Hi. Welcome back, everyone. I’m your host, Sarah Southwell, Founder of GroWise Be Well, a holistic and inspirational lifestyle company for families of all shapes and sizes. GroWise Be Well, empowering you.

Season 2, Episode 2 Helping Others Podcast Transcript

[00:00:25] SS: Hi, everyone. Welcome back. I’ve been thinking a lot lately, about how to help others. We all say we want to help others and we generally do. I think most of us do. I believe that most of us are very good at heart and want good things for others, as well as ourselves. It’s interesting, because when you really get into the back and forth with someone who really needs help from someone who’s grounded and can maintain positivity, a lot of times it gets a little bit trickier than just saying, “Yeah, I’m going to help you with this, because it involves energy and it involves a give and take between you and the other person.”

One of the hardest lessons I’ve had to learn in my life is that if the person that you can see is down and they’re negative and they’re unhappy and they seem to be stuck in a repetitive pattern over weeks, or months, that they just barely come up for a breath of fresh, positive optimism before they sink back down into their pit of despair, and you want to help them.

A lot of times, they don’t want your help and they can’t see the pit that they’re in. They’ve become so comfortable there, that it seems as if it’s home to them. They tend to repel other people. Other people can only stand to be around them for short periods of time, not because they’re nasty or mean, but because the energy that comes off of them. People can pick up on that and they can over time, figure out that that person just – they either suck all my good energy from me, or it takes everything I’ve got to protect my own good energy while I’m around them.

I feel bad for them, but I don’t want to lose my good energy by helping them. I think that at some point, we have this moment where we say, “Oh, I’ve tried a few things I know of already. They haven’t really had an effect. How far do I want to go with this?” We might even become a little bit nervous about getting pulled into their pit. Not that we couldn’t get out, but just that we know, that’s not some place we want to be.

Today, I’d really like for you all to think about this topic with me, because it is one that’s ongoing in my life. Always. Because I’m sensitive to other people’s energy, I tend to pick up pretty quickly when someone’s ruminating on something and it’s starting to eat them. Or if they’re unhappy and I can feel the waves of sadness, or depression, or despair, lost all hope. “Oh, I’ve worked really hard on this project. Now, it’s just ruined and it’s done.” I feel it emanating off of them, as if waves were literally hitting me with that.

I tend to want to jump right in, because I like to stay on the sunny side of life. I don’t always. Thankfully, I have people in my life that help me when I accidentally fall into my own pit. They help me out and then I carry on. Well, thankfully. I’m past the days of repetitively falling into that pit. I used to a lot. I hit some pretty deep lows in my life. Now, I am more aware.

Thankfully, I realize when I start to feel, or think a certain way, that it’s leading me to that pit and I can change direction. I’ll be like, “Ooh. Oh, okay. Yeah. I don’t want to go there.” How do you help others who either aren’t aware that they’re in a pit, or they’re in that pit and they don’t want to come out, or they’re in that pit and they want to come out and they do want help?

Well, I have to tell you. I don’t have all the answers. I wish I did. I’d write a book that sells for millions of dollars. It solved everyone’s problems. I don’t have all the answers. I don’t think that anyone does have all the answers for every situation. I think every situation is unique. It deserves to have thoughtfulness applied and it deserves someone to really spend some time with that very specific situation and person.

For those that are unaware that they’re even in a pit, that’s going to be pretty hard to help them, let’s say. Help them in any way, beyond just being kind to them. They may even start to pull on your energy after you’ve tried to talk to them, get them to open up. Maybe you even have a slightly successful conversation about well, you’ve been seeming a little down lately. They open up about some things, but they just aren’t ready to see that there’s any positive outcome.

You may end up just needing to put out a protective energetic barrier around you when you’re with them and have hope. Always, always have hope. Have hope and love in your heart and your soul and your mind and know that someday, it’ll work out for them. When it does, maybe you’ll be there and you guys can work on whatever it is together. Maybe they’ll reach out and really want to pull themselves out of that pit one day.

What you need to be careful of in that situation is that again, people who don’t want to change, or recognize their situation, they’re not going to be easy to work with, unless of course, you’re trained in that and they come to see you as a doctor, or a therapist of some kind. Obviously, you’ll have all the tools you need. As a friend, as a family member, it’s very hard to see someone in that pit and not just want to go down and eat cookies with them, and recognize that you don’t want to enable their pit dwelling.

