Helping By Any Other Name
Do I meet myself needy and broken seeking to help myself through the other?
Do I impose my helping solution on the other?
Do I meet the other heart to heart and wait for them to show me how to support their needs?
Asking for Help
I was creating a class on helping and service. My sister was telling a story about wanting to make me a special breakfast to mark the occasion of my visit. I jumped in and began to correct and control how she made breakfast. When I heard this story, it occurred to me how hard it was for me to let others help me. The vulnerability of receiving and opening my heart was too risky.
I began to realize how afraid I am to open my heart to receive help. I assume…
I’ll be met by someone who is incapable of responding.
I’ll be met by someone who responds out of obligation.
I’ll be met by a solution of help that doesn’t help at all but adds to my pain.
I often meet true offers for help by trying to manage my vulnerability. I discovered how I can feel help-less without help. I am unable to support myself in some way and unable to let someone in to support me. Yet, I am a healer by calling. How can I help if I can’t receive help myself? The ability to help is born from the ability to ask for and receive help. It is offered from a position of humility.
Helping is an Orientation
Me<—Other as Mirror
All of us have found that our personal relationships, our family and coworkers provide valuable mirrors to see our own unresolved and unmet emotional needs. We project our unresolved issues on to them. Therefore, it is easy to help and comfort myself in the body of [projection onto] another person. It is important to do your own emotional work and find a network of trusted support where you can be vulnerable and receive help. In this help orientation, I don’t see the person who has a need, but my own needs. I seek to help myself. Do I help this person?
Me—>Other as Object
So often we rush in to meet the perceived needs of the other. I know what is best of this person in terms of support and help. Often, it is easy to discount what the other may need as misconceived. This orientation treats the other as object to be served. I serve them with power-over them. Do I see or help this person?
Me<—>You Heart Felt Connection
In this orientation, support and help is grounded in presence. I am present to myself as a soul connected to my heart. I wait for you to connect with your heart in your own time, in your own space. I wait for you to feel safe to be vulnerable. I wait for you to know what you need. I wait to meet you there. It is from this place that I know how to support, how to help.
How to Help
Open your heart. Set aside the ego and the mind. Feel yourself grounded in the present.
Sit with the other in this open and centered heart until your feel a connection to them. This creates an energetic space of support.
Wait for them to be safe enough to understand what they need and to feel vulnerable enough to ask for the support that will meet that need.
Some need you to BE there and no action beyond sitting in presence is required..
Respond to their request for support with a heart filled with compassion and service.
As a helper and a healer, I need to attend to my own personal work toward wholeness and expanding my awareness. We are committed to healing ourselves and opening our own awareness that we may meet you where you need support on the journey.
Resources
How Can I Help. By Ram Dass and Paul Gorman
Helping: How to Offer, Give and Receive Help. By Edgar Schein
21 Ways to Help A Fellow Human Being Today
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