F*ck Feelings: One Shrink's Practical Advice for Managing All Life's Impossible Problems (2015)

chapter four

fuck helpfulness

Helpfulness is supposed to be a higher form of goodness, but you should know by now that if it feels good (and helpfulness can feel wonderful), it can be dangerous (like that other source of wonderful feelings, heroin).

In fact, altruistic-feeling efforts almost always carry a high risk of making things worse, yet most religious leaders, therapists, politicians, and professional do-gooders talk as if you can never do enough to help your fellow man. Meanwhile, history has too many examples of people with the best intentions—from missionaries to armies to the developers of OxyContin—who end up helping people to death.

The truth is that helpful feelings are what drive us to try to change others, whether it’s possible or not, and regardless of unintended consequences. The most strongly motivated and dedicated would-be helpers have been known to kill people in order to protect them from spiritual harm, and if you’re taking a life to save a soul, you’re probably doing it wrong.

Yes, other people need and deserve our help, and we have a special responsibility to help our families. The fact is, however, that many of us have an off/on switch in our brains when it comes to helpfulness. If it’s on, we feel responsible for whatever happens to our helpees and guilty if we neglect to do something that might help; if it’s off, too bad, they’re on their own, and there’s no guilt to worry about.

We avoid in-between commitments because they make us feel more uncertain about what we’re supposed to do and whether we’ve done enough. Unfortunately, most of life isn’t in the convenient on/off or black/white decision areas; it’s the in-between/gray area where you have to do less and think more. Also known as the place most humans hate the most.

Helping indiscriminately—reacting reflexively instead of thoughtfully—does harm when it’s misdirected, misappropriates resources, and raises risks. Yes, it’s noble to make sacrifices for the sake of others, but not when the chances of benefit are low and the cost and risk are high. Many helpers, by nature, are not interested in doing cost-benefit analyses; they live to help and despise risk-benefit managers as coldhearted, selfish, and timid. They would readily sacrifice their entire family resources for an incurably sick child, regardless of the impact on the health and welfare of the other kids, whose chances of growing up healthy and safe are diminished with each noble act.

Resist the call to helpfulness and the rush that comes with it unless you’re willing to acknowledge its potential to do harm and evil. There are methods for managing this powerful emotion and the dangers it creates, so if you want to be helped to be a better helper, read on.

Easing Others’ Sorrow

If one end of the giving scale is donating a kidney, the other is that ol’ standby, “making someone smile.” After all, if you can’t help people in a material way, at least you can try to ease their pain and sorrow. The trouble starts, however, when it’s just not possible, and instead of making someone feel better, you make a bigger mess.

Many of us feel compelled to accept responsibility for the happiness of our loved ones, without question or limit, either because we’re the responsible type or we instinctively feel guilty if we fail. Which means that when they aren’t smiling, we’re in tears.

Or we may need to help people feel happy to make ourselves happy, meet a professional goal, give in to a guilt trip, or simply to satisfy altruistic urges. The sad fact of life, however, is that we’re often unable to help others feel better, regardless of our motivation, intimacy, and commitment.

There are, for example, people who can’t help but always be in pain, whether from grief, physical or mental illness, or even self-destructive actions they can’t perceive or stop. If they, other loved ones, and professional helpers can’t improve their suffering, there’s little chance you will.

The fact that you have accepted responsibility, even when it’s for a very good reason, does not mean you have more power to be helpful. It just means you might be making things tougher for everyone, since failing to help will hurt you as much or more than anyone else.

We take on that blame because it’s human nature to find someone to blame for our unhappiness, beginning with loved ones—an uncaring mother and painful childhood, or a vengeful ex—and ending with the president or a local sports team. A major reason for marriage, of course, is having someone to blame. But that doesn’t actually mean there’s a person, be it a parent, political figure, or pitcher, who’s responsible for our unhappiness. More often, the real source may be our personalities, our genes, or a lot of shit luck.

Knowing when you can’t make people happy, even when you want to with your whole heart, is essential to changing your goal to one that’s constructive and achievable instead of dangerous and exhausting. Accept that and you’ll end up doing less harm and feeling better, even if nobody else does.

Here are some powers you’d like to have to ease suffering, but lack:

✵ An ability to make people feel better about themselves, or at least look like they don’t want to die all the time

✵ A list of therapists who are guaranteed to take everyone’s insurance and who never allow patients to leave their first session until they’re feeling better

✵ The name of an antidepressant, psychotherapy, or inspirational video with a money-back guarantee

✵ A knack for making people feel it’s someone else’s job to make them happy, and that someone isn’t you

Among the wishes people express are:

✵ To find the right words, action, or therapy to make someone feel better after everything has failed

✵ To get an unhappy person to understand that they’ve done their best to help her and can’t do more, but that she needs to help herself

✵ To get an unhappy person to change behavior that is causing her unhappiness

✵ To feel less guilty and powerless about their inability to help

Here are three examples:

I hate how much my seventeen-year-old son is suffering from depression, and how there’s nothing I can do to help him. Helping him to feel better is the top priority for me and my wife, but nothing we’ve done has worked. His doctor says he’s depressed, but can’t seem to find a medication that will help him, and the therapist he sees says they can’t seem to get at the cause. My son weakly jokes that I look so miserable that he’s very, very sorry for making me depressed with his depression, but the fact is, I’m just endlessly worried. My goal is to do something, anything, to help my son.

I had a wonderful relationship with my mother for many years, but she’s developing dementia, and now being around her makes me feel totally helpless. She’s convinced that people are breaking into her apartment and stealing from her and she complains that I’m unwilling to do anything to help her. Meanwhile, she’s had a couple bad falls but refuses to use a cane. She feels scared and abandoned and there’s nothing I can do. Her lawyer tells me I can’t force her to accept treatment or move into assisted living until she’s more obviously impaired. My goal is to ease my mother’s suffering and protect her from danger.

