The chapter for allies

This is the part that will not primarily be of interest to people who are struggling but rather for their friends and allies. You want to help, but don’t know how? You do not want to add to the stress? You want to look out for your friends but it is hard? Or you have friends who mean well and you don’t know how to tell them they are not helping? This chapter is for you. It is addressed to the friends and allies. So when I say “you”, I mean “dear ally”.

Ask

The only person who knows how your friend feels and what they need is your friend. If you want to help, ask what you can do. If your friend does not have the capacity to come up with an idea or maybe does not dare to ask for the help they need, make suggestions you would feel comfortable offering.
Possible questions could be:

“Do you want company or would you rather be alone?”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“Can I do anything to help?”
“Would it help you if I did some shopping/made you dinner/called your company/your family/lent a hand with the household/walked your dog?”
“Would you like to be distracted?”

Then listen to the answer and accept it. I am not trying to say that you would not, but when I say that I do not want to talk about it I often get asked “Why not?”, which would require talking about it. If your friend says that they need space, it is not because they do not like you. It is just that it is sometimes easier to just look after themselves when they do not have someone else around to worry about. Why would they worry about you? Because brains are jerks.

Or if they say “Thank you, dinner for today is sorted” maybe this means that breakfast tomorrow is not. People who are in a bad place are not good at asking for things or sharing their needs. I know this makes it harder for you, but trust me, if we could make this easier on everyone, we would.

There is also something like too many questions, the point will vary from person to person and from situation to situation. So once you got a couple questions answered with still no clear idea of what to do because every answer was either “No” or “I don’t know”, offer to check in later.

Do not count on your friend to call you when they can think of something. They may not be able to turn a need into a request. Calling people to ask for help is hard. Calling people at all can be hard. Maybe you can check with them if they would rather like you to call, drop by, text or e-mail later.

Be honest

Be honest with yourself and with your friend. Offer only help that you are really willing to give. Go only so far as you can comfortably go. Your friend would not want to impose on you or have you bending over backwards. They would not want you to stress yourself out, neglect your needs just to meet theirs.

Your friend probably already feels like a burden. If you feel burdened by things you are doing for your friend they will probably pick up on that, or hear about it from someone else. This could make it much less likely that they will accept help at all the next time, not necessarily only from you.

So, with respect to yourself and your friend: be kind, but be careful. Before you offer something just to offer something consider if you really want and are able to do this.

Believe

When someone shares a story of trauma with you there are a lot of possible responses:

Shock
Anger
Compassion
Disbelief

All of these are understandable. All of these mean that you care. You may find it hard to believe, but trust that your friend is the expert on their own experience and feelings. Even if you have never had something like the described situation happen to you, even if you do not think something like that could happen to anyone, believe that this is what your friend experienced.

If someone shares their trauma they are opening up to you and choosing to be vulnerable. They, however remotely, revisit the trauma and are faced with the situation and their pain again. They are probably hurt, afraid, maybe ashamed, embarrassed and insecure.

Calling their experience into question might easily feel like they have to justify how they feel, like they have to defend their pain. They might feel like it is their own fault for experiencing a situation as traumatic. Even if you do not understand why the situation was experienced as painful, believe your friend when they say that it was.

Unsolicited advice

When a friend is visibly having a problem or tells you about something that bothers them and you have an idea how to fix it, you tell them, because you want to help. And your friend knows you only want to help. So where is the problem?

Simple example: Your friend tells you that their shoulder hurts and you have this fantastic stretching exercise that helped you a lot, so of course you tell your friend all about it. And they are less than enthusiastic. What happened?

Odds are, your friend knows a dozen stretching exercises for their shoulder, at least three recommended for exactly this issue by a physiotherapist. Your friend probably knows they should really be doing those but for some reason they just can’t. It happens. Your friend might feel guilty about not doing these exercises and is in pain because of not doing them, and beating themselves up seven ways to Sunday already.

Your friend is probably half paralyzed by the mountain of things they should be doing and the guilt and shame about not doing them, and fear about things getting worse and never better.

