Don't forget you

If there is a problem that helpers have it is that oftentimes they forget themselves. They get so busy taking care of others that they go down the tubes. Part of it is the phenomenon that says if I am helping others deal with problems somehow that means I should be able to handle all of my stuff also. It's like when doctors think they can't get sick because they are . ..  doctors. And to be honest with you there is nothing worse than going into a setting with helpers, it might be nurses, or counselors, or social workers and they are fried, or angry or defeated. Sometimes the staff morale totally sucks. And sometimes they look at me like I'm the enemy. Who the hell am I coming into this organization and talking to them? They know the drill. Some of them have Ph.Ds like me or have been a helper for a gazillion years so they have "heard it all." Some of them will sit back on the chair almost defying me to help them. The thing that saves me is that I don't care. Now I don't mean that in the most negative sense. I mean it in the "I am not going to be attached to the possible outcomes of my presentation." If somebody wants to stay miserable they win. If somebody is finally tired of being miserable then maybe I can either give them a few new ideas, or remind them of ones they have misplaced, or maybe just take a little different stance on some old ideas. Let's face it. All of us can get sucked into being miserable. We're especially vulnerable when we've picked up some bad habits, which I will talk about in later posts, or when we are exhausted and we fall back to old ways of thinking, or maybe we have let the onslaught of misery around us wear us down.

Whatever the reason helpers must remember that being a helper is not a vaccine. We need to take care of ourselves. We need to ask for what we want. We need to stay aware of old habits creeping back in. Helping others is probably the highest form of human interaction. We can't do it if we don't help ourselves.