Ya Just Can’t Help the Helpless
So you’ve got an overgrown sense of responsibility, and when you see someone floundering, lost and confused, you feel compelled to rush to their rescue, helping them out like another Spiderman or Wonder Woman. Perhaps you’ve unwittingly made it your mission to save the world one person at a time.
If this is you, man are you misguided.
If you’re leaping to help the helpless, restoring to them their rightful dignity and self respect, I have some bad news for you. It almost never works out quite the way you’re expecting it to.
Now, let me issue a disclaimer before we get too deep here. I’m all for helping people – in fact, that’s what this blog is about, and the books I’ve written. I love to help people.
Certain people.
A Different Way
But somewhere along the way I learned an interesting lesson. Not everybody who asks for help actually wants it, and not everyone who claims to be helpless really is. It’s these imposters – posing as defenseless, powerless victims – who don’t qualify for my help (or yours).
What do I mean by this? Let me give you a common example. You’re with a bunch of friends or co-workers, sitting around the table, and Frank starts telling about this problem he has.
“I just can’t get my wife off my back. She’s always yelling at me to do this and do that when I’m at home. I have to go out drinking just to get some peace and quiet.”
So one of the group suggests, “Why don’t you just say __________,” and offers a perfectly logical suggestion for resolving his situation.
That’s when Frank reveals that he’s not really interested in anybody’s advice. He parries with, “Yes, but I tried that, and she just won’t listen.”
So somebody else offers a suggestion, and again it’s met with a reason why it won’t work.
Now we’re into a recurring pattern – what psychiatrist Eric Berne called the “Why-don’t-you – Yes-but” game in his 1964 book Games People Play.
The real point of this game is for Frank to reassure himself that his situation really is impossible. And as long as Frank continues with that mindset, nobody – NOBODY – is going to help him.
(By the way, if you ever find yourself on the wrong end of one of those games, the only way to extricate yourself is to simply say, “Wow, you really have a problem there – what’re you going to do about it?” In other words, throw it back to the owner, where it belongs. They’ll quickly lose interest in anybody unwilling to play their game on their terms.
What Do They Really Want?
Haven’t you found that most people, when they ask for your advice, are really fishing for an opportunity to tell you what they think, or to do some more complaining and whining?
And if this scenario describes the way YOU do things, then hear this – nobody’s going to be able to help you because you’re close-minded and won’t LET them help you. You’re pushing away every helping hand that’s offered.
My Mom, as smart and as wise as she was in so many ways, was a total fool when it came to her relationship with Dad. They spent 50 years fighting, and during every one of those 50 years, she constantly complained and was frustrated because “he won’t change.”
And me… I spent my childhood wishing I could help those two get along together. I actually believed Mom wanted Dad to change. I’d pray, “Please God help be a good boy so they can stop fighting.” Ain’t that pitiful? There was not the remotest connection between my behavior and their constant warfare, but I took on the responsibility for their foolishness – especially Mom’s – and as a result, I grew up wishing to be a rescuer of the utterly un-rescueable.
I hope you’re not doing the same thing with the floundering, “helpless” people you meet along the way.
No Longer Free
These days, I have a new way of offering my help. I set a price for someone to earn my help. If a person really wants some aid, and believes I can supply it, they’ll find a way to work with me. But it isn’t free. Now, when I say I set a price, it doesn’t have to be money. Sometimes it’s showing they’re serious by completing a task. Sometimes it’s being somewhere on time to meet with me. But in any case, if they don’t qualify, they don’t receive my time and effort.
I still get emails asking me to send one of my products, or to coach someone “for free” because of this reason or that. And I don’t do it. On rare occasions, I’ll offer a counter proposal whereby they can qualify. But I have yet to hear back from even one of these people on any of my counter proposals. I guess if it isn’t a free ride, I can go to hell.
Ya just can’t help the helpless.
What’s most heartbreaking is when it’s a family member or close friend. You feel duty bound to help them out.
But this stuff is all case-by-case. Sometimes they’re just in a bad spot, due to injury or other unforeseen events, and truly do need some help. Maybe you give them a hand, they take it and turn things around. I love it when I see that happen.
On the other hand, if you give them your time, trust and energy, but again and again they just never make any headway, it’s probably time to be a hard-ass and tell ‘em to go find another sucker.
