It's so hard to find good help
Sat 21 Nov 2020 by mskala Tags used: psychologyYour friend Andy tells you that he's planning to move to a new apartment next Saturday, and asks you to help. How do you help Andy? Maybe you'll show up at the old place on Saturday, help him load boxes onto the truck, and unload them at the new place. Helping Andy means participating in the achievement of his goal - actually doing some of the work yourself so that he doesn't have to.
Your friend Barbara tells you that she's planning to secure her PHP installation next Saturday. How do you help Barbara? Unless you're already involved in administering her servers, you're probably not going to log into them and start issuing commands as root; that would be inappropriate. More likely you'll direct her to instructional resources from which she can learn about common pitfalls, the steps that need to be completed for the different tasks involved, and so on. Helping Barbara doesn't mean participating in the achievement of her goal, but enabling her to do it herself. She will still end up doing all of the work.
Your friend Charlie tells you that he's planning to kill himself next Saturday.
How do you help Charlie? Well, you're probably not going to show up at his door with a sawed-off shotgun on Saturday and shoot him in the face when he answers. That would be participating in the achievement of the stated goal, helping Charlie just the same way you would help Andy... but most of us would consider it far beyond inappropriate.
You're also probably not going to help Charlie the way you would help Barbara, not by directing him to instructional resources on methods for killing himself, nor by simply handing him the weapon. You're not going to enable the achievement of the stated goal, not even indirectly, not even if he's still going to do all the work himself.
Instead, most likely you're going to treat Charlie's stated goal as a symptom of mental illness - the desire being a problem in itself that needs to be solved as a high priority - and you'll attempt to "help" him no longer have that desire, most likely by offering some kind of psychiatric counselling. "Helping" Charlie means, by all means, preventing him from doing what he said he intended to do.
By now the word "help" has made a complete 180-degree turn. Helping one friend means your doing real work to cause the goal to be achieved more easily, or at all. Helping the second friend is indirect - you don't actually do any of the work, she still has to do it all - but you still feel that you've helped because you were part of the chain of causes leading to the achievement of the goal. But "helping" the third friend is the opposite action: you're obligated to actively interfere with the achievement of his stated goal. "Helping" Charlie is the opposite of literally helping.
What if you offer that same kind of anti-help to Andy? If he tells you he's planning to move to a new apartment, that's a perfectly ordinary and non-pathological thing that many people do as part of their normal lives. But what if you perceive it as a mental health emergency and you offer him cognitive behavioural therapy to help him transform himself into the kind of person who doesn't have the symptom of planning to move to a new apartment? At that point it's no longer Andy who is several boxes short of a truckload. You've lost touch with reality yourself. At best, you come across as refusing to help, in a strange and complicated way.
"Dude, if you can't help me move because you've got other plans for that day, you could just say so!"
But even offering to help Andy in the indirect but less obstructive way that you might help Barbara, would be inappropriate, rude, and not a good way to treat a friend. You don't help Andy by just telling him how to pick up boxes and load them onto a truck, except maybe in some very special circumstance where you have expert knowledge about technical details of that process which you know he doesn't have and could benefit from. In the ordinary case, Andy wasn't asking for your advice on the subject of moving, he was asking you to show up and participate, doing some of the work yourself. Helping him isn't helpful if it still leaves him with just as many boxes that he has to pick up and load himself. And substituting advice for direct participation is, again, not help but a weird indirect way of refusing the request.
If someone asks for your help then you'd better know which kind of help is appropriate to the situation; all the more so if they didn't ask and you are offering your "help" unsolicited.
6 comments
As I said recently on Twitter, "The bit where you declare the goal to be an obstacle, think of clever ways to avoid it, and demand gratitude for providing this assistance." That comes up with relationship advice especially frequently. I think it may come from an excessive commitment to the techniques of "lateral thinking."
When I wrote the above piece I was trying to limit it to good-faith help. Someone who sincerely wants to do what's most helpful for the recipient, and isn't just trying to twist the situation into a way to score points for themselves, may avoid bogging down the project with extra questions and outright contradictory behaviour, but still faces the question of whether to literally assist in the completion of the stated goal or to consider the situation on a more abstract level. But the distinction between good-faith and bad-faith help can be hazy, because people are often trained to think that asking lots of questions, for instance, is an inherently helpful activity. And they may reach for that tactic in difficult situations just so they can believe they *did something* when they really don't have the ability to help in a more direct way.
There's a belief that it's important not to walk away from a friend and that saying you tried is more important than actually succeeding; so someone who has no power to help in a substantive way may feel pressure to just do *something*, anything, even if what they end up doing does not advance and may even impair the goal. We all should heed the wisdom of Daffy Duck, who says "Don't just do something! Stand there!"
