Previous Ask Bear columns for The Butter can be found here. If you have a question for Bear, The Butter’s advice columnist, send it along to asking.bear@gmail.com.
Dear Bear,
I help too much. I can’t stop. It crops up in all kinds of ways, but the bottom line is that I am constantly giving too much help. Too much as in more than is wanted sometimes, too much as in more than I can afford (time or money or both) some other times. People feel like I don’t have confidence in them. Or sometimes they take advantage. Or sometimes I am supposed to listen and empathize with their feelings, but I don’t get why I would want to do that when I could be fixing it and then they wouldn’t have to have those feelings at all.
I do kind of get why I do it (or what my therapist says about why) but it’s all past stuff. So I’m not trying to be funny, this is actually awful and I don’t know what to do.
Please help?
***
Dear Brave Correspondent,
Man, writing an advice column is so illuminating. Anyhow.
I too am a helper, and I too have had all manner of trouble with this over the years. Also many good things, it must be said, but in general most of them have come as I have gotten older and figured out how to get a somewhat tighter rein on my horses. I’ll tell you what I have figured out, and perhaps some of it will be useful to you?
(Actually, that’s one of the things I have learned – when giving advice, frame it. “Here’s what I learned about this in school…” or “When we went through that, what worked for us was…” or “I’ve never had anything like that happen before, and I am not trained in this area, but my first instinct would be to…” I apply this rule especially to unsolicited advice on the internet but it’s always useful, because (I have learned) it seems more like sharing and less like directing. Which, listen: I am a New York Jew living in Canada with my British husband. Any help I can get sounding less directive, I will take.)
The first and most important thing I had to get on board with is also the one with which I struggle the most intensely: the idea that I am worth keeping around even if I am not actively making myself useful all the time. Without doing too much extra, my family situation as a young person was not a tiptoe through the tulips. I internalized the idea that I was way too awful to love, or even like. I compensated for that brutal reality by being as useful and as entertaining as I possibly could imagine to everyone, all the time. People tend to respond more warmly to the “entertaining” part (at least until the people who’ve known you for years eventually realize that they don’t really know you at all because you’ve been so busy being entertaining, but: that’s another column) than the helpful part, as you have quite correctly identified. And so some of your work here will be slowly working your way toward the idea that you’re actually a totally worthwhile and probably quite delightful human, despite messages you may have received from people purporting to know better.
(Related: the thing that happens to some of us where we get so good at reading other people’s emotional weather and tides that we figure out very, very quickly what they need. And then supply it, because HELPING. Feel free to sing along if anything sounds familiar.)
Now, about how to not help. I will tell you honestly that I have never had any luck at all trying to pretend that I am not feeling or wanting whatever I am feeling or wanting. The only way I can ever get past a “bad impulse” is to look at it, recognize it, spend a moment imagining it, and then choose elsewise. If I try to pretend that I am not silently planning to totally overhelp while also pretending it’s a spontaneous coincidence, I get nowhere. I have to imagine it, and indulge it for a minute or two in my head. Then I can take a deep breath and pull up my socks and try to imagine how a less-insecure, less-codependent person might behave, and do that. This process degrades when I’m tired or low on cope anyhow, but it works for me. Try it and tell me what you think.
Last, on listening and empathizing: I am so bad at this. I am so bad at this that it is my actual, non-euphemistic habit that if someone I love says they’re hungry I reflexively start listing every food in the house that they could choose from. (Apparently, you’re supposed to say “oh.” Or maybe “have a snack!”) on the one hand, I get it – some people just find it cathartic to complain. Some people need to talk a issue through in order to get their own problem-solving skills engaged. Those are all completely legitimate choices. I just always always forget them when I’m in the moment.
Eventually I developed a script, which I run in my head while someone explains their upsets. It helps me enormously, and it has three parts:
- Validate their emotions. “That sounds super hard,” “I would have screamed too!” “I don’t know how anyone could be expected to…”
- Give credit. “Really, I don’t think you could have explained it more clearly.” “Good for you for speaking up.” “I think you’re doing an amazing job considering all the factors.”
- Problem solve (but not too soon). At this point you say: “I have a few ideas about next steps. Let me know when you have the bandwidth/spoons/patience to hear them and I’ll share.”