Exceptions Do Exist, However
The wildly popular hypnotist Wendi Friesen (www.Wendi.com) tells how, early in her career, she ended up broke, with no food, no gas and no electricity, and then on top of that, she was handed a two-week eviction notice. Oh, and she was a single mom with two sons.
She very reluctantly dialed the number of the local welfare office, but when the lady answered, Wendi was so emotionally crushed under the weight of her situation, she could only sob – couldn’t even talk to the lady.
Well, it’d be easy to think that she was just another helpless welfare mother and dismiss her case. But the truth is, she’d had a very successful business before that, so when it came to skills and mindset, she had a history of success.
She used her own hypnosis skills on herself, then started making phone calls. Within days, she had a new position, had moved into a luxury home, and had several thousand dollars in the bank.
You see, Wendi was only helpless for a brief time, then she lifted herself out of it. She didn’t need any Spiderman to swoop down to her rescue because she recognized that helplessness is only a way of looking at things.
So when you’re charging around seeking somebody to rescue, remember to get your rescuees to qualify themselves, to meet you partway, to demonstrate that their mindset isn’t totally saturated with helplessness. There has to be something within them for you to work with.
Because ya just can’t help the helpless.
Cheers from warm and smiling Thailand,
Charles
Maggie has an aunt who is totally into drama. This woman is only 6 years older than Maggie, so their relationship is more like friendly cousins.
Two of Auntie’s favorite ‘shows’ are financial and relationships. When Maggie and I first met, she was firmly entrenched in Auntie’s relationship issues. Auntie is 51, divorced and still quite a stunning ‘looker’. Attracting men is NOTHING for her. And herein lies the problem. Auntie LOVES the thrill of the hunt and all the hanky-panky she can get. But as soon as Sir Manly goes all mushy with proposals, the game is OVER!
The thing is, Auntie doesn’t ‘understand’ why she can’t find and KEEP a good man!
Maggie, natural-born counselor and rescue-holic that she is, would lend Auntie her entire Barbara De Angelis relationship library (it’s VERY extensive). She would spend hours on the phone with Auntie. However, most of the time it was a one-sided conversation of Auntie detailing her latest exploits.
I hinted to Maggie, “I don’t think she wants your help… sounds to me like she just wants an audience.”
Well, blood is thicker than water as you know. I was still relatively new in Maggie’s life and Auntie was… well, Auntie. What the hell did I know?
I told Maggie to listen for the, “Yeah, buts…” whenever she offered advice. I told her to quiz Auntie on the books she read. Of course, Auntie never got around to reading ANY of those books, even after months of having them in her possession.
One day, Maggie ‘got it’. She asked for the return of her books. (She eventually had to go retrieve them herself.) She gently confronted Auntie and asked, “Do you really want me to help you? Then here’s what I need you to do.”
Wouldn’t you know, the phone calls and emails suddenly stopped. Maggie and I assume that Auntie found a new audience. We hear about her occasionally through the family grapevine… same old, same old.
I’m currently working on another ‘horror’ story that’s happening right outside of my condo building. Here in Toronto, a person with a ‘disabled permit’ displayed on their dashboard can park in a no-parking zone or virtually anywhere they want. Most mornings, a perfectly able-bodied looking person parks her car in the most hazardous and inconvenient (for others) location, and trots across the street and disappears for the day into an office building. Apparently, they have permit and/or paid parking there so she is trying to use her disability sticker to ‘cheap out’. I’m guessing she is a temporary worker.
The thing is, she parks her car in a blind spot at a very busy four-way-stop intersection. My girls’ school bus driver has to swerve dangerously around this car whenever it is parked there. The bus driver actually confronted her last week – I wasn’t close enough to hear the conversation but her body language and clear hand gestures were basically telling the bus driver to “@#$%-off”
I’ve notified the City Parking Authorities. They set up a stake-out for this woman yesterday to see if she is the actual owner of the disability permit. If it’s for her mom (let’s say), this woman is in a boat-load of trouble. However, the woman never showed up yesterday. She’s there again today though – but no police stake out. If I call the police again, I’ll be the ‘boy crying wolf’.
