As helping professionals, sometimes we can get sucked in to a point where we kind of
lose track of ourselves.
How do you help someone without hurting yourself?
I've brought in an expert to help out with that today.
One of the biggest challenges about being an helping profession is keeping yourself
out of that..
You got sucked in or you start losing track of your health, your own boundaries, your
own mental health as you try to assist someone else.
Blu, you know a lot about this because you've worked with addictions for your entire career.
-My entire career.
-And you've seen that there are some ways people get sucked in sometimes.
You and I did a podcast recently about this very topic.
-It was a good one.
-And I thought who better to come to Live On Purpose TV today to help us with this issue?
What have you noticed about this?
-You know, Dr. Paul, when we get involved in other people's lives, our primary goal
and desire is to truly help.
And sometimes, we cross those lines and those boundaries that we've set because that person
that we love, we care about who's come to us is hurting so bad.
But if we take on all of their emotional baggage, if we get ourselves to involve, if we become
so hyper focused on their problem, we start losing control of our own.
And what happens is we start doing that with multiple people.
So, pretty soon, you're carrying this backpack full of problems that are weighing us down.
And then when your own come up, you sink.
And so, being able to draw an established emotional boundaries are crucial with this
kind of stuff.
I love something that you've said years ago.
That stuck with me for years.
And that's, "You're urgency is not my urgency."
That doesn't mean you don't care.
That means, there's a crisis right now, but I'm not going to bring it on board.
We're going to fix it together at appropriate time.
We talked about core communication in our previous video.
And I think that's a big part of this is that our goal isn't to solve the problem.
It's to help navigate them to solve their own with a little bit of co-piloting.
-Can I comment about that?
As a psychologist, I had to learn that early on.
It's not my role to steal their problem from them.
And I use those words because I want you to consider this for a minute.
What if you're to steal something valuable from that person as you're trying to help?
-Absolutely.
-That won't be a good thing.
-No.
-Right?
-Yeah.
-Their problem is there for a reason.
I don't think you can solve it, first of all.
Because the things that contribute to that problem being in there in the first place.
Let's say it's an addiction or someone who's really struggling with certain lifestyle issues.
Can you solve that?
I don't think you can.
-No.
It's not possible.
-So, as you back up and you become a supportive resource to them, that's very different from
taking it on and assuming the emotional and sometimes the financial or physical responsibility
for their problem.
-Absolutely.
-We need to let them keep it because it's going to teach them something really valuable
and important.
-Absolutely.
Because what happens if you don't is that you learn and grow immensely.
But the person you are trying to attempt to help, the gain nothing.
In fact, they can become weaker.
It's like when I'm coaching my athletes in Addict To Athlete.
And being a coach is a very different thing than being an athlete and a player.
I have to stand on the sidelines knowing that the things that we've thought and the training
that we've done are going to get them across the line.
If I decided to jump in and push them away and the run and finish their race, what value
would that be of there?
So, yes.
Stealing their problems or trying to overpower them with has worked for you in the past isn't
going to give them that experience that they can grow from.
It's okay to struggle.
Let them struggle.
-That's so hard thing to do, Blu.
-It is.
-When you love or care about someone to the point where you want to help them with their
life, it's hard to see them suffer or struggle.
As you were talking earlier about they don't gain anything if you steal their problem,
part of what they're learning is probably something you don't want them to learn.
-Yeah.
-And that's dependence/ -Absolutely.
-Or this pattern of differing their problem to someone else.
Instead of taking it on and finding the personal resources to get through that problem.
-Absolutely.
And you can have that with a sense of empathy.
And you can have that with sense of direction.
But again, if we take away the struggle and we make that even to the point where it's
so light that they're kind of floating through without learning the reasons why they need
to be stronger or step up or ask for more help.
We take away the advances their going to gain to help someone else in that same situation.
And so, we got to be cautious on what our motivation is.
Why do we feel so impressed or driven to take it away.
And sometimes, it feels good to help people that can something turn into something of
an addiction.
We got to put ourselves in check.
-I wonder if this where we mention that issue of co-dependency.
