When Helping is Harmful

Anger is such a powerful emotion and it often triggers us to act;  but do those actions create desired outcomes?

I work in the Social Services field and often find myself managing many emotions, especially anger.  Unfortunately, sometimes when I start taking on the injustices of the social services system and the resulting consequences I become reactionary.  I, of course, feel justified in my actions and feel compelled to tell everyone how this and that are not working right.   Sometimes I find myself so activated, in fact, that my intense behaviors start to infiltrate other areas of my life.  At those time, I can be experienced as off-putting rather than as the helpful soul I strive to be.

I was confronted by a superior recently and was forced to step back to examine my motives.  Defensive at first, I felt a strong urge to justify my behaviors.  I took a deep breath, went inside myself and realized that my emotional body was so activated that I was misinterpreting the situation and other people’s actions.  I had insinuating myself into situations where no one had actually extended a hand asking for help.  As a helper in the helping profession, I can get overly sympathetic and take on too much.

The decision to practice wisdom in difficult situations is something I re-commit to every day.  When I contemplate the wisdom of my spiritual teacher it moves my soul and restores me to proper alignment.  Below are some tools I use to reposition myself when necessary.

• Be in it but not of it
• Don’t extend help if someone isn’t asking
• Stay aligned in love and compassion
• Seek to understand before being understood
• Visualize God creation in all beings, things and activities
• Practice proper self love

Ask yourself, how are you primarily positioned in your daily activities?  Is it serving you well and elevating you to higher consciousness.

How to Help Abused and Neglected Children

“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” -Albert Einstein

A dear friend e-mailed me this article about Adrian Conway, a three-year-old boy who died following abuse by his mother. My friend wanted to have a dialog about “how we deal with this.” That’s a loaded question with no easy answers. What I do know is that Child Protective Services’ typical pendulum swing between removal of all at-risk children from their families to family preservation at any cost doesn’t work. The National Coalition for Child Protection Reform blog has written extensively about this issue and articulate the systemic challenges very well. Go here if you want to see what they have to say.

There are many things we can do to effect change for abused children and their struggling families on a personal level. Here’s my short list of suggested starting points:

1. Get informed: Find out what has already been attempted. What worked and what didn’t? To begin with just find articles online and read blogs.
2. Get involved: Why not start your own blog? Blogs are about having conversations that aren’t necessarily happening in the “real world”. Join an online forum. Or become a mentor, or a foster parent.
3. Benchmark outside the box: Benchmarking is one of my favorite activities. I regularly scan the internet to find child welfare organizations engaged in promising practices. What’s even more fun is looking at organizations outside the child welfare world to see if they’re doing anything interesting that might be applied within the child welfare system.

In one of my next posts I’ll tell you about one of my recent “benchmarking outside the box” ideas to help teens who are aging out of the foster care system. Stay tuned and join the conversation by adding your suggestions in the comment section below.