Solution: I’ve got my video camera ready to take shots of the car complete with plate number and a close-up of the disability sticker/#, the area so people can see the chaos the inconsiderate person creates AND finally the woman prancing across the street.
Here’s the offer I’ll make this woman… “Your car has been reported to the police parking authorities. I have enough video evidence here to sink you. You’re about to become a YouTube controversy. Your call…”
Some people truly need and deserve help. Like Charles, I’m all for bending over backwards for these people. That’s what MY blog is about, too.
Others want an audience. A few are outright ABUSERS and need a good, swift kick in the ass.
It’s going to be a very interesting couple of days.
All the best from Toronto,
Russ
Oh what an enticing choice – whether to blackmail her or just go ahead and sandbag her. Hard to decide… too bad you can’t have the pleasure of doing both. She’s the embodiment of the old entitlement attitude.
Sure, patience IS a virtue, except sometimes it’s not. It’d definitely be a waste of good compassion giving it to somebody like your parking troll. But what you wanna bet, she’s got a legitimate permit, probably on a technicality.
When I picked up my girls from the bus stop at 3:45 PM, the officer in the unmarked car was already staked out. I went over and chatted with him for a bit. He asked me if I could describe the woman, which I did. He told me that was exactly the description of the vehicle owner AND… the disability tag owner. They were indeed one and the same.
I told the officer that on Monday, she didn’t get to her car (from wherever she came from) until nearly 5:30 PM. He said he was prepared to wait it out.
My condo faces the street and from our 23rd level, Maggie and I watched the officer finally confront the lady at about 5:30. Their conversation lasted for about 7 minutes. Maggie and I looked at each other. Oh, how we wished we could have heard that conversation. Even though it was dark, the street lights revealed the lady doing a lot of animated pointing. We could only guess that she was trying to explain where she was during the day.
The officer started to walk away, stopped abruptly and turned around for another 8 minute discussion. Again, our guess was that the lady must have said something pretty offensive to invite the attention of the officer.
The officer was in full agreement that where she parked was certainly a hazard. In fact, while he was parked there, he witnessed several near-accidents. He told me that he would do everything he could to ‘encourage’ the woman to park elsewhere.
So now the matter has been handled by the authorities. We’ll never know the results. Privacy, you know.
The only way we’ll know who won that battle is if the car continues to park there.
If that happens, perhaps we can arrange a daily flat tire! Just remember, you didn’t hear ME say this! LOL
It’s Thursday morning and I drove Maggie to work at 8:00 AM. Who’s car is parked out in front of our building again?
Unbelievable!
Maggie and I are now guessing what all the animated hand gesturing was about last night as we imagine the conversation, “I’m going to park HERE and there isn’t a @#$%ing thing YOU or ANYBODY can do about it!”
Time for plan B. No, I won’t do the tire-flattening deal.
Nope. It’s going to be, “Who Wants to Be the Next You-Tube Star?”
I’ll do a bit of sleuthing with my video camera to capture the exact distance this ‘Disabled Person’ is walking every day to and from her destination. Trust me, it is SIZEABLE! Just the distance Maggie and I caught last night was already half a kilometer, and she was coming around the corner from somewhere so you have to wonder, how much FURTHER is Ms. Disability is hiking?
Maggie and I were thinking, “Perhaps her ‘disability’ is the inability to get along with society.” It’s obvious she has a “@#$% YOU” attitude. Her body language clearly demonstrated that to the bus driver a few days ago. We’re guessing that was part of the animated hand gesturing with the parking violations officer last night as well.
The officer told me that there isn’t a damned thing anybody can do. (he probably heard that from the lady)
OH REALLY!
How about create a YouTube video, distribute it to my large network of contacts to get a decent hit count over a couple of days. Then send out press releases to the various news media here in Toronto… just for starters.
This one absolutely boggles my mind. Why would a ‘disabled person’ park in such a hazardous place clearly marked “No Parking”; put MY GIRLS and all the other kids on the school bus at high risk, not to mention all the other traffic problems she potentially causes; and walk God Knows How Far… (we’ll find out soon) to get back and forth to her destination?
BECAUSE SHE CAN!
@#$% THAT!
I’ll keep you posted on the video footage I capture over the next few days.
From cool and rainy Toronto,
Russ