Thursday, September 11, 2008
When are we too emotionally involved to help someone we really care about?
It's a good question to ask in my view, for two reasons; from a practitioner perspective helping people change and from a personal perspective; dealing with my own family and friends and loved ones.
We have a saying in NLP when we are considering our roles as "helpers" (people with a bunch of skills and abilities that can help people) which is to "get hired". It is metaphorical of course and therefore doesn't always mean you need to get paid, but it does mean that there needs to be some degree of the person having asked for your help, or a contract you have with them that you will play the helping role for them, or of course a formal arrangement like coming to see someone like me as a paying client.
When I first did my practitioner training I was so enthusiastic having left this training with all these life-changing skills and wanting to take them out into the world as soon as possible. I tried to do a lot of "helping" without actually "getting hired"! I was going around offering my skills left right and centre and seeing opportunities to help everywhere and anywhere I went. Was is effective? No! Seeing as at that time no one had actually asked me for my good ideas and help. I learnt a valuable lesson back then - wait until you get hired and have a clear understanding of boundaries between your professional and personal life. A balance I feel I practise relatively well these days.
So, how easy is it for most of us to blur those boundaries and automatically play a helping role to someone in our lives? And I am not just talking about those of us that work in the health system - it happens to us all. Someone we love is having an issue, a problem, is upset, confused, depressed, worried. It is very easy because we care about and love that person, to jump in and try and "fix" their problem for them - to take their pain away and make it all better again. The questions are:
How good is it for our personal well-being?
We have a saying in NLP when we are considering our roles as "helpers" (people with a bunch of skills and abilities that can help people) which is to "get hired". It is metaphorical of course and therefore doesn't always mean you need to get paid, but it does mean that there needs to be some degree of the person having asked for your help, or a contract you have with them that you will play the helping role for them, or of course a formal arrangement like coming to see someone like me as a paying client.
When I first did my practitioner training I was so enthusiastic having left this training with all these life-changing skills and wanting to take them out into the world as soon as possible. I tried to do a lot of "helping" without actually "getting hired"! I was going around offering my skills left right and centre and seeing opportunities to help everywhere and anywhere I went. Was is effective? No! Seeing as at that time no one had actually asked me for my good ideas and help. I learnt a valuable lesson back then - wait until you get hired and have a clear understanding of boundaries between your professional and personal life. A balance I feel I practise relatively well these days.
So, how easy is it for most of us to blur those boundaries and automatically play a helping role to someone in our lives? And I am not just talking about those of us that work in the health system - it happens to us all. Someone we love is having an issue, a problem, is upset, confused, depressed, worried. It is very easy because we care about and love that person, to jump in and try and "fix" their problem for them - to take their pain away and make it all better again. The questions are:
How good is it for our personal well-being?
And how empowering is it actually for them?
Let me give you a personal example. My mother, whom I obviously care about deeply and love with all my heart and always will. She is also the one person on this planet who can initiate an emotion in me that I don't feel very often - frustration! Way back when I was lost teenager and attempting to forge my path in life I decided to study A-level psychology when I left school - having absolutely no idea what it was - it just seemed like an obvious choice when I had lived with my mum's depression for a number of years - feeling helpless and ill-equipped to deal with it and her. My mum got really good at doing her depressive episodes when my grandmother (her mum) died and then even better at it when she divorced my father. By the time I was studying psychology at University, she was still a huge worry to me and I was still desperately trying to understand the human mind and find some answers for her. I know now that she was my main motivating factor back then, something which we can joke about now.
Mostly these days she does OK - she has been able to reach a level of satisfaction with her life most of the time and has developed a more well-rounded lifestyle. I wouldn't say she was happy - far from it - she is still very good at doing depressive thoughts and feelings. Most of the time she's OK I think, I hope. Or up until recently when she has got herself really depressed again - a result of some current circumstances in her life which are not entirely satisfactory to her. I talk to my mum (who is in England) often, 2 or 3 times a week sometimes, and we had a conversation recently which upset me so.