I’m scared to death that my ex-boyfriend will kill himself and it will be my fault. I know he had periods of depression before we dated, but after I decided to end our relationship, he told me he was suicidal and couldn’t stop drinking every evening. I urged him to get help, but he says the only thing that makes him feel better is talking to me. I hate to see him suffer, but I don’t want to resume our relationship. I hoped I could use our phone calls to persuade him to stop drinking and get help, but he says they’re the only thing keeping him alive. My goal is not to be responsible for his suicide.

If you can’t stop feeling responsible for making someone feel better, it can make him feel guilty for not getting better, make you feel guilty for not making it happen, and drain everyone’s resources until you and the sufferer are each other’s pain slaves in a misery death-spiral. At this point, assuming you aren’t in therapy, the only person you’ve helped is probably your local bartender.

You’ll also wind up angry at the one you want to help, at yourself for being angry, and at everyone else for not being helpful enough. If you don’t know when to give up on your happiness-bringing goal, you can get locked into a vicious cycle of anger, guilt, and therapy, either the real or liquid kind. Whereupon you’ll find yourself the subject of an intervention as all of your friends try to help you, and then the world will implode.

Before allowing yourself to take responsibility for other people’s painful feelings, ask yourself whether there’s something you can do that will actually help, that you can afford to do (given your other commitments), and that isn’t better done by someone else (including the person you’re trying to help).

Using these standards, you’ll decide whether the person you want to help is doing a good job bearing chronic, incurable pain for which there may be no cure. Instead of feeling like a failure because you can’t help, or wondering why he can’t do better for himself, respect your joint efforts and the success of living a full life together in spite of chronic pain. Then you can focus more on enjoying your small victories than your greater defeat.

Give yourself even more respect if the person you’re trying to help is needy, demanding, and impossible to satisfy. Even when you know that person can’t avoid it, you can’t help but want therapy yourself after being around them for any period of time. Once you decide on and meet your own standards for providing necessary care, you can protect yourself and your own needs, go about your other business, and then give yourself a medal.

The biggest medal you can win is for trying to help a desperately unhappy person who tells you that you’re the only reason they’re still alive. Whether you’re his ex-lover, child, or therapist, accepting responsibility for saving someone from despair can enslave you if you let it. Unfortunately, the only person who can save the life of a desperately needy person is that person, and releasing his death grip on the ones he loves is the first step toward recovery.

As long as you don’t take or give responsibility for life’s incurable misery, you’re free to evaluate and respect what’s more important: whether everyone is doing what they can actually do about it, assuming unhappiness really is unavoidable. Don’t be surprised that unhappiness continually promotes negative thinking and self-blame in all involved.

If, however, you remember how much you respect what this person does despite his unhappiness, you can show him how to fight negative thinking and urge him to seek coaches who can build pride by focusing on what he does with his pain, rather than on whether or not he has it.

You may not be able to make him happy, but you can show him powerful tools for preserving his pride, and save yourself and them from the dark, powerful forces that can turn helplessness into pure (sometimes boozy) hell.

Quick Diagnosis

Here’s what you wish for and can’t have:

✵ A happy smile on the face of the one you love, like, or are otherwise related to

✵ Confidence in your ability to make someone feel better

✵ Belief in the power of the right treatment to solve any problem

✵ Faith in everyone’s ability to feel good as long as they take care of themselves and practice meditation, yoga, a gluten-free life, etc.

Here’s what you can aim for and actually achieve:

✵ Know that you’ve done what you can to make someone happy

✵ Tolerate unhappiness without flinching or blaming

✵ Respect how well people pursue their values in spite of unhappiness

Here’s how you can do it:

✵ Find out what can be done to help and do your proper share

✵ If behavior change is necessary, be objective about whether it’s possible

✵ Urge treatment only if you think it has something to offer

✵ Stop treatments that haven’t proven useful

✵ Encourage suffering people to do what matters in life, to the extent that symptoms will allow

✵ Coach people on methods for fighting negative thinking, using the above values

Your Script

Here’s what to tell someone/yourself when you’re seized by urges to help the unhappy.

Dear [Me/Family Member/Poor, Miserable Sonofabitch],

I can’t watch someone I care about [suffering/weeping/flunking out/drown in hurt] without feeling there’s always something that can help and I should be able to find by [trying harder/visiting Lourdes/finding money for a psychoanalysis], but I know that’s not true. I will try to ease your suffering, if possible, by [being a friend/wearing a rainbow Afro wig/farting repeatedly], but if my efforts don’t work, I will not judge you or me as failures. I will respect you for continuing to [shower/take out the garbage/face another day].

Dumb Things We Say to Try to “Cheer Up” the Depressed, and Their More Helpful Alternatives

Rescuing the Addicted

We all want what’s best for those we love, which is why our first instinct when we see signs of alcoholism or drug addiction is to express worry, argue about whether or not a problem exists, and push for treatment. Rehab is not just, as the interventionists call it, “a gift” but the gift; it’s the Tickle Me Elmo on every addict’s Christmas list.

If we argue too much, or if the addict tends to behave badly while under the influence, we get angry and then feel guilty about that. Everyone can agree that the one thing that can cure both her addiction and our discomfort is the aforementioned treatment, which, like that ointment for the rash you got from a regrettable sexual encounter, will clear everything up right quick.

Unfortunately, however, given the way people usually react to other people’s advice, and the fact that treatment often doesn’t work, especially when agreed to only to placate others, urging addicts into treatment often backfires.

