How Important is Helping Others to Your Healing?

[Lionheart]

I have heard it said that the "final" stage of healing is to take our experiences and truth and use them to help others. Do you agree or disagree? For me, it is important that I share and hopefully make life a little easier for those who are healing from trauma. It is one way I can take a negative and create something positive. I don't think I can always do this, but when I can, I find it very meaningful. I like it when negative past experiences somehow become "tools" to help others find their own truth and healing. I don't think it is a prerequisite but it is by far one of the nicest things that has come about as I have healed. Perhaps it is best explained as being a "Wounded Healer."

I am here for my own healing first and foremost, but at the same time, I pray that my past experiences can help others on their chosen path. I find it to be a comfort and it makes me happy when it works out that way.

It is important to me that I make a difference whenever I can. Is it important to you as well?

 

[Mee]

I think helping others is important to my humanity more than my healing. My healing has rather focused on the opposite- trying to focus more on my needs. I still find things T tells me are normal ‘selfish’ when I do them.

maybe for me the balance and the stability of balance will be the final stage of healing?

 

[intothelight]

The more sharing that can be done, of experience and ideas, can be helpful. The more options and tools that people find available to them, the more likely they are to find something that will help.

 

[ladee]

I believe that what each person experiances will help someone else. Not feeling alone in our struggles is healing within itself. Others teach me. Just knowing we are not the only one that feels, thinks or expresses our pain helps build trust. Something we all come here lacking. Not just here, but in the world.

 

[internal]

i do my best to help people. if some thing is in front of me. i will try and help. if i cannot help. i try to let it go and offer my presense if it is necessery. prior to my diagosis and all that. i always did try to help. and i do try to help around the house with my daughter and my husband. i watch my behavier, mderate, offer advice if needed.

i volunteered and helped people who were similer to me. scared and with no education and young. i helped in our community. i raised awareness for covid and hiv. i helped lgbt people-resumes, testing, "how to do" things, balala. corona put a stopper on a lot of it thought. i try to help online. i'm not very good at it.

it is a fairly simple matter of me. if some one is suffering and i have the ability to ease it i will try. if i am not capable of helping. i would try to get them to the person who can help them. i am unsure if this is trama or not. it may be. because that i know what it is all like. i want to make sure that other people have the resources and also just even being a person they can trust. and talk to.

it's nice. because i don't know how to do a lot of things. but working with the lgbt group was really empowering. and with my job now i suppose that ido the exact same thing. it is just people that i have never met. but i don't care. every one of the things i see is a human being. and by removing it and tracing it and idenifying the people involved-it's a big deal.

it's something i imagine i will be doing until i drop. the better we develop our software (what we are doing now) the more effective we will be. and that is very good. it means a lot of things. i am good with computers and math, and this is how i can help people for real. and i'm so f*cking grateful to be part of this place and of doing the work i am doing.

even though it's incredibly taxing. it is taxing. that's what we're doing. but someone has to. and as someone who has been there, i know what the f*ck i'm looking at almost 97% of the time. i'm the one who developed the angular propositions (balala computer nonsense) my boss asked me how i knew to start from a lower perspective. and i said well children are smaller than adults; and often they are [balala]

so if we have the opportunity to incorporate this featuer. it is a lot but it is so worth it.

and is we ait relete to my trauma? given the nature of my work i'll have to say yes. at some point all of my trama came up and you know. that's hard. but i just went to the bathroom and put water on my face and calmed down. we have a huge fight in front of us. i might be traumatized but i am the only one here with the ability to do it right.

but let's dig into it. we need to prepare for the next set of recovered devices. so i send my trama aside and i just do it.

sorry if i had said too much.

 

[somerandomguy]

Using my experiences to help others has been absolutely crucial to my recovery from the very beginning.

I recognize that this is not everyone's path, but I think that more people should probably try it. Say what you want about AA, but one big reason it's so successful is that it gives people further into recovery a method of mentoring others who are not as far along, which helps everyone.

 

[Friday]

I have heard it said that the "final" stage of healing is to take our experiences and truth and use them to help others. Do you agree or disagree

Totally disagree.

Helping others -or attempting to- can be distraction, avoidance, compulsion, reenactment, drama/chaos/thrill seeking, attention seeking, a personality trait, habit, learned behaviour, punishment, fear of spending that energy on one’s own life or people in it, and probably countless other things aside from healing. Ranging from destructive & damaging, to neutral, to useful & beneficial.

Final is even worse, than healing. People help others at every possible stage that a person themselves can go through. For better or for worse.

The inherent obligation in the concept also just pisses me off. I have zero problem with the assumption of debt. If I, or anyone else, chooses to take on a debt? That’s fine. And if someone wants to make their help conditional on a debt? I’ll ONLY help you if you pay me, or if you take on this obligation of time/energy, etc.? Shrug. That’s their right. I just think it’s f*cking loooooooooooow bar morality. There’s a reason 911 is a free call, on every phone, even inactivated ones. Yep. Totally understand people need to eat. So if that’s their job? They have the right to charge for their services; for their experience & assistance. But obligating anyone else to make the same decisions? You were helped, so you have to help? That’s like if someone had sex with me and then told me I have to go have sex with someone else now, because they stooped to have sex with me. Nope. Either you’re a pro, and charged me for services rendered -or- you’re helping me with no demand that I do ABC in trade. Blackmail & guilt trips & tricking desperate people into debts they would never otherwise assume or be able to pay? Just ain’t my thing.