You want to ask them to please join you up in the light, and where it’s full of sunshine and positivity. Keep extending the offer whenever you can, but don’t overextend. Don’t try and fix them. They need to do the work for themselves for it to be long-lasting. I have learned that I have this hero complex, as they like to call it, I think in the trade, in the healthy communication trade, shall I say. How you communicate with others. I have this hero complex. I want to save everyone. I want to go in and make everything good.

“Oh, it looks like it’s going downhill. Oh, well, let me fix that for you.” It’s not the right thing to do all the time. You’ll have to be the judge of when it is the right time. I used to pull that one out all the time. Then I realized, that I was draining myself of my own energy. It wasn’t always needed, or appreciated. You have to learn that the hard way, if that’s part of your character is wanting to help people, saving them and making thing making everything okay. Well, they’re the only ones that can make things okay for themselves. Just keep that in mind.

If you have someone who’s in that pit, they’re aware they’re in that pit and they’re really just looking for some way out, they realize, “Gosh, I really don’t want to be here and I really want to be happy.” I think there’s a lot of things that you can do, but number one, of course, is always just to be a friend. A true friend doesn’t just continue to give and give and give them themselves. A true friend sets boundaries as well.

Knowing that to be a really good friend, you’re going to have to say no sometimes and you’re going to have to defend your own boundary at some point and say, “Gosh, what you just said made me feel uncomfortable.” I would really like for you not to say that again. Here’s why it made me feel uncomfortable and maybe help them understand and learn.

That’s something a true friend does. They’re honest and they have boundaries. Always again, keeping the hope and optimism and knowing that someday, this person if you’re this beaming ray of sunshine and positivity, I mean, obviously, not the unrealistic cartoon bunny rabbit that bounces around and everything’s great. I’m talking about a real person who has ups and downs, but the majority of the time you’re pretty positive on life. You you’re pretty sure that everything’s going to be A-okay, and that you know that you’re giving it all you’ve got and that it’s going to work out, that it’s going to work out in a way that’s best for you, because that’s what the universe tends to do. We don’t always get what we want, but we always get what we need.

That means, sometimes we don’t need exactly what we’re asking for. We need something just slightly different, that either helps us out, or helps us learn something. Know that that person that seems down and out, they also are going through a journey and they’re learning about themselves and they need that time as well. If it becomes uncomfortable for you to be around them, then just simply say to them, “Look, I’m here for you whenever you need me, but I can’t hang out with you every single day. It tends to start to make me ache and feel a little bit down myself. I certainly want to be with you. When you’re read and if you need someone to talk to, please call me anytime. I can’t necessarily be with you, as much as we were.”

Allowing them also that time to go through their healing process. Then you’ve got someone who is just maybe the glass is half empty all the time. They’re not really in a pit, but they’re just down on life. Everything they try just doesn’t seem to work out. Sometimes they think about giving it all up and just going hiking, or living on a beach and doing nothing with their lives. Those people are sometimes the most challenging, because I think what’s happened maybe in their life is that they’ve been – Unfortunately, they’ve been given the same lesson over and over and over again to learn from and they haven’t yet learned from it. The universe keeps giving them the same scenario, or the same lesson over and over.

It’s very hard to explain to them when they’re in that mindset, that well, I mean, maybe this is just a lesson you’ve just never learned in your life. I mean, that doesn’t come off super appreciated from the other person, understandably so, but it’s probably the truth. Maybe if you could find a way to say it in a heartfelt conversation, maybe suggest that they might want to do some inner work and really look at these situations in their life and think, are some of them the same, are they similar? Could they have changed their responses, or their actions in those situations that would have ended in a different outcome?

Reflection is always a really good thing to encourage people to have. Then at the end of the day, to really just enforce to them that – or reinforce to them that fake it till you make it. I know that seems, God, I used to think that that was cheating. What? That’s cheating. If you don’t really feel happy, why smile? If you don’t really feel everything’s going great, why do you say everything’s going great?

There’s something to be said about the effort it takes to say the positive, even when you feel the negative and to smile. Those energetics of “faking it,” still have energy associated with them. Positive energy is much more powerful than negative energy. The universe will respond to that and they will start to see that oh, okay. You’re putting out positive vibrations. You’ll get positive vibrations back. I always do say, last ditch effort. Fake it till you make it. Smile even when you don’t feel like smiling. The universe will give you something to truly smile about. It’s not a good long-term solution, but definitely realizing that if you want to turn your ship around, that you’re headed to waters that just look a little turbulent and on the – if you turn it around, it’s sunnier and looks a little smoother. To turn the ship around takes effort and you have to work on it.