Now, here’s the other thing, though. Don’t let people help-shame you too much. It’s good and appropriate to keep an eye on how much we actually do in the world of helping because, as above, it’s not entirely uncomplicated. But also remember that of all the personal challenges in the world, Brave Correspondent, wanting to help a lot is not the worst one. Being someone friends can count on when they’re locked out of the house or need some maddening computer glitch handled is lovely. The trick is to choose as friends people who want to help you, too. Everything is much nicer that way.
It doesn’t have to be a strict tit-for-tat arrangement. There will always be ebbs and flows in time and energy and money during a relationship of any kind – sometimes you’ll have more to spare, sometimes they will. But your friend will be the ones who will say “you can get the next one,” sometimes, too. They’re the ones who will put pants on at 3am in January and come collect you from a parking lot, figure out why your phone is doing that, listen while you think out loud, distract your racist great-aunt at a party so she doesn’t bother anyone, and on and on.
Notice in whose company the world feels bigger, more expansive, more optimistic, more alive. Notice when you feel met. Notice when you feel buoyed. Keep choosing those feeling, Brave Correspondent, because – not to be like that about it, but – you are totally worth it, and those assholes made you believe you weren’t don’t know dick about it.
Love and courage,
Bear
Tags: advice, ask bear, S Bear Bergman, the butter
“I am so bad at this that it is my actual, non-euphemistic habit that if someone I love says they’re hungry I reflexively start listing every food in the house that they could choose from.”
I laughed out loud at this. I love so many people who do the exact same thing. I think for any other case of listening and empathizing it would not be a good response, as you explain, but I find it so endearing when people do that that it’s hard to find it peevish. (To see an example of when “listing all the foods in the house” is not a good response, refer to the comments and deleted comments on Mallory’s fried egg piece…)
Yeah, my husband does that. Sometimes it’s helpful, if I’m hungry enough that I’m having trouble coming up with ideas. Being reminded that oh yeah, we have apples and string cheese around is useful. Other times I’ve crossed over into pure, unadulterated hangry and hearing the list just feeds the fire. I know we have crackers, dammit, bring them over here so I can insert them in my facehole I don’t care GRRRRRRRR
I’m trying to work on giving better indications of which situation is currently in place at any given time.
Hahaha yes, that is true: listing every food in the house when I am hungry is only acceptable if you are also willing to prepare and deliver that food to my waiting maw. Important distinction there.
Exactly! “Oh no, hang on a sec and I’ll make you a sandwich and bring it to you!” is the BEST possible answer.
Oh, shit. This is me. I had no idea. 🙁
Oh I want to clarify– I definitely don’t think listing every food in the house is a bad reaction! It’s pretty innocent and, as a lot of people seem to agree, endearing. I think that’s because food is not advice, and unsolicited food is much more fun to receive than unsolicited advice.
I would like “unsolicited food is much more fun to receive than unsolicited advice” on a t-shirt.
One of my most-loved friends also does this exact thing and I also find it IMPOSSIBLY endearing. Honestly just reading that line gave me a rush of joy and fondness and gratitude!
Yep, yep, yep. I come from a family of the aggressively overhelpful. We will push each other over to get the check at a restaurant. And then I go out in the world and I get a little miffed if people won’t physically hurt me so they can snatch the check from my hand.
I liked your advice to imagine your first impluse and then take a deep breath and choose to be a regular human that doesn’t need to pay to get her friends out to dinner with her. It is hard sometimes though.
My family is like this, too, and I totally identify with your comment about check-snatching. I find it kind of hard to accurately gauge the sort of…cultural expectations? of the people you’re with and then determine how much you need to tone down the behavior that works/would be expected in family situations. Imagining how different following my instincts would play out sounds like a good strategy, though!
One thing I’ve learned to do is to just, outright, ASK people if they are looking for someone to complain to or if they’d additional insight/help/etc. I try to clarify that I’m happy to be there for whatever they need, but I want to make sure I’m actually there for what they want, rather than doing the wrong thing. This sort of meta-communication tends to take people by surprise the first time I ask, but even in situations where communication breakdown is pretty severe generally, this has worked better than expected.
And then, if they actually want advice/concrete help, they’ve just had the chance to opt in to asking for it. And if they really just need someone to complain to, I try to reframe the situation to myself— what they need, the way that i can best help them, is to make their complaining experience as good as possible– get out as much frustration as possible, etc.