For one thing, intense urgings usually wind up making the addict (and nonaddicts) feel the problem isn’t addiction, it’s your feelings, and her goal isn’t to evaluate or improve herself, but to make you happy or change your mind. She feels responsible for your feelings, you feel responsible for her rescue, and her responsibility for her own well-being and self-control gets lost in between.

If she agrees to get treatment in order to make you happy, not only is treatment less likely to help but blame for failure of said treatment is more likely to land on your doorstep, leaving you angrier and more helpless than before. In other words, you can start a dangerous vicious cycle by intervening the addict into treatment that often promotes more conflict and drug use than sobriety.

Fortunately, however, there is a better way to discuss sobriety with an addict (or to determine whether someone’s drug use is dangerous) than by creating an emotional, or any other, mandate for treatment. It begins with accepting your inability to rescue someone from addiction, an acceptance that is as hard as an addict’s accepting his or her inability to control addiction.

It requires you to keep intense feelings, including fear and anger, to yourself. It allows you to be potentially helpful with less risk of doing harm or being harmed. So if you’re called on by love or bad luck to rescue an addict, slap yourself and get help right away.

Enroll in Al-Anon or get a good counselor to coach you on how to manage your rescue instincts. Yes, there are probably some good, helpful things you can do, but not until you’ve learned how to protect yourself from being drained, over- or underdiagnosing addiction, and inadvertently encouraging addictive behavior. Then you can put aside accusations and fears and instead use the dispassionate language of business to describe the problems that need to be improved and what will happen if they aren’t.

Control your urge to help and you’ll be better able to help someone control their urge to use and give them a truly useful gift: the power to help themselves.

Here are the rescuing powers you wish you had but don’t:

✵ Denial-busting insight that will show the blindest, dumbest addict the extent of his/her poisonous bullshit

✵ Love that will draw the addict into trusting your vision and getting help for the sake of your future, legendary relationship

✵ The name of the ultimate intervention clinician with the ultimate power of denial-busting insight (i.e., the bald guy from Intervention, although Candy Finnigan would also do)

✵ The name of a clinic, guru, or spell that, given enough time and money, can guarantee good results

Among the wishes would-be rescuers express are:

✵ To fill whatever need causes the addict’s addiction, but in a healthy way

✵ To help the addict understand feelings that cause addiction, and thus improve control

✵ To get the addict effective treatment

✵ To get the addict to see the need for treatment

✵ To figure out where everyone went wrong

Here are three examples:

My boyfriend is a great guy and would do anything for me, but I can’t get him to stop drinking. I know he had a miserable childhood, and I respect the way he basically raised himself, but he gets tipsy every night to get to sleep, has a glass in his hand after 3 p.m. on weekends, and doesn’t realize how angry and scary he can sometimes get when he’s had one too many. He’s never hurt me, and he never misses work—as he points out to me over and over again whenever I bring up the issue—but I see trouble ahead. I don’t think he’s ever had a serious relationship before, and I have confidence he’ll listen to me if I can get him to see it’s important and I love him. My goal is to help him get into treatment.

My brother was always my best friend, but he’s been different since he got back from Iraq. He was discharged for using drugs and alcohol, which made him bitter because he’s got PTSD (and was probably self-medicating in the first place). Since then he’s been in and out of rehab, but it’s always a revolving door and he never really gets the help he needs. I’d do anything to see him get better, so I’d like to spend my savings on getting him into a private thirty-day program and then maybe have him come to live with me and my husband, who, as you might imagine, is not crazy about the idea, particularly since my brother stole from us the last time he was here. My goal is to help the big brother who always helped me, no matter what it takes.

My wife nags me to stop drinking, and I know I like to have a couple glasses of wine with dinner, but I’m confident that I never go over my limit and there hasn’t been a time in the last ten years when I had a hangover or put myself over the limit when I had to drive. She’s pretty sensitive about drinking because she grew up with alcoholic parents, and I don’t like to make her unhappy, but I work hard, I love good wine at the end of the day, and it’s not something I want to give up just to make her happy. My goal is to get her to see that I’m not an alcoholic so she can feel better and I can keep enjoying the finer things.

Using love or any strong emotion to push an addict toward rehab usually causes nothing but false promises and/or a nasty argument (e.g., quoth Amy Winehouse, “No! No! No!”), so when it comes to trying to help an addict, it’s best to manage your emotions carefully.

Trying to nurture a tortured, misunderstood, drunk Shrek who loves you into a confident prince is appealing as a fairy tale but dangerous as an actual game plan. Of the many things that cannot cure addiction, love is one of them, even if it’s unconditional and mutual. Believing otherwise and banking on Beauty’s curative love actually prevents Beasts from realizing they need to learn to manage themselves.

Sheltering a needy drunk when no other place will is another sweet gesture that backfires. Addicts don’t deserve the horrible dangers they encounter, but if you don’t make shelter conditional on sobriety or ensure your safety in some other way, they won’t get better and you (and your marriage, health, and credit score) will suffer even more than they will.

Rescue makes addiction worse until you gain control of your own addiction to being a rescuer, and spell out what’s acceptable and safe. Borrow a page from the Intervention playbook by figuring out what will oblige you to leave, evict, or divorce an addict if they don’t give recovery a try. Spell out addiction-related behaviors that must stop, whether it’s stealing, nodding off, neglecting your kids, and all the other shades of the fuckuppery rainbow. Decide what you need to do with your feet, wallet, and brand-new alarm codes, then let the addict know where you stand, with regret, and be prepared to follow through.

Don’t skimp on your love, but know what needs to be done to protect it from addiction, including yours to helping. Let your caring motivate sobriety, not stimulate emotional reactivity.

