Two questions:

1) When does helping someone become self-serving or controlling?

2) When does asking for help become making someone else responsible for your happiness?

In therapy

If a client becomes overly dependent or shows signs of transference (diverting their buried anger etc onto the person helping them), there are established guidelines to follow. Sometimes this means referring the client on, other times it means trying a different approach. This professional detachment and objectivity create the conditions that allow the client to work on his issue – all he has to do is attend (and do the homework).

The therapeutic/coaching relationship is essentially a business partnership and comes with empathy, objectivity and focus built-in. It has to because that’s what you pay for. It’s a safe environment and the therapist is separate from your real world.

The boundaries are clear.

In the real world

In the real world – our homes and offices – the boundaries are not so clear. The overlaps in roles, relationships and expectations can be confusing, messing with our personal identity and perhaps even harming the person we are helping… or seeking help from.

Here are three examples of help-related behaviours that commonly lead to relationship breakdowns or poor self-image.

Making all major decisions for your child: It feels like you are helping him, but long-term his self-worth and self-belief is at stake.  He is missing out on learning to think for himself, to correct mistakes and to take responsibility for the consequences of his decisions. He may be learning to cast blame instead. Interacting with him without harsh judgements or ultimatums will help him explore with support. Create boundaries that encourage responsibility and personal development.

Playing on an illness: Sometimes a call for help becomes a reliance on being labelled as an “illness” or “condition”. Almost as if you’ve given yourself permission to stay unwell, it becomes difficult or unappealing to leverage the help you receive. The mind/body connection means that it’s worth speaking to a doctor or therapist if you find this happening. This is a hard step to take but important because often, the person doesn’t recognise he is risking:

1. Mentally keeping himself in a weak, incapacitated condition. Recovery is slow and tedious and further complications may develop if there is a subconscious desire to stay ill – perhaps to hold someone’s attention or some other secondary gain.
2. A one-track record playing inside his own head, strengthening his belief that he won’t recover. He complains a lot and may become manipulative and bitter.
3. Isolating himself or the people he loves.

Fuelling a demon: He urgently needs to lose weight but guilt-trips her into late night trips to the store for him. She does it for a quiet life and because she loves him. He blames her for his continuing obesity. He’s asking for help (buying excess food) because it means he can offload responsibility for his poor health. She’s helping (buying excess food) because she’s afraid he’ll leave her. They are both making each other’s life a continuously stressful experience.

His fear of taking responsibility is greater than his desire to reach a healthy weight or to be respectful to her. Her fear of being alone allows her to accept his resentment and blame. They’ve both tapped into a need in each other that they are fulfilling in a way that harms.  In real life, at least one of these people needs to be able to see what they are doing. Recognising their own part in the problem allows the opportunity to at least start making small changes in their own behaviour.

Temporary crutches

When you break a leg, they give you a crutch to use to help support you while your leg mends. After a while, they tell you to ease off the crutch so that your weak leg can build its own strength.

This works in relationships too. Help is assistance is support. It’s not replacement.

1) If you’re doing the helping, remember you are a crutch. If the person you are helping uses your support all the time, their own ability to stand will weaken.

2) If you’re asking for help, remember it’s up to you to use the crutch in a way that helps you to get stronger in that area. Like all things on loan, if it’s treated with respect and returned, it’ll always be on hand if you need to borrow it again.

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image: http://www.sxc.hu/profile/Dippes
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I’m in Dubai where there is much construction taking place. The construction workers work hard all day long in 40 degree heat. At lunchtime, they lie in the shade to rest.

Looking out from my 17th floor balcony, I’m feeling quite content. The internet connection is stable, the room is comfortable, my work is all laid out on the desk and I’m just where I want to be.

As I look out, my attention is caught by a man lying in the shade. He is uniformed head-to-toe in blue like all the other construction workers and there is a shoe beside him. He has one leg stretched out. The other leg is missing. There is just a short, black stump where his right thigh should be.

I’m humbled of course. I’m also in awe of a man who does construction on high-rises with only one leg. How does he climb up and down? I wonder why the stump is thin and black. Is it an implant of some kind? I wonder what his life must be like. My mind weaves an intricate story about his misfortunes and in the background, I’m acutely aware of all my comforts.  I grow increasingly sad at the unfairness of it all.

As I’m about to turn, the man moves. Miraculously, his missing leg appears!! He had been lying with his right leg bent up at the knee. The black “stump” was his sock covered foot. The blue of his trousers had blended so perfectly with the blue of his top and the bird’s-eye angle was such that I had not been able to see this. Now I also see that the one shoe beside him is wide enough to actually be two shoes.

My relief was immediate and I said “Thank you” even though I don’t know who I was thanking… God for not crippling him? Or the man for freeing me from my humbling guilt?

Strangely, there has been a string of events in the last few days where I have been surprised by the reality of something being different to what I had thought. It’s almost as if I am being gently prodded to go slower, be less hasty to put a label on an event, take my time with evaluation.

If I had turned away a second earlier, I’d have spent the day (days probably) pondering this man’s life, creating a story, looking for imagined turning points. Elements of this story would come back in the future to remind me of what I “saw” today.  Instead, I’m full of humility at my own ability to see and run away with things that are not there.

Taking things at face value is of course normal. I saw what I thought I saw – the story I created based on what I thought I saw was however quite remarkable.

Whose face do you see when you take things at face value? In the spirit of the Paradox of Reality, we don’t see things as they are, we see things as we are.