Tag: helping others

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Eating Peace: The Weight of Thinking You Need To Help Others Who Are Suffering

One area I’ve noticed over the years of working with those of us with eating woes is one particular type of eater.

An eater with such a deep broken heart about other people’s suffering…

…that they unconsciously move to help those in need almost as a compulsion all in itself. Like they can’t help it.

Often, they are nurses, teachers, healers, holistic practitioners, counselors and therapists, maybe moms.

Now, helping others is a beautiful act. But often, when we’ve got this underlying belief running about needing them desperately to be OK….our efforts to help them are not really helpful.

When we’re worried about other people we feel the weight of the world on our shoulders, literally. It’s all over us.

We seem images of people close to us, and the suffering of humanity, and feel the pain of it all.

The belief “I need to help other people” can be very, very stressful.

People feel guilty about questioning it, like it will mean they will never help others, and they’ll be selfish, isolated, uncaring people.

Can you really know that’s true, that you’ll forget about others, if you question that you need to help them?

“Being soothed and oral intake are closely associated in the human mind…Food becomes a substitute for nourishment. Being cut off from our own natural self-compassion is one of the greatest impairments we can suffer. Along with our ability to feel our own pain go our best hopes for healing, dignity and love. ” ~ Gabor Mate, MD

Much love,

Grace

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An Odd Thing To Do If You Know Someone Sad

Yesterday in our telegroup Turning Relationship Hell To Heaven we looked at a powerfully stressful thought that causes a lot of insanity on the planet…

She should be happy. He should be happy. Everyone should be happy!

All by itself, the idea that you want people to be happy, content, free, or peaceful is of course beautiful, true, and genuinely loving.

We love the world to be happy, all of us do.

But it’s so easy for this one to get twisted into multiple knots of confusion….

….and to bring great suffering upon yourself by wishing someone would be happy who really isn’t.

You know when the wish is stressful, because you feel pain inside your heart and an urgency that they change. You can feel the voices saying crazy mean things like “Get Happy Now, you miserable victim!” or “Snap out of it! Come on!” or “Gimme a smile!” or “Get yourself into therapy immediately!”

What if you first just slowed down this whole Race-For-Happiness thing and accepted that person’s bitter unhappiness, now.

Maybe your kid fell and cut her lip, maybe your friend is going on yet again about her awful boyfriend, maybe your dad is sitting in his chair staring out the window with a lost look, maybe another friend is going into a treatment program and acting suicidal, maybe someone you love lost someone very special.

That person cries, looks sad, sighs deeply, tells you their story. Maybe you’ve heard it before.

Then YOU feel sad, irritated, annoyed or anxious.

Stop.

Notice…who would you be without the belief they need to be happy?

Sometimes people feel guilty, just to imagine not having that belief.

I might skip along and ditch that person forever. I might be uncaring and never helpful. I might be completely self-centered. I might wind up alone, untethered, crazy. I might be abandoned. They might hate me.

I have to help other people become happy! I can’t just be happy and not care about them, that would be WEIRD.

Try it on, though….like you’re trying on a fabulous, interesting, creative new stress-free outfit.

Not having the belief that anyone else needs to be different than they are in this moment.

It doesn’t mean you don’t think they’ll be happier tomorrow, or that you hold in your heart that they arrive at happiness sooner than later, or that you want peace and awareness for them when they feel empty.

But there’s a sense of trust in this moment, here, now…that all that is being felt, including sadness, grief, rage or suicidal thoughts exist in reality….and that there is a path unfolding for everyone.

That’s life.

Without the belief that someone has to be happy in order for me to be at peace, I am free to return to my own happiness.

I can feel the wonder of Not Knowing and remain steady, my practice only to feel love, aliveness, joy in this moment now….even with that unhappy person sitting with me.

In fact, I notice I’m way more attentive, responsive, compassionate, and oddly enough, even more connected to this dear sad person.

It’s like I’m not afraid of sadness or grief or unhappiness in them. I can handle it. I know it’s temporary. I know there’s a substantive, deep pool of acceptance at the bottom of everything.

Even death, depression, failure, loss or hurt.

“Hurt feelings or discomfort of any kind cannot be caused by another person. No one outside me can hurt me. That’s not a possibility. It’s only when I believe a stressful thought that I get hurt. And I’m the one who’s hurting me by believing what I think. This is very good news, because it means that I don’t have to get someone else to stop hurting me. I’m the one who can stop hurting me. It’s within my power…..Questioning our thoughts is the kinder way. Inquiry always leaves us as more loving human beings.” ~ Byron Katie

I don’t have to feel hurt, dread, sad, terrified when someone I love is hurting. Their reactions to their life does not “hurt” me unless I believe my stressful thinking.

As I turn the thoughts around about other people and their pain, and what I think it means, I notice I trust that the universe has got this.

Not me.

I have no absolute answers. I can be here with them, joining closely with love, and not believe they should be any different.