If addiction is just a possibility, and not a well-established disaster, don’t overdiagnose or overreact. Instead of asking a beloved suspect to get sober because you care and you’re worried, ask him to figure out his own standards for defining problematic drug use and apply it to himself. Avoid debate over how often he has to experience cravings, hangovers, or withdrawal to be in trouble. Instead, ask him whether drug use has interfered at work or caused him to do things he regrets. If he’s unsure, ask him to try a few months of sobriety, just to compare.

Educate yourself about treatment and AA. If you think it might help, invest in a big intervention, but keep in mind that, like bar mitzvahs and magic shows, interventions are only for the young, impressionable, and green, at least in terms of usefulness. Even then, treatment’s power is limited and depends a great deal on an individual’s motivation, so don’t assume that more is better.

If treatment fails, urge him to keep thinking about his own reasons for getting sober—not to make you happy, but because he wants to keep living with you—and to use whatever he’s found helpful. Even so, don’t regard relapse as failure; every day of trying to stay sober, as long as one is trying one’s hardest, is a success.

If you can’t get an addict help, respect the strength it takes to continue to love someone who is always in trouble, always requires careful management, and may or may not get sober, recover, and grow. If you can control your urge to save an addict while not giving up, however, you may help people recover from addiction and possibly get a yes, yes, yes.

Quick Diagnosis

Here’s what you wish for and can’t have:

✵ An ability to get through to someone about addiction, with or without professional assistance

✵ Faith in treatment

✵ Progress through spontaneous sharing of feelings

✵ Freedom from fear of relapse

✵ Freedom from addiction worst-case scenarios

Here’s what you can aim for and actually achieve:

✵ Accept addictive behavior as possibly unavoidable and uncontrollable

✵ Limit responsibility and blame

✵ Manage anger and false hope

✵ Do your best to help addiction without taking responsibility for rescue

✵ Know when you have to go and know that you’ve done your best

Here’s how you can do it:

✵ Discuss tools for thinking rationally about addiction

✵ Define what has to change for both you and the addict to live under the same roof or under current conditions

✵ Offer input about ongoing addiction-related behaviors and stand by what you think about their dangerousness or other potential for harm without expressing negative emotion

✵ Urge an addicted person to check out potential sources of therapy, guaranteeing that a patient search will be rewarded but that he or she may first find many duds

✵ Rescue yourself if you can, knowing that you can’t rescue anyone else

Your Script

Here’s what to tell someone/yourself when you’re tempted to rescue him from addiction.

Dear [Self/Beloved Drunk or Junkie/Person I Once Trusted Who Pawned My TV to Buy Pills],

I would have given my [life/TV/fortune] to save you, but that approach seems likely to cost me my [life/TV/fortune] and make me [pissed/broken/broke/very obsessed with the one relationship in my life that makes me most unhappy and which I can do nothing about]. So instead I will [check your health insurance/put aside money/change the locks] and let you know that living with me requires [sobriety/doing your share/no unreasonable shit]. Of course, various treatments may help you get there, but that’s up to you. Good luck.

What They Say on Intervention vs. What’s More Likely to Be Helpful

The long-running A&E series Intervention made a few things very clear: (1) even the gnarliest addict has cute baby pictures, (2) huffing keyboard cleaner is a thing, and (3) most important, speaking to an addict from the heart is the best way to break addiction’s spell. While two outta three ain’t bad, that last Intervention lesson is actually false, since heartfelt pleas often make someone else’s addiction your problem when you want to make it his or hers. Instead, bypass hiring a former drunk named Jeff and reserving a hotel conference room, talk to the addict one-on-one, strip away the drama from the content of your concern, and ask him whether or not he’s ready to make it his. In the meantime, find old episodes of Hoarders, because the therapists on that show may be worse than the interventionists, but at least you’ll get motivated to clean your house.

Protecting Victims of Injustice

Everybody loves an underdog, mostly because, at one time or another, everyone’s been one. If you’re lucky enough to have never felt powerless or mistreated, you probably feel an extra obligation to help the underdog, because helping the wronged is a way for the undeserving lucky to feel less guilty and even the score.

That’s why coming to the rescue of the unfairly disadvantaged is one of those equally selfless and self-serving acts; helping a badly treated good guy feels like you’re both avenging a personal injustice and making the world a better place. You’re helping him, helping yourself, and helping the universe.

Unfortunately, it’s often hard to tell a sob story from the real thing, and not all mistreated underdogs are necessarily good people.

Even when you’re sure he’s a good guy and his mistreatment is real, defending him may do nothing but draw further fire and endanger other good people, including you and yours. In other words, even if you’re not taken for a sucker, rescuing good people from injustice may suck you into an impossible situation that can create more injustice and victims, namely you.

Fortunately, you can protect yourself from your instincts for helping victims of injustice, while actually helping victims when it’s possible. It requires strength and patience and is often emotionally frustrating. If what you’re committed to, however, is protecting victims of injustice when it’s actually possible to do so, rather than satisfying your desire to feel like a victim protector, then you can do good while staying out of the (under)doghouse.