I am not always successful. But sometimes I can, at least, tuck away the advice I want to give at that moment for the future, at some other time, when maybe that person will be better able to hear it.
Also, I try to remember that I’m big on consent. And that doing for others when they haven’t asked for it, or have even asked for me to NOT do it, is treading on their consent, which I am Opposed To, and I’m more committed to that (intellectually, anyway) than being a helper.
Setting personal boundaries to avoid being used is more complicated for me, but mostly involves me trying to very carefully choose the people I let into my life.
Yes! I feel like my listening has improved 100% since I started saying “Are you looking for suggestions or do you just want to vent?” when someone complains about something to me.
That’s a really good idea, I will start it forthwith. I don’t understand why people come to me with their problems if they don’t want me to try to help them solve them – I never ‘just vent’ and i hate complaining for the sake of it, so it is totally alien to me.
For me, “venting” happens accidentally when I’m too mentally exhausted to rein in my voice and slow down my thoughts while thinking out loud. Sometimes, a situation is so dumb and frustrating that I can’t keep track of it all in my head, and I need to lay out all the frustrating parts in front of me just to see them so I can think about them. I’m also basically trying to communicate to the other person how bad the situation is, and sometimes you need to hear that you don’t deserve (for example) to be treated badly? So I’m trying to be constructive (I’m not complaining for the sake of it, it has a purpose), it’s just not going very well. Ranting is a sign of really bad stress, and I often don’t notice that I’m slipping into ranty voice.
If the other person starts to feed in even MORE stuff into my brain (by for example trying to tell me their idea for a solution), it feels like being derailed. I can’t remember what I was thinking. It’s like doing math while someone else is counting out loud at you. Or it’s like describing a math problem to someone to think it through, and they just answer immediately “I think the answer is 16”. You can’t think straight when they interrupt you like that, and even if they’re actually trying to be helpful, they don’t KNOW if they’re right. A lot of the time, other people’s spontaneous assumptions are wrong!
And even if they ARE right, YOU don’t know whether the answer is really 16 or not. You can’t just skip to writing “16” at the bottom, you still have to actually solve the problem to see that the answer holds up, which means you have to keep doing math (in a real life situation, you can’t blindly take a friend’s advice without being sure that that’s what you want, because you need to be responsible for your actions). If they get annoyed that you’re not using their wonderful solution when you’re still trying to talk through the problem, they’re being actively unhelpful, even if they’re completely right. They may not want to help you think through this problem, but then they need to say so.Trying to interrupt you to make you go faster just won’t work.
i think that’s a great way to put it – a lot of the time when I’m venting, I’m just trying to lay out all of the things that are frustrating me and work through how they’re related, but from someone who’s not used to being inside my head, it might not make sense that way.
Wow, that math analogy is extremely helpful. I’ve never thought about it like that before.
MrChouffe is very much like this, and I am a vent-er. After several quite spectacular fights rooted in the help/listen/vent triad, he has learned to take my venting as venting unless I specify otherwise, and I have learned that if he makes a single noise about dissatisfaction I need to jump in to help, because he doesn’t vent aloud.
YES. Yes, yes, yes. I ask regularly and get asked occasionally. The extra bonus of getting asked if you’d like someone to listen to you complain or offer suggestions/help is that you then have to actually think about what you want/need. I know personally when I’m in that mood where nothing is going right and I need to vent but also change and fix things it helps to be reminded to think about what would actually be helpful. And often it’s that I know what I need to do, it’s just that I need to vent about doing it, if any of that makes sense.
I am 110% behind meta-communication. It makes those kinds of interactions so much easier for me, and I find that sometimes it helps the other person feel better right away just to know that they can ask for exactly what they need/sometimes thinking through the process of what they want out of the interaction makes the whole thing nicer and more effective.
I had never thought of over-helping in the context of consent, though. That’s really interesting(/personally helpful to me!) and I like it a lot.
My best friend and I have become so committed to meta-communication, it’s ridiculous. We’ve both been going through some tough times where our emotional resources and needs can vary quite widely from day to day, so being able to just flat out say ‘I’m feeling fragile, let’s stick to discussing Christian Kane’s hair tonight’ or ‘I really need to talk through [heavy problem], are you in the right space to do that’ or ‘let’s leave the problem solving to the end, it’s vent time now’ has made navigating that so much easier.