-Ooh!
The scary word.
Yeah.
-That comes up in the addiction industry all the time, doesn't it? -it most certainly does.
-What is that mean?
Can you help us understand what co-dependency is?
-Yeah.
See co-dependency kind of occurs when our desire to help kind of overpowers the actual
help.
Meaning, we start finding purpose and value in our helping to the degree that that's all
we focus on.
And again, that does is it suffocates and takes away from the experience that our loved
one or friend might have.
And so we become so we meshed with our gain to feel good and to help them feel good.
We start depending on those kind of things and try to solve problems that aren't even
problems.
-It's like we need someone to need us.
-Exactly.
-And it's the opposite side of an addiction.
It's called co-dependency because they're 2 people who are engaged in a dynamic.
Both of which are dependent on the other.
-Absolutely.
-So, this person with an addiction for example is dependent on this person to take care of
them.
-Absolutely.
-And then this person become dependent on having someone over here to take care of and
it's just a nasty cycle.
-It is.
And it boils down to that concept of the airplane.
Put your oxygen mask on before you help someone else put theirs on.
Because if you don't have oxygen, you're going to be no help to the rest of the other passengers.
So, take care of yourself first and foremost in order to be able to be available, emotionally,
mentally and physically for others.
-Can we talk for just a minute about something you mentioned earlier?
--That it's okay to set appropriate boundaries when you're trying to assist someone who's
very needy?
-Yeah.
Absolutely.
-How do we do that?
-I like that because there's this old philosophy of tough love.
You know?
And to kick the person out or to really set that hardcore boundary, I don't know if that
works as well as we thought it did years ago.
And what it means is establishing those boundaries is that this stuff has to happen now.
If you try to establish a boundary, once the war has kind of over taken your walls, so
to speak.
Setting a boundary is going to be very difficult.
But being able to do that now with how much energy you're going to be able to bring to
the table and have those expectations and those values very clear are so primarly important
because it's going to keep you safe.
And sometimes, you'll elevate, sometimes you'll flow.
But more often that not, if you can set those healthy boundaries for yourself, knowing that
there are line you won't cross.
And if you do, you'll bring in maybe an alternate substitution for someone that can help.
--Therapist, friend, counselor, you know, clergy.
That is so crucial and important because you don't have to be that person that always throws
out the rescue ring.
-Can I put a practical application on this for a minute?
-Absolutely.
-Sometimes when you're trying to help someone who is so needy and so dependent, they may
want to call you or text you at any hour around the clock.
-That has happen to the both of us.
-Yes.
And it's okay for you...
My message when I was operating a full clinical practice.
My voice message was, "You may leave me a message.
If this is an emergency, call 911."
-Yeah.
Yeah.
-I was differing to emergency services..
--911 which was a way of my setting a limit.
I'm not going to get out of bed in the middle of the night to respond to your crisis.
Your crisis is not my emergency.
-Yes.
-It is your emergency.
And if this is an emergency, please call 911.
And that was very clear on my voice message.
-And that small little snap back into reality is they're listening to that voicemail.
And they're saying, "Emergency."
And they get the question.
"Is this really an emergency?"
-Right.
"I'm I going a little bit to far or maybe I can take a deep breathe and come back at
a decent time?"
-You know what? if it is an emergency, you've jut given them a resource.
-Absolutely.
-If it's not, they're going to rethink and they're going to say, "Well, I'll just call
them in the morning."
-Exactly.
"-Which I'm okay with."
-Those kind of boundaries that are so crucial to set.
-Right.
You can have some office hours.
-Yeah.
-So to speak.
Now, you may not be a helping professional.
But if you're trying to assist someone who's got this issues that are chronic and recurring
and very needy, it's okay for you to set those limits and those boundaries.
In fact, it's crucial to your own health and it puts you in a better position to help them.
Because you're not going to burn out as quickly.
-Nope.
You can be available for the next one.
Big thank you to Blu Robinson for helping out with this video today.
If you want to connect to Blu, go to addicttoathlete.com.
Or you can connect with him at liveonpurspose.coach.