Here are some magical powers you’d like to have to protect victims of injustice, but lack:

✵ A truth amulet that distinguishes noble victims from conniving liars

✵ An enchanted canary that tells you how many new victims will be created, if any, by your protective efforts

✵ A sword of justice that defends true victims without causing unintended cuts, sprains, or amputations to its wielder and innocent bystanders

✵ A Pegasus that flies you away to your next assignment, putting an end to your responsibilities to the victims you’ve just helped by making you impossible to trace

Among the wishes injustice menders express are:

✵ To find a method for protecting victims that will be effective and not provoke any counterattack

✵ To get others to understand that a victim deserves support and respect

✵ To spread the truth about who hurt whom and why their reasons were bad and the results were devastating and unfair

✵ To feel like they did the right thing

Here are three examples:

Our new boss is trying to fire one of the best members of our team. He was loyal and helpful to me when I was starting out and deserves better. The boss seems to like me for some reason, but she doesn’t like it when I defend this guy, and seems to think that, by defending this coworker, I’m trying to undermine her authority, and I don’t want to get myself into trouble. My goal is to find a way to protect a hardworking colleague from getting unfairly targeted with criticism and maybe losing his job.

My family hates my girlfriend, not because she has three kids from previous relationships, but because all the kids have different dads, and she never married any of them. I tried to explain to them that each of those men was abusive, and that, like me, my family should instead see her as someone who has been treated badly and is now flowering because she’s finally with someone who loves her and treats her right. She no longer feels like cutting herself and says she’s stopped taking pain pills altogether, and I’m so proud of her. My goal is to stop my family from being mean and undermining her confidence.

It’s my job as a high school counselor to help troubled kids, whether or not they’ve had run-ins with the law, and I think the positive relationship I’ve formed with this one particular kid has been good for him, since he needs the extra attention. My colleagues tell me to watch out because foster kids are always trouble, plus he’s had a specific history of getting violent with a series of foster parents, and he broke into his last counselor’s house while she was away on vacation. I’ve gotten to know this kid and I think he just gets blamed for everything because he’s had such a tough upbringing that everyone expects the worst. My goal is to give him the trust and confidence he deserves.

The risks of protecting victims of injustice are numerous, including possible violence that can turn you from protector to one of the persecuted. That’s why it’s your job to assess your risks before getting on your white horse (and possibly galloping off a cliff).

First, find out what happened to the white knights who preceded you into battle. Often, they ran into bad guys who had the big boss and HR behind them, or a damsel in distress who went back to her wicked thug boyfriend, or a counselee who filed complaints. You can try to talk to your predecessors, but it might be hard, as they’re likely in hiding, prison, or the grave.

Do your best to check out facts, because, as much as it can give you a headache (and absolutely no catharsis) to hear three contradictory-but-sincere versions of the same story, information is the key to knowing how much help is deserved and what it’s likely to trigger. If you know that your coworker has a clean record with HR and that your efforts have a remote chance of saving his job and, most important, won’t cost you yours, then rescue away. The odds of those things being true, however, let alone knowable, are as good as a successful quest for the Holy Grail.

Second, do background checks on all innocent victims, no matter how clear their innocence may seem. Without blaming them for their bad luck, explore the possibility that they encounter more of it than most because of weaknesses they can’t help, including mental illness and addiction. If that’s true, your intervention won’t do much to protect them in the long run unless they change their bad habits. Be suspicious of stories that are too bad to be true, especially when they concern serial victims and their tales of woe. Your innocent single mother may be the kind of unstable person who falls in love as quickly and arbitrarily as she falls into hate.

Finally, remember your other priorities. You have obligations to others, as well as yourself, for your independence, safety, and stability, even if those commitments lack the emotional pull of the good fight. Don’t enlist until you’re sure your protective mission doesn’t endanger your other missions at home, because, like the distressed damsel above, your misunderstood teen may turn out to be a jerk who steals your laptop. Since, by definition, Assholes (chapter 9) always see themselves as victims, some victims of injustice will turn out to be Assholes, and it’s your job to protect yourself.

Real opportunities to help victims of injustice are limited, but you’ll be most effective when you’re selective and careful. Respect yourself for doing careful screening, which requires hard work, is often painful, and seldom gives you the thrill of righting a wrong. Even when you can’t protect someone from unfairness and harm, however, show respect for how hard it is to endure injustice and still remain a good, determined person.

Given the facts of life’s injustice, you do good by honoring victims of injustice who refuse to alter positive moral values and priorities, despite knowing that a rescue party isn’t on the way.

Quick Diagnosis

Here’s what you wish for and can’t have:

✵ Knowledge of who really deserves protection and will really benefit from it

✵ Power to protect those who really deserve it

✵ Resources to protect yourself from retaliation

✵ The ability to protect people from weaknesses that expose them to repeat victimization

Here’s what you can aim for and actually achieve:

✵ Care appropriately about helping people who have been mistreated

✵ Develop the skills to assess a complex, righteousness-drenched situation

✵ Tolerate the fact that you may be able to help no one

✵ Retain your personal priorities, regardless of protective urges and pressures

✵ Respect people who endure injustice, regardless of what happens

Here’s how you can do it:

✵ Develop effective methods for fact gathering

✵ Do careful risk assessments, including risks caused by a victim’s bad habits

✵ Perform careful political evaluations that include the risk of escalation and retaliation

✵ Offer respect to those who endure injustice, whether or not you can correct it

Your Script

Here’s what to say when you’re tempted to rescue a victim of injustice.

Dear [Self/Unfairness Refugee/Victim of Nastiness],

Helping you, after you’ve been unfairly damaged by [your boss/your ex/the town gossip/the IRS/Fox News] would give me great pleasure, but I can’t forget that [I’ve got to make a living/I’m vulnerable to the same kind of crap attack/you have a history of making enemies]. I will find out more about what happened and whether it’s likely to happen again while trying to figure out whether I can help and [lying low/changing my name/winning a Nobel Prize for unassailable virtue/making it look like it’s coming from someone else]. Even if I can’t help, I respect your ability to stay focused on the goals and values of your life without being distracted by [bad luck/bad choices/being born under a bad sign].