Making it normal to check in with each other and talk about our needs and resources up front has meant that we’ve both been able to provide each other with a lot of support, without anyone burning out or feeling like a burden. I get a little evangelical because even just writing about the relationship makes me feel so warm and happy and grateful.
Wow, that sounds like such a wonderful dynamic. 🙂 I think it’s really great that you can provide that kind of mutual support for each other (as opposed to, say, you individually just having this kind of communication as a back-up strategy in your pocket, but not necessarily getting it turned back towards you). I imagine it would be really comfortable and comforting to know that the friend you’re talking to is really consciously and explicitly trying to give you exactly what you need, and that you can give them that, too. I know that for me knowing that I will be able to give back can really assuage the sort of discomfort/guilt I sometimes otherwise feel when a friend is helping me. Anyway, A+ to both of you. I hope your respective tough spots pass soon, but in the meantime it sounds really good that you have each other. (PS: Whatever else is going on in your conversation, I’m pretty sure 90% of interactions are improved by discussion of Christian Kane’s hair. :p)
Meta-communication is seriously THE BEST. It felt like I’d discovered a cheat code to life! I don’t have to painstakingly ~read between the lines~ or ~send the right signals~ when I can just FLIP TO THE ANSWER KEY.
The funniest part is that I started doing this because I thought I was objectively bad at communication (because good communicators are mindreaders!), so I still thought of meta-communication as a cop-out or training wheels. And then I started to read advice like Captain Awkward and stuff, and it turned out that this is actually what “good communication” means? But it’s easier!
Hmm, I think maybe meta-communication and a little mind-reading don’t have to be mutually exclusive. I really *like* all that reading-between-the-lines silliness; it’s like a sport to me (but like a fun, pickup-soccer-in-the-park sport, not something super competitive or high-stakes). But it seems to me that it’s totally reasonable to pick up on someone being, say, in a particular mood and still (a) check that you’re right, and (b) invite them to talk or ask for help if they want to. So, like, you can practice your subtext-clue-scouting to notice that Sandra is out of sorts, and then still ask her directly if she’d like to vent and/or be distracted and/or talk out a problem and think through solutions, instead of just guessing/butting in and deciding for her which you’ll do. I’m not sure if this is super coherent, but my point is mostly that I agree with you that meta-communication only enhances interactions, whether or not you also like to approach your friends’ needs in other ways, too. I definitely don’t think asking someone what they want is ever cheating, and I think asking in a way that makes them feel comfortable answering is its own skill, too!
I compensated for that brutal reality by being as useful and as entertaining as I possibly could imagine to everyone, all the time. People tend to respond more warmly to the “entertaining” part (at least until the people who’ve known you for years eventually realize that they don’t really know you at all because you’ve been so busy being entertaining, but: that’s another column).
Welp, that describes my life exactly…
I’m trying so hard lately to be less entertaining and it is hurting my soul because then HOW WILL PEOPLE LIKE ME but man I am tired of ending up with a whole bunch of people I like who like me and neither of us know each other at all and then I never bother calling after a while because why bother, I get more real interaction from watching a tv show, and that’s my own fault, and…
So yes. Trying.
“the idea that I am worth keeping around even if I am not actively making myself useful all the time.”
oh. Yes, I am familiar with this struggle. In fact a LOT of this is very familiar to me. Thank you.
At the risk of “feeding the over-helpful beast,” I had to learn that sometimes listening and sympathizing IS helping, simply put. My assessment of the problem before me is not always correct (the narcisism of it all). As another commenter said, sometimes you just gotta ask what the other person wants.
YES THIS. It ties back in to that ’emotional labour’ post. I think we as a society feel like emotional labour somehow doesn’t ‘count’ and that therefore the only way to help someone is to do a physical thing. But the thing I want the most from my intimates is to engage with me as I hash out my problems and vent and describe the world around me. And this also ties into that ‘how to have ideas’ post – except instead of an idea for a piece of writings it’s ‘a way to think about my own life’.
My very best friends are the ones like in that list, who will bring new perspectives, or challenge me, or help me take a thought and run with it. It’s the most helpful thing because I can’t do those things by myself, and I can’t pay someone to do them for me. They are things only friendship brings, and that is such a precious thing to me.
Also I remember reading a study (yes, that’s a good citation, isn’t it?) that said people like you better when they do favors for you! Cognitive dissonance something something (I must like her, since I shoveled that whole sidewalk!). Maybe helpful for pleaser-helpers.
