THE HEART OF THE HELPER’S DILEMMA
Being a helper is harder than it looks. Helping involves the ability to calm and empower people when they are in distress, and to focus their attention so that they can engage in the change process and fully participate in life itself. Being prepared for this work is much more complex than the usual advice to “pay attention” or “just relax”.
Generally speaking, most students and laypeople do not regard their personal thoughts and feelings as a significant part of their professional work. Critical thinking skills come from the nervous system in the forms of cognition, emotion, and behavior. The data gathered from the outside world and other people is processed and synthesized within the mind and body. As a result, the health of each helper very much matters to the quality of care they provide.
What if people in helping roles began to see themselves not just as service providers, but as therapeutic agents for the humans with whom they closely interact?
When helping professionals inevitably interface with the minds of others, they are also confronted by their own tightly-held beliefs. This can sometimes create friction and cause conflicts - also known as transference reactions - that can disrupt the helping process. Although many helping professionals naturally possess exceptional “people skills”, and empathy and psychological flexibility are seen as important pre-requisites to helping work, transference makes it hard to solve interpersonal conflicts without external support. Unfortunately, there are very few supports available to develop or practice these advanced skills.
At the heart is the dilemma is how to manage one’s own health needs in the midst of being needed. It requires exquisite attention to the other person and one’s own safeguarding all at once. It calls for courage to be where there is suffering, pain, despondency, and powerlessness. It involves being comfortable with discomfort - one’s own and other people’s. And it requires a foundational base of reliable skills so that even when things go sideways, there is always a way to return to solid ground.
Helping work requires a sense of personal vulnerability that goes way beyond the job description of the average technician or tradesperson. Our helpers deserve access to the psychological skills that will help promote and protect their mental health.
HELPING GREAT PEOPLE GROW
If you are a helper and you’re ready to build a better base for the work that you do, reach out for a no-cost 20-minute consultation to see how we can work together.