Brokering Peace at Home

Of all the “-making” professions, from cheese to dress, peacemakers are the only ones to be blessed, and with good reason; a good cheese can be heavenly, but peacemaking has more potential benefit, given that conflict often hurts and tends to escalate in ways that bring out the worst in everyone.

If the warring enemies are sufficiently powerful (e.g., India and Pakistan, Godzilla and Mothra, Red Sox and Yankees), successful peacemaking can be exciting, but can also be dangerous and sometimes prolong conflict. So don’t assume every peacemaker is, or should be, blessed, and therefore able to work without a bulletproof vest.

Taking too much responsibility for other people’s wars means you wind up feeling responsible for everything they say and do, so before long, you’ve got their headaches and they’ve got someone to complain to who feels obligated to listen. Yes, you may have every good reason in the world to wish for peace, but your peacemaking may actually make it easier for hostilities to continue, especially now that their conflict has one convenient, human representative who can neatly receive all grievances and blame.

Peacemaking a long-standing conflict also tends to devalue old grievances that some people feel are worth endless sacrifice, so if they think you’re succeeding, they’ll go out of their way to make those old arguments seem fresh again with timely discoveries, new evidence, restraining orders, or even another round of violence.

In the end, the one thing on which warring parties may come to agree is that they both hate you. Of course, as long as you’re not too sensitive, and survive, you may regard this as a mission accomplished.

So don’t try to broker peace because you’re good-hearted and want to help people just get along. Before stepping into the combat zone, get your peacemaking urges under control and learn the techniques you need to know before deciding which conflicts are worth peacemaking and which ones you should stay away from.

Learn how to keep responsibility where it belongs, which is never, ever in your vicinity, and if the conflict resembles a pool of quicksand, learn how to make a nice fresh mozzarella instead.

Here are some peacemaking powers you’d like but (probably) lack:

✵ A calming, charismatic presence that makes everyone eager to win your approval when you ask them to “do it for me”

✵ A strong empathy for grievances that relieves combatants of the need for any other satisfaction, so you can feel the pain right out of them

✵ An ability to interest angry opponents in the mutual advantages of peace, despite their shared interest in pummeling each other

✵ Arm strength sufficient to knock heads together

Among the wishes people express are:

✵ To protect combatants and their family members from the pain of their conflict

✵ To end rifts that divide and weaken groups and families, so they can function more effectively

✵ To solve a problem they feel responsible for but can’t see their way out of without help

✵ To get groups to sit down and find an answer to their dispute, no matter how difficult

Here are three examples:

Unlike most kids, I was thrilled when my parents got divorced, because living in a house with the two of them constantly fighting was pure hell. Since their miraculously peaceful divorce, I’ve enjoyed my time with each of them, because separately, they’re very nice and loving people. To this day, however, they still can’t be within a hundred feet of each other without a battle, which means I have the impossible task of trying to equally divvy up any holidays, events, birthdays, etc., that involve their grandkids. Both insist that they’re getting the short end of the stick and I’m favoring the other parent, but neither will even consider just shutting the fuck up and putting up with each other at the same event for the sake of my kids. Maybe I should ask them to get couples therapy? My goal is to get them to sit down, make peace, and put aside their anger so they can enjoy family events without being excluded.

I’ve got two smart people working for me who do a great job, but they’re always snapping at each other. They’ve got personality styles that just don’t mesh, so each one thinks the other’s questions and requests are stupid or exploitative, and then they complain to me. I’ve asked HR for help, but mediation didn’t work. I like to have an open-door management style, but each of them takes advantage of every opportunity to give me an earful about everything the other guy is doing wrong. My goal is to get them to be happy members of my team.

My best friend is nasty and overbearing with her teenage son and I can’t get her to see it. She sees him as a disrespectful liar because he often doesn’t do his homework when he tells her he has, but I see him as a nice, bright kid with some ADD who lies because he’s afraid of her reaction. If I suggest she’s overdoing her criticism, she tells me it’s none of my business and I’m trying to undermine her as a parent. My goal is to help her avoid making obvious mistakes and traumatizing her son and ruining their relationship.

After giving careful thought to the risks of peacemaking in general (and paying homage to the prematurely deceased blue-helmeted peacekeepers who have gone before you), define goals for your warring parties that are entirely positive, professional, and designed to enhance the happiness and well-being of both sides.

At the same time as you define these goals, be extremely careful not to make yourself a shared target, which is what happens if you screw up and make yourself responsible for easing the terrible, unfair wrongdoing they blame on each other.

Ask each combatant to assess, with your input, whether the cost of conflict outweighs its advantages, taking into account the impact of long-term penalties, retaliation, and unintended consequences. Yes, expressing anger feels more satisfying, sends a tough message to your enemy, and may eventually bring about desired change. But urge people to get real, remember what has actually happened, and anticipate the bad things that will keep happening. Then offer them your help in making peace if and when they decide it’s in their best interest.

While it doesn’t fit with the positive spirit of your mission, don’t exclude the possibility of imposing self-protective limits and penalties if fighting continues; if the United States can impose sanctions on Iran, you can impose sanctions on grandparental visitation and worker performance ratings. That way, you send a clear message that you’re sorry they’re unhappy and you’re willing to penalize their bad behavior if they can’t just suck it up already.

Be clear, however, that whatever limits and penalties you impose are an unfortunate necessity, and are not meant to express criticism, superior power, or pressure to change. Should the conflict come to a resolution, with grandparents and employees who find the strength to keep their feelings to themselves, you will be delighted that sanctions can be lifted.