I fall into the range of people for whom helping others is a personality trait bordering on compulsion. I run towards trouble, nearly always have. But that doesn’t mean everyone “should”. Nor is it always what’s best for me. People are different, and that’s a damn good thing. Someone who is incapable, disinclined, or simply bad at helping others? Is going to be amaaaaazing at a whole lotta other things. I don’t have the hubris necessary to insist that everyone set aside what they’re good at, to suffer through something they’re not… if I’m helping someone? It’s either out of self interest, payment, or no debt. Those are my choices. Other people are free to make their own.

 

[Tinyflame]

I know some people say what each person goes through makes them uniquely qualified to help another. I don't think that's quite true, because it depends how far healed they are or even open to support or sharing. Though even for others who are struggling or angry etc, it might be exactly what someone else needs. However, I think there's no doubt that certain experiences or traumas by their nature give a lived perspective very different than what some others have (they have other experiences). People have often told me, when I said "I can't say how you feel", - "Yes, you know how I feel, because you have been through it too".

So I suppose some are called to share explicitly, but for me helping is only based on what I can try to offer, or comes to me, and as @Mee @intothelight and @ladee said, if it can help or support someone, that is good. But for me it is a basic requirement of humanity, regardless of whatever experiences. It's called human-kind, after all. But that doesn't mean it's not part of your explicit purpose @Lionheart , or @somerandomguy , if you feel called that way I would follow it.

 

[RNrecovery]

For me helping others was the start of my healing. I found my way to a helping career. When I was at my lowest I had that extra motivation to help myself so I found help others. After I stabilized I knew that the calmer and more educated I was, the better care I would be able to provide for others.

I will say though that it can backfire. Caring for others made me a better person but also used it as a way to deny myself. Being cared for is not a comfortable place to be for me. I am working hard on this area.

 

[Tornadic Thoughts]

Knowing I have genuinely helped another living being is indeed therapeutic. Regardless of the capacity and/or the species. Knowing I have the resources and energy, but it isn't my place to do so, isn't an easy feeling to work through. At times I've disregarded it and done it anyway, only to regret it later. Glad I learned, though.

Being able to healthily manage my energy (be it bodily, monetarily, etc.), and accurately assessing whether I am even supposed to be offering my help - and experiencing that I was correct in that assessment - is even more therapeutic. It's not the role of anyone else to be my therapy, though, unless I'm paying them for that intended purpose.

Am I truly trying to help someone, or am I subconsciously trying to meet an unmet need(s) of my own via offering help? The answer to that matters a great deal. The latter can breed resentment and can cause unintended harm in many ways.

I used to not really pay much mind to anything but the humans (my professional role for 13+ years was to be a life skills instructor/residential counselor/recreational therapist/volunteer coordinator/etc. at a voc. rehab - then I did non-medical in-home care giving for a while), and domesticated beings/pets (I've done a lot of volunteer work/helped with fostering/pet sitting/currently help socialize potential and active service and therapy dogs).

Gratefully, a major health scare lead me to peek behind some curtains I never knew I needed to peep out, for the health of it. I now also advocate for the multiple species most often disregarded/ignored/indirectly neglected, who can't speak up, that end up on menus under marketed names that we've been taught we MUST consume.

Realizing that we also digest energies attached to the products we choose to consume was quite an eye-opener. That's been a painful experience in so many ways. There's no escaping being exposed to it, and as a childhood sexual abuse/domestic abuse/rape survivor, it pains me to no end to see how many folks don't connect the dots as to what happens to many of these animals behind the scenes - or even worse, that they do, but continue to pay others to carry on the shit show.

The repeated hard-learned lesson I tend to keep spiraling back to is that no matter who I'm helping, if I'm not consistent with the flow of daily cell-ph care that my own healing requires, my perception of the help that someone else needs can easily get misconstrued.

I need to be invited to help, except for the blatantly emergent obvious times, and an invitation can arrive in many forms. Being ready to recognize and being response-able enough to follow through can sometimes be too much to handle. Is today a day I can afford the extra baggage fees? Hmmm....

 

[Lionheart]

I like helping people out when I am able. This means that I must first take care of myself and ny needs. Then if requested, I can make suggestions, encourage healing thoughts and behaviors, and love the person as a fellow human being. How important is that to my healing? It isn't really I can heal without needing to help anyone, but if I can make a bit of positive energy arise from this cesspool of chronic illness, fear, and negativity, then I don't see why not. It is just the kind of person I am and it really has nothing to do with my personal recovery except to know I helped someone in some small way....that brings me much happiness.