your strengths are, you can use them to offer support, rather than rescue when a friend is distressed. That friend may be currently having the worst day of their life, or they may be just letting off a little steam. No one really knows exactly how we feel, and we can’t know exactly how they feel. Therefore, we are at our best, for both them and us, when we remember that “no one knows the relationship like the ones who are in it” and do our best to simply be there without judging. In the end, isn’t that what we would want if it was the other way around?
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Supporting without rescuing is so important. Especially to anyone who wants to be an activist. There is always more we could do - if only we weren’t limited, vulnerable and fragile human beings.
How do we know the difference? I think it is by focussing on what we can do joyously. Rescuers do what they don’t want to do.
A thought uttered by a Buddhist monk that a friend of mine heard: if someone is going to criticise you, and you beat them to it, I ask you: Where is your compassion?
Evan,
Thanks for stopping by!
I agree that we are limited, vulnerable, and fragile and therefore supporting without rescuing is difficult.
As I mentioned in the post, I am a rescuer myself. What I’ve realized for me, and probably for a lot of other rescuers, is that we don’t want to prop people up, but we end up doing so anyway. I’ve learned that for me, the desire to feel needed and validated as a good friend, wife, daughter, etc., has become a subconscious weight that outweighs my conscious desire to be supportive without rescuing.
Over the past year, I’ve become a lot more aware of these subconscious beliefs, which are usually irrational and at odds with being a whole person. Once I’m aware of them, then more often I’m able to act consciously in the direction that helps, rather than the direction that hinders.
I like your comment “by focusing on what we can do joyously.” That gives me a great mental picture of me with a smile, rather than a grimace. In other words, of doing what I love and am best at (supporting), rather than what makes me feel bad and I always seem to get wrong (rescuing and propping someone else up.) And that me in the mental picture, as the Buddhist monk said, has compassion.
I do have compassion, the skill is learning how to overcome the fear or rejection and doing it wrong and access that compassion.