If one party is clearly more aggressive, don’t protect the underdog (see previous section), because it will negatively impact the peace process. Instead, point out to the oppressor the many ways that attacking a perceived underdog can backfire, including passive resistance and counterattacks by others who also feel threatened. For example, instead of questioning whether the critical mother in the above case loves and supports her underperforming son, express concern that her vehement way of expressing herself may lead to a stalemate with him and possibly the school. If she comes to agree, you have suggestions.

Spell out methods for reducing hostilities without asking people to give up grievances; you’re not asking them to stop hating or mistrusting one another, simply to stop expressing their feelings verbally or in the form of offensive actions. Spell out the behaviors that will allow them to escape penalties, whether imposed by you or others. If they comply, they’re not abandoning their cause, just determining that it is not advanced by conflict.

Don’t expand your responsibilities beyond your stated offer, regardless of how fervently you wish for peace, because it doesn’t help to take sides (or appear to be doing so) and it’s exhausting to listen to complaints. You’ve done your job by offering objective thoughts about the cost of conflict and making it easy to reduce hostilities. To do more is likely to cause harm.

Don’t blame yourself or others if you get nowhere; good ideas sometimes take time to sink in, and some people may have reasons for fighting that you can’t understand. Don’t expect to make peace happen, but respect yourself for doing what you can to give it a chance, and trying to do better than the troops that came before.

Quick Diagnosis

Here’s what you wish for and can’t have:

✵ An ability to ease grievances

✵ Power to enforce a just solution or stop bad behavior

✵ An ability to reason with people so they’ll do what’s good for them

✵ Enough patience to not be upset and annoyed by other people’s feuds

Here’s what you can aim for and actually achieve:

✵ Keep your own negative feelings from adding to hostilities

✵ Find reasons that peace would be less costly than war

✵ Add to those reasons with your own sanctions and limits, if it’s in your power

✵ Don’t take responsibility for the grievances or hostilities of others

✵ Take care to protect yourself

Here’s how you can do it:

✵ Talk politely, regardless of how you really feel

✵ Stay positive and concerned, but not enough to listen to complaints

✵ Sell the specifics of peace, including the painful, tough penalties you and others won’t have to inflict

✵ If people don’t want peace, stay out of the way of bullets

✵ As usual, respect your efforts, not your results

Your Script

Here’s what to say when you wish to broker peace between parties in conflict.

Dear [Self/Repeatedly Wronged/Unfairly Traumatized/Folks Who Hate Each Other],

I’d like to help you feel better, but experience has taught me that listening [doesn’t help you for more than five minutes/gives me a headache that lasts an hour/is for music, not opinions], and besides, it’s more important that you stop [trash-talking/cold-shouldering/rumormongering/Facebook-flaming]. I’ve put together a [proposal/PowerPoint presentation/one-page memo] detailing the pros and cons of peace and where you can reach me if peace is what you want. Otherwise, don’t call, and know that I continue to wish you well.

Raising the Downtrodden

No matter how much sacrifice charity requires, be it of personal needs, finances, or just hygiene, there’s usually enough pleasure involved in giving to blur the lines between selfishness and selflessness.

Even when people sacrifice their health and well-being, those who literally give until it hurts find that the pain is its own kind of reward; humans have a long history of using pain to purge guilt, from self-whipping medieval monks to self-harming modern teens.

So while most people are content to be rewarded for their good deeds with thanks, warm feelings, and/or the occasional tote bag, others find that if getting sick while tending to the sick cures the shame they feel for being born healthy, then they’ll take tetanus over a tote bag any day.

Unbridled giving may feel good, but good people need to make tough, less-satisfying decisions about giving that take into account their own needs, resources, other obligations, and the risk of doing harm with their gifts. Good giving is equally selfish and selfless, and is measured not by sacrifice or the pleasure it brings but the objective effectiveness of your gift.

That’s why, when it comes to giving, you need to put together a plan that reflects your values, including those that unavoidably compete with one another because your resources are limited. This doesn’t mean it’s not good to give to the downtrodden, but it may be bad if giving compromises your safety, diverts resources away from those who could benefit more, or sacrifices the welfare of people for whom you have more immediate responsibility.

Fortunately, if you can put aside the great buzz that comes from helping the truly wretched and examine the particulars of each case, you’ll see that the risks of giving are not infinite and can be assessed and managed. Ultimately, it’s not the amount you give, or the amount of pleasure you get out of it, but the amount of care you put into giving that matters.

Here are powers that you’d like but (probably) lack:

✵ A major fuckin’ Gates/Buffett bankroll

✵ An invulnerable immune system (and colon)

✵ A genius for doing simultaneous child care and world saving

✵ Magic hindsight to assure you that the gratitude and admiration people feel for your efforts is not undermining their respect for their own culture or fueling a backlash of envy and destruction

Among the wishes people express are:

✵ To dedicate their lives to something worthwhile

✵ To help people who need it the most

✵ To help life’s worst rejects

✵ To avoid the meaninglessness of a life of self-indulgence

Here are three examples:

As a Christian, I make charity and volunteer work a huge part of my life; helping people who are poor, mentally ill, and neglected by society isn’t just God’s work, but work I can feel good about. Recently, though, my faith received a blow when I decided to hire one of the regulars at the church soup kitchen to do a painting job in my house. He’s always been friendly, if a little off, but after he left, I found the door to my locked closet had been forced open and some of my wife’s jewels were gone. There’s a part of me that wants to show him love by forgiving him, hoping that will restore his faith in mankind, and there’s a part of me that agrees with my wife, that this guy just takes things and I should call the police. My goal is to do good for people who really need it, without losing the jewelry that represents my love for my wife.