You may be surprised to read this - that a professional therapist like myself (a) still gets upset about things and (b) has a depressed mother. To me it is part of being a human-being and part of what I am going to explain next. We are also always learning in life and will continue to do so:
Problem Ownership & "Getting Hired"
The reason I think I was able to get upset when we were talking the other day when she was describing her depressed feelings to me, was that I immediately wanted to jump in and "fix" her problems for her - desperately I did. I felt frustrated that I can help so many people successfully every week, and I can't even help my own flesh and blood! I was taking on her feelings and feeling them, feeling her pain, and wanting to fix it all for her. I was thinking "why is this woman so bloody stubborn? Why can't she just see things the way I see them?!" The result - I got emotional, she got emotional, and I hung up the phone with a feeling that if my supervisor had been a witness to that conversation, she would wanted to give me a stern word! The real problem was, that I momentarily got confused about problem ownership. Something which I am teaching to more and more of my clients these days, especially couples. In a nutshell, understanding problem ownership is about asking - in this given moment, who is it that is not feeling OK? If it is me, effectively, I own that problem. That is a piece of jargon by the way. It doesn't mean it's my fault, or I am to blame, or even that the other person needn't change, it simply means that if I am looking through my window of life and not feeling OK a that given moment, it is me who owns that problem.
If it is the other person in my life who is not OK in that given moment, effectively they own that problem. It doesn't mean it needn't change, or even that it's their fault, or my fault or that I don't need to do anything, it just means that they can take ownership of that problem and stand up and say - "I own a problem right now - it is me who is not feeling OK".
The key difference in understanding this distinction is knowing which communication skills to use at that time. This will make all the difference. If I own a problem about something, I can use my assertiveness and problem solving skills to do something about it. That might be communicating it to someone who is involved, or choosing to solve it myself, or maybe if necessary engage in some useful conflict resolution skills.
If the other person owns that problem - I can help by using my helping skills. This could include good listening skills, and generally offering to help them solve their OWN problem. It means I may just listen in a constructive way, or offer suggestions.
If I use my helping skills in this way - I need to know of course that they are welcome at that given moment. Here is where "get hired" comes into it. If my mum phones me from England to talk about a problem, it is a fairly safe assumption that she wants my help in some way, and I can assume for that point in time, I have been "hired" to offer help.
If I phone her and start offering all my good ideas about how she needs to change her life and solve her problems - it is high risk - and anything I may say will probably not be heard if she doesn't want to hear it. So, not very empowering for either of us and a waste of time and energy. There really is little point trying to help if you are not "hired".
What I actually did in this particular conversation however, was take her problem and bring it over to myself and make it MY problem - and effectively I ended up owning her problem for her. And then I tried to fix it! And then I got frustrated that I couldn't fix it! I wonder why - where is she in all of this while I busy myself with hiring myself to fix her problem? It's hardly helping her practise her own problem solving skills is it?!
It is an easy trap for us to fall into when we love someone and care about their well-being and future. The fact is, it felt terrible for me, and probably not that pleasant for her either.
I realised later that probably all she needed at that time was someone to listen sympathetically, and help her know that someone understands where she's coming from. If I had reminded myself of good problem ownership boundaries at that time, I think I would have hung up the phone and felt OK about our conversation. It was only much later on when I acknowledged how bad I was feeling that I realised what had happened and had to remind myself that in actual fact, I did not need to own her problem. I felt OK at the time - I didn't own any problems of my own, and I could do the best I could to offer my helping skills to her to assist her in solving her own problem - and the reality is that my role stops there. No matter what kind of relationship it is whether personal or professional, it's all you can do. A harsh reality sometimes and true.
The difficulty is the emotional side. It's hard when you are so emotionally involved with someone to stand back and take that objective perspective. We all think sometimes we know best for someone else and sometimes when we take this role of the helper without "getting hired" it simply puts pressure on the relationship and the boundaries become blurred. It is up to us to decide in any relationship, whether we WANT to play the role of the "helper" within that relationship, or whether it is more appropriate for someone else to play that role in that person's life.
Our Loved Ones
They are usually the ones we want to help the most - because we care about them the most. Sometimes this innate need we have creates pressure on ourselves that need not be there. I was mentoring an NLP practitioner recently and in our session she was describing an issue she'd faced recently. Her child had had a minor accident and was in pain. This practitioner wanted to use her NLP skills to help her child manage the pain, and when attempted to had what she described as a "block" - she wanted to help using her skills but couldn't find a way of doing so. And later she began to judge herself and gave herself a really hard time - something in the realm of "what's the point of having these skills if I can't even help my family?". The result? She felt bad and her child hadn't even noticed! He was too absorbed in his mother helping him feel relaxed and soothing him as mothers do to notice she wasn't using her fancy NLP skills!
