Sometimes helping people feels hard, and so is living life.
Months ago I wrote an article on how helping someone with depression or mental illness could prove to be tricky. But I feel that more could be written on this topic. Previously I mainly touched on how supporting someone could be a thankless work, but it’s founded on the assumption that supporting someone is actually worth it. This article challenges that assumption, or rather, expresses my dilemma I’ve faced after trying my best to help for years.
Should I have not helped?
I used to think that supporting people through difficult times — especially when they are mentally ill, is a good thing. And if I’m being honest, it breaks my heart when I saw people just turning away whenever they discover that the other person is depressed, which happens quite frequently. I understand choices, so I respect them, but it has never occurred to me that I myself would one day question if I should help someone.
See, whenever I decided to help someone, I get involved in their life one way or another. And that comes with a degree of accountability, and it can be really hard to draw the line of what can be blamed on me. It seems like whenever I choose to get involved, one way or another I’m part of the reason anything happens to them.
I once got a message from my friend saying that she wanted to kill herself, and I’m worried about her. Since I couldn’t check on her physically, I sent some of her other friends to check on her, and naturally, she became super angry, because I violated her trust (she didn’t want anyone else to know).
I was the one receiving the message because she trusted me enough to confide in me, and now I became involved. Whereas for others who didn’t know, they could sit in ignorance and even if the worst did happen (thankfully it didn’t), those who didn’t get involved in the beginning will probably just carry on with their lives, because you can’t be responsible for inaction, right?
But I might be questioned on whether my response to the crisis actually led to the tragedy, should it happen. Even if people don’t blame me, how can I ever get over the thought that I might have somehow caused this?
In terms of helping people at least, the society seems to only blame people who do things and do them wrongly, and not those who don’t.
The help paradox
Not all depression is equal, and some could be particularly tricky. Like what I said in part 1 of the article, what we do might be perceived as not helping, or even hurting to them. And they could be right. We can read all we want on helping to support someone, but in practice it could be much more difficult. And that’s where the paradox happens.
Just like with everything else, to get good, we need to learn, and learning involves making mistakes. Putting that into depression however, that would mean that in order to learn how to help someone, we will inevitably make mistakes. From my own experience, I only learnt how to listen after years of thinking I’m a good listener but actually I was f*cking judgemental. I’ve invalidated people’s feelings, judged them, tried to bend their minds… till I got hit by depression myself. Based on what my friends told me, I’m a pretty good listener now.
The thing is, to get to where I am today, I hurt someone in the process. Now, mistakes can be small or huge, and in hindsight, it can look insignificant, because what matters is you’re now a better person, right?
But what if we are in the middle of a mistake now? How many people can look at the situation and say “it’s okay you are learning”? In contrast, how many will be quick to judge and point fingers? And the person getting hurt, they could potentially get defensive and end up hurting our feelings in return.
So when enough mistakes pile up and we see things getting worse instead of going into the right direction, it is tempting to just stop helping altogether.
And I’ve made some pretty big mistakes, to the extent that I can no longer just comfort myself with, “you did what you think was best at the time”. Did I? So what if I did, what about the damages I’ve done? I can’t recall how many times I’ve imagined what would have happened if I just don’t get involved in the beginning. Would that person actually be better off?
So this is why I sometimes feel I shouldn’t get involved at all… Maybe I should just take myself out.