I just love this!!! Someone recently pointed out to me that I do things so smoothly and effortlessly that I don’t get recognition for half of what I do because they don’t even realize that I’ve done it. I’m learning to be a bit more of a squeaky wheel, and lo! I’m getting not just admiration, but help!
Anyhow, a few of the things I wanted to comment on specifically.
A – is THAT why my brit ex-boss was constantly tying himself in verbal knots not to be “directive?” Simply because he was a Brit? Never considered that. Cool.
B – I am completely replacing “bandwidth” “capacity” (and my least favorite – “cycles”) with “spoons,” effective immediately.
C – that business at the end, about who lifts you up? You can do that at work, too. Not sure where you want to go with your career? Go work with the person who makes you feel energized. Magic.
Oh, and I had to add something – that bit about not bing worthy unless you’re being helpful/entertaining? Woah. In my case, it’s usually helpful or somehow achieving something. And just very very recently I’ve been able to separate “who I am” from “what I have achieved” and realized that “who I am” is pretty great. Somehow that thought has allowed me to lie down and read a book for an entire Sunday afternoon. Delicious! Anyhow, this is what Brene Brown calls the “hustle for worthiness” and I love that – sometimes I have to stop myself and say “Am I hustling here? Do I really need to?”
FYI, if you aren’t familiar, “spoons” is from this article: http://www.butyoudontlooksick.com/articles/writte… and some people with disabilities regard it as kind of appropriative for non-disabled people to talk about being out of spoons. When you are out of spoons, you literally can’t do anything else. It’s not like, “I’m out of spoons so I’m going for a run,” you know?
Wow – thank you. I really needed to read that today.
Not to pry, but I would love to hear more about how you’ve been separating your sense of self from a list of achievements, if you feel like sharing. I’m trying to learn how to do the same thing, and it’s tricky.
I DON’T KNOW IT WAS LIKE A MIRACLE.
No, but really… ok. It was a really stressful spring, with work stress and sick loved ones stress and physical stamina stress and existential angst stress all piled up… I was crying a lot, and one night I couldn’t STOP crying, and I realized I couldn’t do it on my own and had to ask for help. I cannot remember the exact transition, there, but a couple of weeks later I was walking my dog when the thought just popped into my head “I haven’t accomplished anything near what I want to or even what I think I *should* have by this point in my life, but… aside from that, I’m pretty happy with “who I am as a person.” By which I meant: I’m kind more often than not, I tend to stick to my promises, I’m a pretty good listener, and there’s a lot of love around me…
I don’t know if that’s helpful – I hope so.
Ohhh man, wow, I am sorry you went through so much difficulty to get there, but that sounds like such a beautiful end result. It definitely does seem like that kind of breakthrough sometimes happens for people on the other side of absolutely-too-much-piled-up (like maybe it’s easier to be kind/realistic in your expectations of yourself when the demands life is placing on you are so clearly impossible?). That is helpful/interesting. Thanks!
((hug))
((hug))
I have had this exact thought – “I haven’t accomplished anything near what I want to or even what I think I *should* have by this point in my life, but… aside from that, I’m pretty happy with “who I am as a person.” And it also followed a very tough time of addiction and stress and mental illness in my life that lasted for like, I don’t know, ten years?
I go back and forth a lot between being upset about my lack of accomplishment and being satisfied with being a good person with lots of love in my life and nothing horrible to overcome at this particular moment. Getting through horrible, difficult things in life is actually a great accomplishment, but sometimes it feels like you don’t have anything to show for it. Like I was going through rounds and rounds of therapy when my cohort was becoming accomplished and now I’m way behind? Hustle hustle hustle.
Also, I love Brene Brown.
RIGHT. Like, having life throw a lot of shit at you, and getting through it, somehow doesn’t count. All that was just NOISE that got in the way of all the stuff you would have accomplished if life was all neat and tidy. Except life doesn’t WORK like that. Which means everyone else who has accomplished stuff had their share of shit, too!? Wait a minute, I don’t like this circle…
Yeah, so, I can totally go there with you. But let’s not, ok? 💋
” the idea that I am worth keeping around even if I am not actively making myself useful all the time. ”
OH YEAH WELL THANKS AUTSJ.