That means advising your friend, or offering to them to help them. “Hey, can we write mantras together that we can tape all over your apartment, or your house? Do you want to meditate with me? Do you want to find a visualization that you really resonate with and we can do it together? Or, we could write a stream of consciousness and get all that stuff out of you that needs to come out, or we could do a letting go ceremony, or carry around rose quartz with you, so that you feel love, and so that you’re open to love.” There’s a lot of tools that you can use with this person that you care about, if they’re open to them.

Now, and the one thing I really discourage anyone who wants to be a helper is to not have expectations. You can’t go into helping someone try and find the sunnier side of life and expect things from them, because that’s exactly what might turn them back towards the negativity, is that they don’t want to let you down. Why try? They’re just going to fail anyway. If we just back off from expecting them to do it exactly the way we do it and exactly the way you say it and how you suggest it and let them find their own way, we might even learn something in the process as well.

It allows them the freedom to become empowered. That’s really where your friend, or your loved one really starts to shine and where they can really eventually, start to stay out of the turbulent waters, the majority of the time, is to be empowered, to trust themselves, to trust the universe, to trust in positivity, to know that yeah, every once in a while, it’s not going to go the way you want it to go.

Well, okay. Was there a lesson in that? It’s a different way of looking at things. When you fall down, get up again, because it’s worth it. This world is an amazing place. It’s full of beauty and surprise and magic. Yes, sometimes things don’t feel great, but time heals all wounds. Eventually, if you really want it to and you really work on it, it will feel great again.

Believing in the power of the universe, believing in your own power, to draw to you exactly what you want and what you need is so important. That’s really what you’re wanting to get through to this person that might need help, or a little extra love, or assistance if they’ve never written a mantra, or never meditated, or visualized.

Trying really hard not to have the hero complex. Don’t do it for them and don’t try and make it all better for them. They really do need to learn how to pick themselves up, because it won’t be the last time that they’re disappointed, or that they’re down. They’ll need to learn the skills on how to recognize that they’re disappointed, or they’re down and how do they pick themselves back up again. You might not always be there.

The best thing we can do is empower the people around us, who feel as if maybe their course is putting them into some rocky waters. Just empower them to believe in their intuition and their own power to heal themselves and their ability to learn from the lessons that life is throwing at them and that it will all smooth out again someday. That is life.

I find that those of us that want to dream about a life that has absolutely no turbulence, or no rough waters, we’re dreaming of something that doesn’t exist. Life is feeling and it’s experiencing the highs of a super great day and the lows of disappointment, or heartbreak, or loss. It’s a matter of recognizing that this is being human. This is a human experience.

Just remembering that in the midst of the human experience, we are all just energetic beings and we can make the decision as to how long we want to suffer and how quickly we want to return to joy and positivity.

That is what I’ve been thinking about lately, is how to help others. It doesn’t always go as quickly as you’d like and it doesn’t always go the way you’d like. Some people have real obstacles to overcome, such as an addiction, or deep depression, or a chemical imbalance. If it persists as long-term, they really should reach out to a professional, a naturopath, a homeopathist, a doctor of oriental medicine, their primary care physician, anyone they can reach out to and see what might be going on with them.

Because it will work out for the best. They will learn through all this. Sometimes, that’s exactly the road we’re meant to go down is to reach out to a professional, who can help walk us through, how to get back to the sunny side of life. It’s not always as easy as mantras and visualizations. I am aware of that and you should be as well, that it would be pretty challenging to help someone over an addiction with just mantras and visualization. They’d have to really, really want it.

There are those that can and will. Just being aware that every situation is different and using your best judgment. Because at the end of the day, if someone’s looking to you for help out of the pit, they’re looking for you to be empowered and for you to stay positive, full of hope, non-judgmental and belief in a happy day and a wonderful outcome.

Sometimes that’s the best help we can give to someone else is just holding on to that for them, that we know that someday, they’re going to smile and they’re going to feel joy and they’re going to dance and they’re going to sing again. Sometimes that’s enough. Love heals everything. Never forget that, even yourself.

All right, everybody. Love yourselves and love those around you. Spread it freely. I will be back to you next you day with another podcast. All right. Bye!