How to Offer and Accept Help in 6 Thoughtful Steps
Reaching out to help each other (Image courtesy of worldofmiri.com)
When is help helpful, and importantly, when is it harmful?
What does decent help look like?
I used to think helping someone meant stepping in with the goal of easing their life for them by helping with their responsibilities, lessening their burdens, or taking on tasks for them.
However, I have grown doubtful of this concept. Is this really ‘help’ or is this interference? Is this ‘taking away their lessons and their learnings? Is this fostering dependence or even a form of co-dependence where I feel needed and they need me? Is this a healthy form of help? And if not, what is help? How do I define help? What does decent help look like?
The intention behind helping someone
Let’s look at the goal of help. What do I want to achieve? Do I want to achieve feeling better about myself? Do I help because I feel I’ve hurt this person before and I want to ‘make up for it’? Do I help because I feel I’m not good enough and I need to forge self-esteem by providing help? Do I genuinely want to be of service? I need to honestly assess the intention behind the offer to help on my side.
Next, let’s look at the intention behind the one receiving help. There are different levels of help.
Helping our children
Children or any persons I am responsible for fall into a specific category. Sometimes, human beings are not capable of performing certain tasks. A little baby can’t dress yet or somebody, an adult or an older child, might require help with being fed or bathed.
Raising a child is a fine dance, and balance is required when teaching them how to become more independent. They need help and guidance, but I also need to let them explore so they learn how to navigate life. So, ideally, I would at first do everything for them, but then, step by step, move into the background and later take on a coaching role. I believe in guiding children toward independence and the ability to manage their lives. This includes teaching them about emotional resilience, empathy, conflict, debate, boundaries, courage, their own needs and how to express these, but also when they hurt someone else’s needs and boundaries. I suppose this a long continuous process which involves a lot of ‘letting go’ and ‘stepping back’ on my side, something I struggle with.
The other day, our son felt hurt by the actions of one of his best friends. The ‘old me’ wanted to jump in, take over, and call the other boys’ mum to smooth out the wrinkles. However, I stopped myself. Instead, our son, my husband and I sat down together, walked through the emotions and outlined what form of reaction we’d consider best. In the end, our son was brave enough to call his friend to voice his feelings. His friend apologized and the friendship moved to a new level of trust. This would not have been possible if I’d allowed my ‘old me’ to take the reins.
Helping friends or partners
But what about people capable of fulfilling their own tasks, like a partner or a friend? How can this play out? What if I step in and take over without asking or without them giving permission? I am an empath so I can sense neediness or when there is a silent call for ‘help’. However, I don’t always know what kind of help this might be. What form of help do I offer in such a case without over-stepping any boundaries? How do I react? Do I call, do I text? Do I pay them a visit? What if the help I’m trying to offer is not what they require at that moment? What if they cannot voice yet what they need? What if they simply require space? What if my actions make the situation worse, unintentionally, because I act as a trigger or force myself into their space? When we are in a vulnerable position, feelings and triggers can amplify. At least this is true for me. When I am in a vulnerable space, I feel everything 1000 fold. So, I might want to be of genuine help but it is not received this way.
Can help go wrong?
When I look at the relationships between the helper and the ‘helpee’, more questions come up. What if I foster a pattern of victimhood in the other person by offering my help because I deprive them of stepping up for themselves? What if I take away their responsibility for their own life by imposing myself? What if this leads to a loss of power on their side and subsequently to a loss of life force?
What role does communication play when helping?
What if someone is not capable of communicating what they need and when they need it? I, for sure, didn’t learn how to communicate my own needs until recently. I chose to remain silent and put my own requirements last, often not even knowing what my own genuine needs were. This pattern caused me to lose myself and, ultimately, propelled me into a major health crisis. I am now putting extra emphasis toward teaching our children to speak their truth.
Recently, our teenage daughter and her two friends were going to watch a movie. I set them the task to pick one they liked which required them to be clear about what they wanted. After a long debate, our youngest son joined the girls suggesting a movie targeted at eight-year-old boys and the girls agreed. About fifteen minutes into the movie, I checked with the girls. First, none of them dared voice their dislike each looking to the others for confirmation. I asked them a second time stressing how vital it was to express their own wishes. After a long silence, our daughter mastered the courage to say she didn’t enjoy the movie which prompted the other girls to follow her lead allowing them to take back the reins and make a choice they actually liked.
How to offer and accept help in 6 thoughtful steps
So, looking at all these questions, I am wondering what would be the best way concerning help?
Shall I simply remain quiet? Shall I stop reaching out? Shall I stop helping?
I don’t think this is the answer. I think we need to keep reaching out to bridge the ‘perceived’ differences between us, because at the core, we are all human. We all crave love. In an ideal world we are capable of navigating these waters of our life’s journey by accepting that all of us end up in a vulnerable space. We all make mistakes. All of us feel shame, confusion, loss, pain, or fear. We all have those moments.
These days, I take the following steps:
Check my own intention first. Be honest. Am I the one who needs help because I’m projecting my neediness onto someone else? Is my intention pure and does it come from my heart?
Check the situation of the ‘helpee’ by tuning into my intuition. Am I promoting victimhood? Is there a power struggle going on in the background? Could my offer to help actually shift the situation into a higher place?
Then: Ask. Reach out: ‘What do you need? Is there anything I can do for you’? Stay clear of assumptions. I don’t know what would be best for the other person; I have to accept that.
Accept the discomfort if they don’t answer. I guess no response can mean a few things. Is this a form of boundary setting which I should not take personally? Does ‘no answer’ mean ‘no’? For me, it can be tricky sitting in a situation of discomfort when I am not getting a reply. I still need to learn to accept this discomfort and live with it. But what if ‘no answer’ is an even stronger cry for help? I’d say, in that case, ask again, without imposing. But how do we know the difference?
Have compassion toward ourselves and toward each other. Be understanding. Accept the space we are in and the space everyone else is in without reading too much into it. Accept the boundaries on both sides and that we might need to ‘re-learn’ this form of communication. At least, I know, I do.
Voice my own needs and feelings as part of creating better communication around help . How often have I reached out and said: ‘I feel terrible at the moment. Can I talk? Do you have time? Can you listen? Are you willing to listen?’ Not often enough.
How do you communicate around help? How do you offer effective help?
