The Dark Side of Helping

Put your own oxygen mask on first. You can't give from an empty cup. Put your life jacket on before helping somebody else with theirs. The expressions for self-care go on. For me, being aware of and fulfilling my own needs first is and will be a lifelong practice. We all have integrated pieces of ourselves that if we want to change, if we want to live a better life, will take focus, practice, patience, and years to recalibrate. One of mine is needs.

My mother is caring, sensitive, and she has a bleeding heart for those in pain or need. She finds stories of struggle and requests for help irresistible. It's admirable, yet she helps everyone outside of herself first, often to her own detriment. As a young girl, I remember wishing she would take care of herself more. I wanted to see her dress up, see her feel proud of her outfit, see her at ease when she went out into the world because she was well-fed, didn't have to pee, and possessed the calm of someone coming from a position of strength. Instead her time went to lending a listening ear to someone at church, to driving a community member to the dentist, to spending hours cooking for the family or shuttling us kids around to sports practices. As the years continued and her self-care habits didn't change, I got used to it. It still made me sad, but I stopped wishing for or encouraging change. I accepted the way things were.

Kids learn what they're taught, what they're modeled, and I am a great student. As an adult, I struggle to feed myself well. Although health and balance are core values for me, I have a tendency to band-aid my hunger with snacks, to wait until I'm starving to eat, to sometimes push past the hunger pangs until even they subside, an old, familiar signal to my body that it won't be fed so to stop asking. It's not that I don't like food, I do, or that I have body dysmorphia, I don't. I even like cooking and am proud of my tasty creations. It's simply a learned habit and what I'm used to. Like in childhood, when I do eat, it's a balanced, delicious, measured, home-cooked meal. It just doesn't happen consistently, and I am used to being hungry. Other things come first: work, service, listening to others.

I have learned to value the needs of others above my own. Theirs are important and mine can wait. It is all too natural for me to soothe another when asked and I'm exhausted than to say I need a nap and that I'll call them later. The simple statement, if made, would activate guilt, senses of betrayal, selfishness, abandonment, and a fear that if I didn't help, the other person might not be ok. I have already spent years countering this old lesson. In an effort to change my wiring and teach myself a new experience, I tentatively try the statement with the safest in my circle and pay attention to the response. They're not mad. They accept and genuinely care about my need. I can call them later. They will be ok. And later when I do call, they are ok. Sometimes someone else has helped, and sometimes they have gained something valuable in their solitude. I hold onto this. Now I am rested, my loved one is ok, and I am not a villain. I hold onto this too.

I consider the above "easy mode," if there is one. (Make no mistake, none of this is easy.) But now I wrestle with "hard mode." The most insidious threads are the ones that are entangled with good intentions, with hidden emotions or desires, with other new battles. These manifestations of need wear multiple disguises and take longer to undress. The other day I wanted to reach out to a friend to help them; I perceived them as struggling and I saw myself as someone that could help. As I questioned my motivation, I realized that my desire to help was not pure, it was not unencumbered. I wanted something. I wanted attention and love. I wanted to be distracted from the lack I perceived in my own life. How twisted! To offer help as a manipulation for meeting my own needs! Of course, it wasn't obvious; it was buried, hidden, disguised from even me, so I write this realization with compassion.

The good news is the body doesn't lie. The truth can always be found there. The disguises are old thought patterns, coping mechanisms, beliefs, sometimes a daydream, illusion of grandeur, or the meaning-making that we place atop our emotions. But if you want to know the truth, if you want clarity, if you want to be free, ask yourself what you feel. Ask yourself why. Observe and accept the answer as is. Be kind and respectful about it because it didn't come from nowhere or for no reason. If it's a difficult emotion, remember that it's temporary, and that reminder will get you through the worst part. On the other side, you will learn that you wanted to reach out not from a place of love or giving but from a place of wanting, grasping, and needing. Wanting attention, love, validation, to quell the fear, sadness, or doubt, to fill the emptiness. And there is your need, there, your answer.

Now you put your life jacket on. Say "Ok, I'm sad/fearful/angry" and then make a choice that honors you, a choice that respects your own humanity. Give yourself what you need. At this stage I often experience a death and a grieving. I go through the exercise: resist the temptation to seek external validation, identify what I need, move towards giving it to myself, and then there is a sadness, a letting go. I have to let go of an old salve, an old familiar belief and coping mechanism, and I have to rise to a new labor of self-love. Here's where I cry. I accept the pain, do my best to move through it, and then the part that alchemizes if I can rally for just one more step: I take the called-for action. I eat, sleep, exercise, or tell a friend what's bothering me. I ask for or give myself what I need.

To me, this is the work of life, perhaps the reason we are here. We all have a struggle and a call to change, a call to alchemize, and then a call to reach a hand backwards and help another through. What's yours? It's painful and it's hard, but it's worth it. I am a fraction more free than I was last week.