I have no idea what their experience is for, I don’t know what it really means, I don’t know why it happened or didn’t happen.

And that’s OK. Completely.

What a bizarre and strange thing to do when someone else close to me is hurting: nothing. Except be there, without demanding they be different.

Or….maybe joining with them in their unhappiness was the really bizarre, strange move.

As an inquirer in the teleclass said as she described her family “they’re like crabs trying to climb out of a bucket–they pinch and crawl and keep pulling each other down–back into the dark bucket. No one able to get out.”

Who would I be without the thought that the bucket is sad, the crabs are unhappy, this is a terrible, desperate situation from hell?
Unknown. Open.
Who knows what will happen, next?
Much love,
Grace
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I Should Have Helped Her

This past weekend the sky was mostly gray, the leaves were mostly gone from all the trees and in thick clumps along the street, and my mind was mostly busy with thoughts that appeared random on the surface.

When my mind is buzzing then often there is a little anxious thought or two moving around, often related to the past or the future (they always are).

In the middle of many images and ideas, plans, thinking…I remembered a young professional woman from Europe who I worked with several years ago.

She had been involved with a man who had decided it was time to marry, but not her. She wasn’t the proper type for his family and what he wanted to preserve as his tradition, so he needed to move on.

She had been devastated, even though she had known already about his beliefs and family and that she didn’t fit into his tradition as a mate.

Her story brought out difficulty for her….but what she noticed about doing The Work was really interesting to me.

We had a couple of sessions and then she said “It’s not working”.

She told me she went right back to pining, longing, desperation, isolating, curling up in bed and crying about this lost relationship….

….even after finding great internal relief through doing The Work.

It’s like it didn’t “stick”. It didn’t really make a deep, ever-present change.

I suggested she attend an in-person retreat, go to The School, immerse herself in self-inquiry.

She never came back for another session.

I wondered about how she was doing and what else had unfolded in her fascinating life….and I also wondered about what is going on that she didn’t really get The Work.

Then I realized….this is time for ME to do The Work….not her.

  • I should have helped her
  • she was too stuck in her story
  • she didn’t go deep enough
  • she wasn’t truly questioning her beliefs
  • I want her to have what I have
  • I should have explained it better
  • I was missing something

Is it true that I should have done a better job, that I should have offered it differently? That I didn’t help her, and I should have?

Yes! I want every single person to get at least a spark of insight, but preferably a massive wave of awareness, of enlightenment…

…..I want them to end their stories, and feel the relief, the change, a stunning new way of looking at the world, at their entire lives.

They should feel a shift!

Really? Seriously? Everyone?

Well…no. No.

No one I have ever known or heard of has ever touched everyone in a way that produces awareness, enlightenment, freedom, relief.

Not even the great spiritual masters.

What am I even hoping for?

It all seemed suddenly very odd, all the thoughts I’ve ever had about helping other people, providing support, hope, a shift, some kind of change, a different perspective.

All these results have nothing to do with me, actually.  

How do I react when I believe the thought that I need to support, help, or provide some kind of shift or change for someone, and they are not experiencing one?

I feel like a failure, like I’m missing something, like I should be better, like I should say the right thing at the right time.

I think about the woman’s work and her despair, her worksheets, what we did The Work on and if there was a way I could have assisted her in getting to a different core belief.

I rehash her issue, her situation.

It’s not very kind, or easy, inside my own mind.

People feel this way sometimes when they’re dating, and someone says “no thanks”. Or when they’re interviewing for a job, and the employer says “not you”. Or when they’re getting chosen for a team and they’re chosen last.

So who would I be without the thought that someone saying “no thanks” meant I should have done it different, better, that I was missing something, or a failure?

Sooooo very grateful, full of wonder, smiling as I remember that lovely young woman.

Excited to continue the journey. Noticing the incredible range of people who show up to do The Work with me….the many situations and experiences they have.

Aware that there are so many healing modalities, practitioners, ways of working, methods, teachers….

….I myself have benefitted from so many. Not only The Work. The world is full of incredible creativity and offers so many ways to unravel stories and pain.

  • I should not have helped her
  • she was NOT too stuck in her story, I was too stuck in my story that she was stuck
  • she did go deep enough, she was so honest
  • she WAS truly questioning her beliefs, I wasn’t truly questioning my beliefs
  • I do NOT want her to have what I have, I want her to have what SHE has
  • I should NOT have explained it better
  • I was not missing anything

“No one has ever been able to control their thinking, although people may tell the story of how they have. I don’t let go of my thoughts–I meet them with understanding. Then THEY let go of me.~ Byron Katie 

“Can the inner weather be seen as impersonally as the outer weather, or do we imagine that the inner weather is my doing: my fault or my triumph?” ~ Joan Tollifson 

Oh boy! Any “no thank you” simply shows me the way reality moves.

Beautifully.

Love, Grace