Matt - 2021-01-21 06:16
Like sure, in the realm of politics, or sabotaging someone at a job, or pickup-artists and 'nice-guys' in a relationship. That kind of bad-faith help is common. But that is all just a Machiavellian form of betrayal. True bad-faith help was never intended to be help at all. So I don't think it can ever count. It's just sabotage with more steps.
However I also don't believe that the majority of people engaging in the seven behaviors we've covered are trying to score points for themselves. I can't. Not consciously at least. That kind of non-help is too widespread and common. If people were doing it deliberately at the rate I see it then I say bring on the Four Horsemen. I'm done. There's nothing worth saving. So again, I don't think bad-faith help is relevant using that definition either.
I wholeheartedly agree with what you wrote. However I feel it only explains only a minority of non-help. My reasoning is witnesses. The actions of 3rd parties that cannot do more than nod or upvote/downvote. The peanut gallery vastly outnumbers the two people acting as the requestor and the "helper." Their behavior cannot be explained by the reasons you mentioned. They cannot score figurative points.
The evidence is on sites like reddit with literal points. Where someone provides non-help and it will be upvoted much higher than even the person asking a question. Even though all the reply has done is rephrase the question as a statement. There's no explanation for that. Doubly so when the person asking for help is downvoted or the non-help is explicitly called out for what it is.
I think most people simply don't see any of the problems written here at all. And when they do, they don't see them as problems. I think people are generally just dumb.
Steve - 2021-01-21 12:48
I read an exchange like that every other day. It is easy to understand why the non-helper is combative or trying to score points or whatever. But why is it the top response? What's going through the minds of 3rd parties reading that exchange? Why was the OP downvoted? The 3rd party readers don't have a stake in it nor can they value-signal. They aren't doing it for thanks. (Though I only stressed the gratitude angle above because I find it particularly galling. I don't think that it is a real motivation except for narcissists.) The only reason I can come up with why I see it so often is... people are dumb.
I'd say the vast majority of posts with under 10 votes asking for help follow that exact same pattern. (Including the edit stating what's not helpful.) And those types of posts are likely a majority of posts on help forums of all types. It's obviously good faith "help", but also really really stupid.
Steve - 2021-01-21 14:03
One has the right to do with one's body what one wishes, whatever that happens to be (this doesn't necessarily apply to bodies contained within one's own, however).
Hyolobrika - 2022-01-18 11:31
Matt - 2022-01-18 12:02
Like the "ask extraneous questions ad nauseam" kind of help...
Where are you planning to move? What are you planning to move? How are you planning to move? Why are you planning to move?
You are moving by *car*??!? Everyone knows that bulk cargo shipping by sea is the most efficient method by ton. Justify to me why you are moving by car. And justify to me every single other decision you've made up to this point that brought you to the decision to move. You've already proven you are an idiot since you didn't immediately know about bulk shipping. I cannot possibly help you until then. Not until every possible thing is known in advance and *I* agree with all the answers you've provided so far. No project ever has unknowns after all. You KNOW the elevation and air density before moving at both locations. It's fact you should be able to find easily. Oh you don't want to tell me?!? How dare you! I've only been helping up to this point! You ungrateful jerk. Die in a fire!
Or the "justify/ignore your restricting criteria" kind of help...
You want to move a bed on a car? That's a terrible idea. Get a truck. The fact that car/bed are hard restrictions or all that will be available to catch that falling guy before he face-plants into the pavement is beside the point. GET. A. TRUCK. Fine. I'll bring my truck over in 3 months. Maybe. If you are lucky and I'm feeling generous after how stubborn you've been.
Or the "an explanation of what you are doing is the same as help" kind of help...
You need help moving? Well you need to take the objects you own out of your old residence. Then you need to put them into transportation. Don't use a car! Use bulk shipping by sea! Then take a detailed inspection of those objects because you haven't seen them in months. Anything could have happened since they were not in your direct possession. Now move them by truck to your new residence. There. I have helped. You should be grateful. Now is the time for you to express your gratitude.
Or the "doing the exact thing I told you not to do" kind of help...
I'm being illegally evicted. I need help to stay in my apartment. -- Oh I will help you move. -- NO. I want to stay exactly where I am. Under no circumstances are you to touch my stuff! I need witnesses and documents. -- You will be happy to learn that while you were at work I moved all your stuff outside. If you hurry back you should be able to move it all to your new place before any of it is stolen. Where's my thank you?
These are my big four of 'help'. There are more. Especially aggravating when it comes to something like help with relationships. I've personally found that genuine and real help to be rare and precious.
Steve - 2021-01-21 03:34