If you come along and put one more thing on top of that mountain you’re adding more guilt.
Your friend knows you just want to help, and thus dredges up the last remnant of energy to smile and say thank you, because that is what you do when someone tries to help. It can leave them drained and even more intimidated by their mountain. So if your friend says that their shoulder hurts they probably just want to share. And maybe be told “Poor bunny”, because sometimes that helps.

That does not mean you cannot offer advice, but it means that it would be nice to offer it instead of giving it. Instead of describing the exercise you could ask “Would you want some advice on that?” If they do not want any, do not make the mountain higher.

Deed and word

If you can, back up your words with help. Try to rephrase “You should…” into “Do you want help to…”

• Taking a break sometimes requires someone else to step in and take over.
• Standing up to people can require support.
• Walking away is often easier when someone is walking with you.

My experience is: By just telling me what I should do, true as it might be, without offering any assistance in doing so, I usually just feel pushed around by one more person, just felt more stress, more blame being put on me.

It is totally okay if you do not want to get involved. It is totally okay if you do not want to help. In that case, consider at least not piling more pressure on top.

Toxic positivity

Some people tell others to smile, to “look on the bright side”. Some say that things are not really that bad if you take a step back, or that they worry needlessly, or “Can’t you just believe that I mean you no harm?”
The answer is “No”.

If they could just look on the bright side, they would, because being depressed or anxious is no fun. If they could stop worrying, they would, because worrying is taxing. If they could believe that other people have their best interests at heart and not at an instinctive level expect others to hurt them, they would, because always being afraid and on the lookout is painful.

Some people come from situations where they had to be constantly on watch for every nuance because they only got a tiny shift in atmosphere as a warning before they got hurt. Physically, emotionally, both. By parents, partners, whatever. This is hard to let go.
Telling others to smile is to tell them to ignore or lie about their feelings, something that many have done for too long already. Being honest about how they feel might be hard for your friend, so please do not make it harder.

Telling others to look on the bright side or to just not worry invalidates their experience. There might be no bright side for them or the other part is just so bad that no amount of bright side can make up for it. When someone loses an arm in an accident and gets told to look on the bright side and be happy they are still alive, well, they still lost an arm. On one hand it might be “Losing an arm is better than dying”. On the other hand they might rather see “Not losing an arm is better than losing one” or “I’d rather not have had the accident in the first place”. Your bright side might not apply to their point of view. Respect the pain they are in without trying to diminish it.
Telling your friend to just not be hurt by anything you say because they should know that you love them is also a tough one, and it adds guilt to the pain.

When you stick a knife into someone by accident you do not expect them to stop hurting and bleeding just because you did not mean to do that. Emotional wounds are much the same thing. Your friend cannot control what hurts them. They can control whether or not they trust you that you did not mean to and stay your friend, which might take a lot of courage from their side, but they cannot will themselves to not bleed.

Protect yourself

You are a friend who wants to help a friend. This is amazing and cannot be taken for granted, but please protect yourself.
If your friend has not yet accepted that they are struggling or that they need help you cannot make them see this. They have to learn for themselves that they need help. They need to want it before they can accept it.

You are a friend, not a therapist. This means that neither should you let yourself be pushed into the role of therapist, nor should you accept the role. One can be harmful for you, the other for your friend. Think of it as performing surgery on the soul. Therapists know how to deal with sudden bleeding, heart failure, or infections, they know what to watch out for. You do not. But unlike a therapist you can be a friend, as long as you are comfortable being a friend.

People with mental illness or chronic pain, people who struggle, can be taxing. They require special attention. They need more help. You will probably put in more energy into these friendships than into others. As a reward, they might not even show up for your birthday because they just can’t.

At times it will feel like everything you say will hurt your friend and you do not know how to phrase things so that they know that you care about them. At times it will feel like your friend is cold or self centered, insensitive or selfish. Your friend is trying to find a balance and will occasionally swing too far in the one or other direction.

You are both worthy of attention and care and affection.
So if at some point you feel like you have to step away because it is too much for you, that is okay.
Your feelings are valid, and your well-being is important, too.