My two hours in “assisting others” didn’t turn out the way I had expected. After going back and forth about what would be “noble” enough, a friend called me, she was pretty upset and didn’t know what to do. “Finally,” I thought. “This is my chance to be helpful and altruistic and whatever that ridiculously long word says!” I did what any good friend would do I bought a six-pack of good beer and went over to her house.
She is still fuming when I get to her house and hand her a beer. The problem, it turns out, is her boyfriend. She feels that he’s been disrespectful but she doesn’t know how to fix the situation. After making the usual “oh no!” and “what a jerk!” and the “ he did what!” contributions for a while. I say that “Maybe he doesn’t realize what he did upset you. You should talk to him about it and let him know how you feel...” and so on and so forth, blah blah blah. You know how this goes.
“Yeah, but…” And this goes on for another couple hours.
I know helping others is supposed to make you feel warm and fuzzy and gratified and all of that, but I just felt drained. Not because I’m heartless or selfish—I don’t think I’m those things—but because I knew that the situation wasn’t going to change. She wasn’t going to talk to him. This was going to keep happening. The same problem over and over again. Don’t get me wrong, I love this girl, she’s one of the sweetest, greatest people I know. But it’s hard to maintain that positive attitude when you know that, despite what they know is the right course of action, you see someone repeating the same patterns that they know make them miserable. That sort of got me thinking. Going into the field of psychology, especially public mental health, or drug counseling, how do you deal with those individuals that keep coming back? How do you treat someone that refuses to change the behaviors that are hurting them? If anyone else knows, please, I’d love to hear it.