-Dalai Lama
Helping Those Who Do Not Want to Be Helped
Hmmm! I am thinking of those words as I contemplate how to best help someone I love who is suffering a great deal. I am aware that I am very limited in what I can do, give or offer her especially being that she is a person who confesses that she is resisting getting better. She doesn't know why but she is aware that she resists suggestions, attempts, advice in any way it comes to her. "Maybe you could try this..." is usually followed by a "I can't because..." or "It's too difficult." and "I know that won't work." My favorite is," My mind won't let me go there."
The Need for Control in Others
She states that she hates when people tell her what to do. She admittedly is a 'control freak' with a desire to control all that is going on in her and around her. If someone tells her what to do, i.e. suggests something, she freaks out. One can even see the resistance suddenly twisting her facial muscles and tensing up her body. She wants complete control over this experience, over every experience.
The problem is, however, that she doesn't have control . She feels she is losing control of her thoughts and feelings, her daily life experiences and that is freaking her out. So in her desperation she will ask, "What can I do?" When one responds with an answer she automatically resists it. Part of her wants help; part of her needs help but her controlling nature gets in the way. It's quite the conundrum for her and for those of us who want to help.
I realize that help can sometimes be viewed as the sunny side of control. So I try to keep my motivation for helping clear and clean. I simply want her to feel better, for her to heal.
Ready to Heal?
Because I see things so differently than I did say ten years ago my approach to healing is so different. My approach to her is so different. The thing is, I actually believe she is ready for this new approach and that it may be effective in helping her. She has been speaking for ages about how it feels like there are two people inside her head...a part of her mind that wants her to suffer and another part that wants more, knows more. She has already had moments out of the blue in the midst of her suffering that she suddenly felt tremendous peace and appreciation for Life, knowing in some deep core of her being that she had everything she needed to be happy. There have also been rare moments when I would speak to some of the things I have been learning in my own healing, and she would say, "Oh My God! That makes sense. I see that now." And her mood would just transform in front of me. These moments were very fleeting but I want to believe they did leave their mark even when ego popped back in to do its nasty shaming, blaming, scaring and depressing. Sigh!
The Thinking
Her ego, her pain body (terminology I may use that she doesn't quite accept yet) is so strong and so ferociously controlling that when it is in charge it seems there is no way of getting to her. Her thoughts are compulsive and self destructive. In order to distract from them she does what most of us do but to the extreme: She will seek outwardly into the future for her relief...her relief is never in the present moment but in some future moment. She sets up these expectations for the future that are constantly disappointing her because the moments never turn out the way she felt they should. She invests so much of her thought energy into creating those mental pictures of how it should be, she gets crushed again and again.
The Feeling
She also represses painful emotions. She has been through a lot of painful experiences that she didn't deal with emotionally...she just stuffed and stuffed and stuffed in anyway she could. The intense energy of those emotions are swirling around inside her wanting to emerge but she is fighting that with all she has. It escapes in gusts of anger, resentment, generalized anxiety, fear, restlessness, boredom and despair. But not the way it should. She hates all these other emotions but she really doesn't want to deal with that source of pain!!
The Behaviour
She numbs to the point of it being a problem. She punishes herself physically and emotionally for not having control because that gives her some control in the midst of the non-control. She is a risk to herself. Sometimes she doesn't want to go on living.
So what do I do?
So it is a challenging situation. I don't want to push against that resistance in my desire to help her. I am fully aware that it has to be up to her. She has to be willing and ready to accept the small ( and it is a small amount) that I can offer her. ...simply just a finger pointing in a direction she may or may not be ready or willing to go down.
There are things I can do. I can:
- Make myself available. Check in with her a couple of times a day, more frequently on so called 'bad days'
- Recite Thich Nhat Hanh's Mantra either outwardly to her or at least in my head when I am with her, "Darling, I know that you are suffering? That is why I am here for you." Just validating the suffering is a big step in helping.
- Listen attentively
- Gently probe for more to keep the communication going. "Darling, am I understanding you in the way you need to be understood?" (Thich Nhat Hanh)
- Offer the learning I have gained in an unobtrusive, gentle way after I am given permission to do so. I am copulating a list of suggestions that I feel may help from what I learned from my studying of psychology, philosophy, Buddhism, Yoga, theology and science. At the same time I must monitor and recognize when emergency outside resources are needed.
- Maintain as much safety as possible
- Give options. Instead of saying you should do this...I could say, "Maybe you could try this, this or this."
- Avoid pushing, arguing and defending
- Stay nonjudgmental removing discerning words like "good' "bad", "right"," or "wrong", "should" or "shouldn't" from my vocabulary when I am with her
- Be aware of my motivation at all times...it can never be about me being right and her being wrong!.
- Empower rather than be the one with the power. Leave the decisions and the work with her.
- Take care of me and continue with my own healing. It is easy to get "sucked in" to the negative ego of another. I need to continue working on my own mental construction, my own inner development so that I have more to give away.
There are things I do and will continue to do but doing is not the biggest objective here, is it? Being is. If I can maintain that peaceful, calm, reassuring presence for her that acts as a reminder that there is more than just suffering than maybe...maybe just being with her will be enough. I am hoping.
All is well.
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