I get a lot of women phoning me up wanting to make appointments for their husbands. I will always suggest that the husband calls me himself if he wants to come and see me. Often I don't hear from them at all (I don't wish to generalise gender stereotypes here - it is just a very common pattern). It is our want and need to seek help for those we care about - and to a certain extent believing that WE know what's best for them that can get us in to trouble. If that person's issues are creating a problem for us personally and our own well-being, effectively it is us that owns the problem and therefore our responsibility to seek help for our problem. This may of course involve making the decision to not share our lives with that person any more.
One thing I have learnt through my relationship with my mum over the years is to accept her the way she is and the choices she makes in her life. Yes, I have a lot of bright ideas about what's better for her, and being a professional therapist myself I can see quite clearly what her issues are and what a little professional help could do for her. I have learnt however, over time, that forcing these ideas on her has made her quite resistant to them overall. I feel helpless sometimes, and as I have written about, frustrated, that I cannot do more for her and her situation. Where my peace of mind comes from however is knowing that I can only offer so much; the way she lives is not really my responsibility and that ultimately she will make her own choices. All I can do is be a friend and offer support when "hired" to do so - and as I have learnt the hard way, listen and assist her to find solutions for her own problems. It is out of love for her and myself that I can have peace of mind with that now. I hope you can find that peace in your relationships too.
NB: The Problem Ownership Model comes from a communication skills training - Transforming Communication - which Charlotte is a certified instructor of. To find out more about these courses go to http://www.charlottehinksman.com/
Let me give you a personal example. My mother, whom I obviously care about deeply and love with all my heart and always will. She is also the one person on this planet who can initiate an emotion in me that I don't feel very often - frustration! Way back when I was lost teenager and attempting to forge my path in life I decided to study A-level psychology when I left school - having absolutely no idea what it was - it just seemed like an obvious choice when I had lived with my mum's depression for a number of years - feeling helpless and ill-equipped to deal with it and her. My mum got really good at doing her depressive episodes when my grandmother (her mum) died and then even better at it when she divorced my father. By the time I was studying psychology at University, she was still a huge worry to me and I was still desperately trying to understand the human mind and find some answers for her. I know now that she was my main motivating factor back then, something which we can joke about now.
Mostly these days she does OK - she has been able to reach a level of satisfaction with her life most of the time and has developed a more well-rounded lifestyle. I wouldn't say she was happy - far from it - she is still very good at doing depressive thoughts and feelings. Most of the time she's OK I think, I hope. Or up until recently when she has got herself really depressed again - a result of some current circumstances in her life which are not entirely satisfactory to her. I talk to my mum (who is in England) often, 2 or 3 times a week sometimes, and we had a conversation recently which upset me so.
You may be surprised to read this - that a professional therapist like myself (a) still gets upset about things and (b) has a depressed mother. To me it is part of being a human-being and part of what I am going to explain next. We are also always learning in life and will continue to do so:
Problem Ownership & "Getting Hired"
The reason I think I was able to get upset when we were talking the other day when she was describing her depressed feelings to me, was that I immediately wanted to jump in and "fix" her problems for her - desperately I did. I felt frustrated that I can help so many people successfully every week, and I can't even help my own flesh and blood! I was taking on her feelings and feeling them, feeling her pain, and wanting to fix it all for her. I was thinking "why is this woman so bloody stubborn? Why can't she just see things the way I see them?!" The result - I got emotional, she got emotional, and I hung up the phone with a feeling that if my supervisor had been a witness to that conversation, she would wanted to give me a stern word! The real problem was, that I momentarily got confused about problem ownership. Something which I am teaching to more and more of my clients these days, especially couples. In a nutshell, understanding problem ownership is about asking - in this given moment, who is it that is not feeling OK? If it is me, effectively, I own that problem. That is a piece of jargon by the way. It doesn't mean it's my fault, or I am to blame, or even that the other person needn't change, it simply means that if I am looking through my window of life and not feeling OK a that given moment, it is me who owns that problem.
If it is the other person in my life who is not OK in that given moment, effectively they own that problem. It doesn't mean it needn't change, or even that it's their fault, or my fault or that I don't need to do anything, it just means that they can take ownership of that problem and stand up and say - "I own a problem right now - it is me who is not feeling OK".
The key difference in understanding this distinction is knowing which communication skills to use at that time. This will make all the difference. If I own a problem about something, I can use my assertiveness and problem solving skills to do something about it. That might be communicating it to someone who is involved, or choosing to solve it myself, or maybe if necessary engage in some useful conflict resolution skills.
