How To Help Someone
Semi-regularly I find myself in the position to help someone who’s going through something horrible, traumatic, painful, or otherwise unenviable.
Here are some things I’ve learned during these moments:
Their faces might be calm or neutral, they might even be wearing forced smiles (someone once described this to me as putting on their “customer service smile”), but they may still be drowning. They may be struggling just to keep their heads above water and you are on the beach. It’s important to understand that your situations are fundamentally different at this moment and you can’t truly fathom what they’re going through. All you can do is try to help improve their situation by whatever means you have at your disposal.
You may have the opportunity to step in and provide some kind of consistent aid, whether that means making and delivering meals, tidying up their home, or handling other responsibilities and chores that are simply beyond their capacity (or their healthy capacity) at the moment. If you do this, perform these tasks to get them done and lessen their load, not for credit or kudos or recognition, as there’s a chance they won’t be in the right headspace to even recognize the effort you’re exerting (and you need to be okay with that).
Help make progress on the core of what’s burdening them whenever and wherever possible, but moderate expectations (yours and theirs) and prioritize stability, sustainably, and healthfulness—the things they require if they’re going to keep going.
Some days, part or most of what you’ll be doing is validating their feelings, concerns, fears, and efforts. This isn’t wasted time or energy: sometimes the most valuable service you can perform is just listening and commiserating without judging, attempting to provide solutions, or injecting your ideas or preferences into the conversation.
At the most basic level, try not to add to their stress, responsibilities, or workload (“first, do no harm”).
I find it’s generally useful to respect boundaries and rhythms, even if they don’t immediately make sense to me. Default to a Chesterton’s Fence stance.
Pick up the skills and knowledge you’ll need to help handle their biggest pain points as you’re able.
Everyone has things they really hate doing and you can have outsized positive impact by identifying those most-hated tasks and handling them.
Look for other, supplementary things you might be able to handle for them, too. Running errands, doing the dishes, and vacuuming the floor can free up their time and energy, which tends to help with everything else.
Little things can become big things within the context of ongoing stress, pain, and anxiety, so alleviate small frustrations and frictions when you notice them.
If you have a lot of wealth to spare, sometimes throwing money at their problems can help immensely (handling their medical bills, buying groceries, maybe even hiring some additional help to clean and cook and take care of the baby). If you lack wealth, time can be just as valuable. If you lack time, maybe you have energy or stamina or optimism or some other attribute they currently lack.
Do they have a favorite food they absolutely love to snack on? Don’t criticize them for eating it (even if it’s junk food) and pick up more of it next time you’re at the store. Do they love visiting a specific park or playing video games? Offer to drive them to the park or to watch the kids (or do the chores they would otherwise be doing) while they enjoy a half-hour of gaming. Small crutches can be lifelines in situations where there’s otherwise little dopamine flowing.
Similarly, don’t underestimate the power of tiny pleasures, mini-vacations, meaningful and truthful compliments, and small victories.
It can sometimes be useful to provide alternative, more positive or neutral perspectives on things, while still acknowledging and honoring their negative versions of the same. Blanket optimism isn’t always helpful, but highlighting real-deal silver linings can make a difference, as long as you don’t try to shove them down their throat or decorate bad stuff to make it seem artificially good.
It’s often better to assume that things are as bad as you can imagine (and perhaps even worse than that) and to make decisions and provide assistance based on that uncomfortable potentiality, rather than making the opposite assumption and perceiving things through that lens (and consequently helping at an insufficient level, or not at all).
Know your limits and honor them, and develop a process for decompressing before and after you jump into the fray. It’s wonderful to want to help, and it’s even more wonderful to invest your time, energy, and other resources in making someone else’s life better by helping them through a difficult period. But it’s not a good idea to ease someone else’s burdens by creating an entirely new (slightly relocated) bad situation. Help when you have the sustainable capacity to do so and in ways that make sense for you and your situation, and apply leverage where you can have the most positive impact whenever possible.