I find this question uncomfortably close to how I can be. Eek! But I love Bear’s answer. And I think there are worse things than being helpful.
goodness i have never been so understood by an advice column before
that snack thing, it is too real
Oh, man. Perhaps this is a good place to share this perspective. I really. really. hate. to. be. helped. When I am sharing a problem, and people offer suggestions/advice/solutions, it comes across to me as though they think I am too stupid or incompetent to come up with their (often very obvious) suggestions on my own. I KNOW this is not their intent, but that’s how it can feel to me, when I am simply wanting to share what’s on my mind. (I have a theory that this is because I was a trailer – my sisters were 8 and 10 years older than I, and I have a suspicion that when I was a toddler they did waaaayyy too much “helping”. There is in fact a family joke around me saying “Wanna do it MYSELF” that I don’t actually find all that funny) Aaaaanyway, when I want help, I actually ask for it.
I love Bear’s answer, though, and the idea that for some, being helpful is tied to self worth, is very helpful (heh) to me.
There is in fact a family joke around me saying “Wanna do it MYSELF” that I don’t actually find all that funny
In conversation, if people offer advice, insight, etc, I’m fine with that. I am not a person who *just* needs to vent, although that is often more important to me. But, really, any way someone will use their words to attempt to help me is perfectly fine with me. Even if I don’t find is especially helpful/correct/etc.
The moment someone physically takes a task away from me without asking makes me furious. If I would like your help, I will ask. If you think I might benefit from your help, use your words like the adult I know you are. I will never learn how to do something if you just take over and do it for me every time, that is not healthy for either of us. OR maybe I have a plan for how this is going to work, and by just taking it over you may be fucking up that plan.
FURTHERMORE, if you are asking me to help YOU, please remember that I have not yet developed mind reading skills. I will do what you tell me to do. If you tell me to write my name, but don’t give me further instructions, I may write it in a different size than you prefer. If you tell me to put something down, but don’t give me further instructions, I may put it down in the wrong place. Unless this is part of some larger BDSM dynamic we have previously negotiated, do not take out your anger or frustration on me when you are the one who was non-specific. a;lgksj;gh;sdgh;lsfjghyulkahlsdjljh
do not take out your anger or frustration on me when you are the one who was non-specific. a;lgksj;gh;sdgh;lsfjghyulkahlsdjljh
Oh hey, ex!boss, nice to see you there. Seriously, he’d insist that he’d given very clear instructions, only he hadn’t, he just expected everyone to magically intuit exactly the way he wanted things done.
Oh man. I have trouble allowing myself to be helped. I had a not-super-healthy childhood and I have hot buttons for control and personal autonomy and I will FLIP OUT if I feel like those are being taken away. Just, like, totally emotionally lose my shit.
I also am super bad at asking for help, though, for similar reasons – feeling like if I am not independent then I am worthless, and having learnt that someone helping you is usually them building up things they can later use to hold over your head or undermine you.
I have almost no one in my life now who does this (some work people are unavoidable but at least manageable) and I am slowly unlearning it and finding joy in letting my loved ones help me. But OH MAN IT IS SO SO HARD.
And that thing of taking out anger on someone for not getting an unspecific task exactly right, usually in a way that is totally irrelevant… that’s my mother. And my toxic ex. And it is the thing I am most afraid I will do to those who I love even though I appear to have worked through all the possible causes and it seems pretty safe now, but I am still so terrified of it because it is so awful to experience.
do not take out your anger or frustration on me when you are the one who was non-specific. a;lgksj;gh;sdgh;lsfjghyulkahlsdjljh
I love it when The Toast lets me add to my mental ‘really good reasons I left my old partner’ list. (I don’t love sick, ‘oof’ of recognition quite so much, but I do get to remember that’s not my life anymore.)
Bonus points if I asked for clarification and just got the same three word instruction repeated in increasingly condescending tones, possibly with the addition of some angry sighs and gestures. I don’t know what you are asking me to do! You can think I’m stupid all you like, but saying the exact same non-specific phrase isn’t magically going to make me smarter! USE YOUR WORDS to tell me more detail about what you want! You might still think I’m stupid, but at least I’ll be able to do what you’re asking!
OMG MY PEOPLE. Hi, I don’t know how I got this way, but I very much have the default reaction of “JESUS WHAT KIND OF IDIOT DO YOU THINK I AM” to unsolicited help. This I know is not great!