If the other person owns that problem - I can help by using my helping skills. This could include good listening skills, and generally offering to help them solve their OWN problem. It means I may just listen in a constructive way, or offer suggestions.
If I use my helping skills in this way - I need to know of course that they are welcome at that given moment. Here is where "get hired" comes into it. If my mum phones me from England to talk about a problem, it is a fairly safe assumption that she wants my help in some way, and I can assume for that point in time, I have been "hired" to offer help.
If I phone her and start offering all my good ideas about how she needs to change her life and solve her problems - it is high risk - and anything I may say will probably not be heard if she doesn't want to hear it. So, not very empowering for either of us and a waste of time and energy. There really is little point trying to help if you are not "hired".
What I actually did in this particular conversation however, was take her problem and bring it over to myself and make it MY problem - and effectively I ended up owning her problem for her. And then I tried to fix it! And then I got frustrated that I couldn't fix it! I wonder why - where is she in all of this while I busy myself with hiring myself to fix her problem? It's hardly helping her practise her own problem solving skills is it?!
It is an easy trap for us to fall into when we love someone and care about their well-being and future. The fact is, it felt terrible for me, and probably not that pleasant for her either.
I realised later that probably all she needed at that time was someone to listen sympathetically, and help her know that someone understands where she's coming from. If I had reminded myself of good problem ownership boundaries at that time, I think I would have hung up the phone and felt OK about our conversation. It was only much later on when I acknowledged how bad I was feeling that I realised what had happened and had to remind myself that in actual fact, I did not need to own her problem. I felt OK at the time - I didn't own any problems of my own, and I could do the best I could to offer my helping skills to her to assist her in solving her own problem - and the reality is that my role stops there. No matter what kind of relationship it is whether personal or professional, it's all you can do. A harsh reality sometimes and true.
The difficulty is the emotional side. It's hard when you are so emotionally involved with someone to stand back and take that objective perspective. We all think sometimes we know best for someone else and sometimes when we take this role of the helper without "getting hired" it simply puts pressure on the relationship and the boundaries become blurred. It is up to us to decide in any relationship, whether we WANT to play the role of the "helper" within that relationship, or whether it is more appropriate for someone else to play that role in that person's life.
Our Loved Ones
They are usually the ones we want to help the most - because we care about them the most. Sometimes this innate need we have creates pressure on ourselves that need not be there. I was mentoring an NLP practitioner recently and in our session she was describing an issue she'd faced recently. Her child had had a minor accident and was in pain. This practitioner wanted to use her NLP skills to help her child manage the pain, and when attempted to had what she described as a "block" - she wanted to help using her skills but couldn't find a way of doing so. And later she began to judge herself and gave herself a really hard time - something in the realm of "what's the point of having these skills if I can't even help my family?". The result? She felt bad and her child hadn't even noticed! He was too absorbed in his mother helping him feel relaxed and soothing him as mothers do to notice she wasn't using her fancy NLP skills!
I get a lot of women phoning me up wanting to make appointments for their husbands. I will always suggest that the husband calls me himself if he wants to come and see me. Often I don't hear from them at all (I don't wish to generalise gender stereotypes here - it is just a very common pattern). It is our want and need to seek help for those we care about - and to a certain extent believing that WE know what's best for them that can get us in to trouble. If that person's issues are creating a problem for us personally and our own well-being, effectively it is us that owns the problem and therefore our responsibility to seek help for our problem. This may of course involve making the decision to not share our lives with that person any more.
One thing I have learnt through my relationship with my mum over the years is to accept her the way she is and the choices she makes in her life. Yes, I have a lot of bright ideas about what's better for her, and being a professional therapist myself I can see quite clearly what her issues are and what a little professional help could do for her. I have learnt however, over time, that forcing these ideas on her has made her quite resistant to them overall. I feel helpless sometimes, and as I have written about, frustrated, that I cannot do more for her and her situation. Where my peace of mind comes from however is knowing that I can only offer so much; the way she lives is not really my responsibility and that ultimately she will make her own choices. All I can do is be a friend and offer support when "hired" to do so - and as I have learnt the hard way, listen and assist her to find solutions for her own problems. It is out of love for her and myself that I can have peace of mind with that now. I hope you can find that peace in your relationships too.
NB: The Problem Ownership Model comes from a communication skills training - Transforming Communication - which Charlotte is a certified instructor of. To find out more about these courses go to http://www.charlottehinksman.com/
