idealawg

Why do we help others? Do we need self-awareness to truthfully answer that question?

Those questions are considered in the article "The 'Helper' Syndrome" (Tricycle Magazine). I find that pondering the matters discussed in the article is very important for those of us in helping and service professions. At least, I find it extremely enlightening each time I look deeply at what I am up to—and then try to correct once again.

From the article:

When our strategy is to help, when we need to be helpful, this requires that we need to find people who seem helpless, or situations that seem to call for help. It’s true that we may also have a genuine desire to help - one that isn’t based on our needs - but whenever we feel an urgency or longing to help, it’s often rooted in the fear of facing our own unhealed pain. If our basic fear is that we’ll always be alone, what better way to avoid it than to find someone who needs us? If we have an underlying feeling of worthlessness, how better to prove that we’re worthy than by doing good deeds? If we’re trying to avoid the feeling of being fundamentally powerless or ineffectual, doesn’t it make sense to take on the identity of someone who can affect people and outcomes positively through service?

The “helper” syndrome I’m describing is not outwardly harmful. What makes it dangerous is its potential to keep us blind to what is really going on. Yet it’s easy to see how this lack of awareness, multiplied throughout our society, could lead to the social and political chaos that we live in. Failure to work with our inner turmoil - our need for power, our self-centered desire to possess, our fear-based greed and need to control - results in hatred, aggression, and intolerance. This is the source of all conflicts and wars. Without inner understanding, individuals as well as societies will continue to flounder. This is why it is so important for each of us to come back again and again to the practice of awareness.

Disease model of alcoholism and AA not always accurate or helpful

Many years ago, a client asked me to find an alternative to Alcoholics Anonymous and their intervention process for a BigLaw partner who was drinking too much. She knew it was not a fit for him. I began to do the research and entered a labyrinth of poorly-proven assertions about AA and of its stakeholders wrongly saying those 12 steps are the only way - a BIG industry.

I was reminded of that long-ago project by two recent articles: "High-Functioning Alcoholic Lawyers May Defy Stereotypes" (ABA Journal) and "High-Functioning Alcoholics: Lawyers Are Not Above The “Bar” (The Conplete Lawyer). Both seem to accept the disease model which my research did not validate.

Through my client, this partner was put in touch with a non-disease-model therapist Dr. Chad Emrick. The result was excellent. In my investigation, I learned of the work of Dr. Stanton Peel. Our culture tells us that AA is the only answer. Definitely not true. Read what Peel has to say.

"I am just trying to save the world": How would you identify a toxic mediator?

I am writing an article on the legal profession's version of the helper syndrome. This syndrome results in a person helping others in order to ease his or her own pain or to ignore his or her own problems. Because of the lack of clarity or self-awareness on the part of the "helper," the results of the helping intervention can often be worse than nothing at all. The service professions frequently attract people who exhibit the helper syndrome. Even for the mentally healthy, the service relationship can be tricky.

A major consideration, and one that should be held steadfastly in the back of every professional's mind, is that the helping relationship is typically asymmetric: people are not on equal footing. Asymmetric relationships bring with them many potential problems, including dependence, resentment, and suspicion. A key antidote to those perils is the client or helpee maintaining autonomy and self-determination in as large a measure as appropriate and possible.

Another key is well-placed trust in the professional. Gerard Lulofs* writes:

[T]he professions are separate from other vocations because they require a relatively high level of systematic theoretical knowledge. This brings with it a market imbalance, because the information at the disposal of the exchange partners is asymmetrically distributed. . . . As a rule, it is the supplier who determines the needs of the recipient, whereas the latter is seldom in a position to assess the quality of the services provided. The most prominent characteristic, therefore, of the professional services market lies in the element of trust contained in the exchange relationship between provider and recipient.

Still another key to effective service relationships, perhaps the most essential, is the professional's mental