How to help?

How can you help someone who seems to be in such grief and loneliness and also almost shutting down in that pain.  It occurs to me at such times as these we so often feel powerless.  There may be nothing we can do with this person.  They may not recognise what they are feeling and their feelings, confusing at they may be are their feelings.  They are not our feelings.  We can feel for them but we cannot go further than that and then we can hit a brick wall in knowing what else to do.

Its a feeling and issue I have had so much in my own family.  When my older sister was alive and I watched her suffering it was so hard.  There was little more that could be done in the home she was living in everything was under their control.  I struggled at times with helplessness knowing how much she was being drugged at times.  I could feel her sadness when I went to visit and then I would start to cry, after one of these visits when I took my ex partner he got really, really angry with me.  “You better watch out that you don’t end up like that,” he said to me after we left the home.  I was deeply hurt by this comment, in what universe was it wrong to feel for my sister, to be there, to listen?   Did he fear such sorrow or see it as contagious?  It is now recognised that the presence of mirror neurons in our being actually does resonate with pain as well as with other emotions or energies in others.  Such feeling is empathy and is a sign of something most human, normal and natural.

But to someone who is blocked in feelings, feeling such empathy may be met with fear, at least that is the only solution I can come to about the way my ex partner’s defences would so often kick into action around me at times.  My attendance at Al Anon helped me to work through what was and what was not within my power to change for my sister.  I still made the choice to stay close which at times was not always the best choice for me, but I made it out of love.  My need to be connected and to make up for the dearth of connection following her separation from her husband and four boys was a natural one for me.  I see that I have beat myself up at times for making it, in just the way my ex partner wanted to beat me up with those kind of comments.

Recognising the limits of my own power to change another’s suffering is important work. I need not be consumed totally with the sadness of others.  I may feel sorry when I do not see them reaching out for help or to express what is in their hearts, as I know the release and comfort and strength that comes from doing so.  But just because that is my choice, it doesn’t mean it is theirs.  I need to respect that because everyone does the best they can and people all have different lines of defence.   Its part of the complex tapestry of personality and life.