I fortunately/unfortunately know exactly where a lot of my shit comes from. I’m the poster girl for the bright-girls-learned-helplessness thing.
Earliest clearest example: my fourth grade teacher split us into two math groups. I was in the advanced one. That particular day, we were working on a math worksheet that was based on doing a particular subtraction shortcut. I could not get my head wrapped around that idea that day, for whatever reason, I pitched a fit, and demanded to be put in the less advanced math group. My teacher pushed back a little, but then put me in the less advanced group. I spent the rest of the year paying attention to what the more advanced group was doing, as I sat there with my easier worksheets. The teacher never asked me if I wanted to move back up.
So any time I see that pattern re-appearing– like if I ask someone “how do you do this thing?” and instead of telling me how to do the thing, they just start doing the thing for me– I get really really frustrated. I connect it with those sorts of insecurities (so I get frustrated that the immediate message is that I can’t do this thing), and then I get frustrated with the larger societal message (that it’s okay to perpetuate this pattern that I can’t do things), and I end up in a small pile of RAGE and ineffective communication.
I think I’m a bit like that. I’m an over-thinker, so if I’m venting or complaining to someone, I’ve probably already thought of and dismissed what ever solution they come up with; especially if I’m in a anxious/depressive spiral and I’m feeling stuck/trapped in something, people who try and help are just going to get frustrated with me because everything they suggest is going to be met with ‘I can’t do that’ or ‘That worn’t work’
I think part of my cycle/process is coming to a solution on my own; and I know that when I’m in the middle of it I can be short sighted or blind to possible solutions, but shouting them at me is not going to make me hear it. I tend to drive therapists mad because I won’t accept any of the solutions they suggest (CBT can fuck off, just give me the drugs and let me vent once a week)
I’ve come to the realization also that I have a strong fear of being a burden on anyone or being an inconvenience in anyway, it probably comes from being the child of a single mother and being made to feel like my existence is an inconvenience at all times; anyway, it has made me fiercely independent, to the point of isolation because I refuse to be dependent on anyone in anyway (in particular emotionally), sure its great for my career but it does mean that if I’m in a bad place I refuse to reach out, or if by a miracle someone notices it, I refuse to let them in to help.
Yepppp. Maybe you (general you) just want to talk about what’s happening in your life for other reasons than needing them to tell you what to do? Maybe there are other reasons for talking to people than needing instructions? If no one ever needed help, would everyone just be quiet? Do such people expect others to only speak when they need something? If not, why do these people assume that every word someone says means they’re too stupid to figure out an obvious solution?
As someone who both has to fight the desire to give advice when it’s not helpful and someone who frequently needs to talk about a problem for quite a while before the part of my brain that allows me to solve it engages, this was really quite good to read.
brb emailing this to all of the women* in my family
(*Not to suggest that this is a thing exclusive to women. It just sounds a lot like me, and my mom, and my grandmother, and my sisters.)
I think I'm a bit like that. I'm an over-thinker, so if I'm venting or complaining to someone, I've probably already thought of and dismissed what ever solution they come up with; especially if I'm in a anxious/depressive spiral and I'm feeling stuck/trapped in something, people who try and help are just going to get frustrated with me because everything they suggest is going to be met with 'I can't do that' or 'That worn't work'
I think part of my cycle/process is coming to a solution on my own; and I know that when I'm in the middle of it I can be short sighted or blind to possible solutions, but shouting them at me is not going to make me hear it. I tend to drive therapists mad because I won't accept any of the solutions they suggest (CBT can fuck off, just give me the drugs and let me vent once a week)
I've come to the realization also that I have a strong fear of being a burden on anyone or being an inconvenience in anyway, it probably comes from being the child of a single mother and being made to feel like my existence is an inconvenience at all times; anyway, it has made me fiercely independent, to the point of isolation because I refuse to be dependent on anyone in anyway (in particular emotionally), sure its great for my career but it does mean that if I'm in a bad place I refuse to reach out, or if by a miracle someone notices it, I refuse to let them in to help.
RIGHT. Like, having life throw a lot of shit at you, and getting through it, somehow doesn't count. All that was just NOISE that got in the way of all the stuff you would have accomplished if life was all neat and tidy. Except life doesn't WORK like that. Which means everyone else who has accomplished stuff had their share of shit, too!? Wait a minute, I don't like this circle…
Yeah, so, I can totally go there with you. But let's not, ok? 💋