There’s nothing about animals I don’t like—they’re much nicer and more loving than people—so I regularly foster animals for the local no-kill shelter, and I’m always willing to take in and adopt strays or abused pets. My friends have started to complain that they can’t come over because dogs and cats have taken over the furniture, and neighbors have complained to the authorities that they can’t stand the smell, but I think they’re all overreacting because I have multiple cats and a couple of my dogs are pit bulls. My goal is to be helpful and heal the damage caused by human cruelty.

I feel selfish living in a rich country with my middle-class comforts and all the luxuries I could ever want, so it’s always been meaningful for me to spend a couple weeks every year doing something helpful in developing countries. I had such a good time the last time I did it, I began thinking of making it a full-time job by finding an NGO I could work with. My boyfriend points out that such a move wouldn’t help our relationship (he’s happy with his job and thinks giving a bit to charity is enough) or my retirement. My goal is to figure out a way to do something good and important in this world without losing what’s important in my life.

The great Boston philanthropist Daniel Rothenberg famously judged the effectiveness of charitable organizations by interviewing their janitors, reasoning that janitors, as the canaries in the coal mine of a business, best reflect an organization’s ability to enact its values and keep its priorities straight. In other words, shit flows downhill, so if the guys who clean up shit feel fairly treated, then the organization probably knows how to do its work.

Ask yourself what you owe yourself and those who depend on you, including safety, before you pal around with the terribly infectious and potentially dangerous. Otherwise, if you give for sentimental reasons and without considering those issues, you can expose you and yours to danger with little chance of benefit, leaving your metaphorical janitors up shit creek.

Before assuming that you’re not giving enough in life, figure out how many you can afford to help in a way that’s bound to be beneficial. If you give to all comers, whether they be people or pets, without first measuring your resources, the only true benefactor will be you, as you’ll inherit a shit storm from everyone around you.

Before becoming a full-time giver, also rate the value of your relationships, since you’ll have to take time from them to dedicate your energies to your new, full-time cause. Most close relationships require a certain level of involvement and attendance, and if you’re off on a giving crusade, your relationships may fall apart as well.

The due diligence list for checking out uplifting opportunities isn’t endless or complicated, but it does make it hard to maintain your enthusiasm and virtuous feelings if it leads you to discover that many programs don’t measure up or will cost you too much. When it comes to giving, it pays to give a shit about the details.

Being a good person doesn’t mean you have to be charitable as an occupation or lifestyle. Being a good person means doing right by friends and family and working hard and honestly to support yourself. If you can keep those standards in mind while also trying to do good in the larger world, you’ll come up with rules for giving that allow you to do some beneficial things without becoming a jerk to those who know you, or even those who do your shit work.

Quick Diagnosis

Here’s what you wish for and can’t have:

✵ Enough resources to prevent a deserving group from being deprived of benefits you happened to give another group

✵ Advance assurance that people won’t misuse what you’ve given them

✵ Confidence that giving to people from a much less-affluent culture won’t cause envy or otherwise hurt that culture

✵ Assurance that you won’t give or receive undesirable new bacteria

Here’s what you can aim for and actually achieve:

✵ Prevent harmful or ineffective giving by doing a thorough assessment

✵ Avoid repeating previous, unsuccessful attempts to help

✵ Make a huge difference to a large number of people

✵ Learn how to maximize your impact without wasting resources

✵ Minimize harm and unintended consequences

Here’s how you can do it:

✵ Decide what’s needed most

✵ Identify those who don’t have it and can’t get it

✵ Define an amount that’s necessary and enough, rather than what’s best

✵ Maximize the number who get it

✵ Measure the bang per buck

✵ Look for unintended harm

Your Script

Here’s what to say when you or a loved one wishes to donate services to reduce human misery.

Dear [Self/Spouse/Desperate Beggar/Huddled Masses Yearning to Breathe Free],

I am willing to sacrifice [lots of time/money/my DVD collection] to making the world a better place, but I won’t be satisfied by intense gratitude from a small group of people who maybe [didn’t need my or your help in the first place/deserve help but offer repayment in the form of rare amoebae/weren’t worth losing a marriage or bank account or foot over]. I will take time to assess need and will not be distracted by [loud begging/sob stories/disheveled appearances]. I will learn how to ration resources, assess impact, and take pride in providing what’s necessary and otherwise unavailable to the greatest number for the least negative impact.

Did You Know … About the Dark Side of Social Work?

There’s an old country song called “Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys,” and while it’s arguable that mamas should be more worried about their children becoming performance artists or senators than cattle rustlers, one occupation that parents should also be quite wary of is social worker. Believe it or not, your money’s better spent underwriting your child’s MFA in performance studies than an MSW of doom.

Social work school will train your kids to be the ultimate helpers, and you might think that would make them really, really good kids. After all, they’ll listen carefully to what you have to say and show great interest in your feelings, and you’ll never have to ask them to take out the garbage, make curfew, or not mess around with drugs. Then again, they’ll give the same kind of care to people who are all kinds of messed up with drugs, since they’ll also feel obliged to help them—in addition to hustlers, criminals, the garbage man, etc.

That’s because what social work school doesn’t do is prepare them to say no to bad people, be sensitive to bad instincts in good people, discipline their own giving instincts, and stand up for their own needs. Mostly, it encourages some of the worst habits that counselors of any kind (shrinks included) can have: listening nonjudgmentally, being empathetic, and caring deeply about those in your care. All skills that will set anyone up to get taken advantage of, feed others’ bad habits, and fall short of achieving the goals that sent them into social work in the first place.

The sad irony is that social work often takes good people with the best of intentions, pairs them with bad people with terrible intentions, and best-case scenario, robs the good people of their faith in humanity as they realize they’ve been working very hard to help bad people do worse. The worst-case scenario is they don’t realize when they’re being suckered and feel angry at the world on behalf of their victim-clients. At least until they get laid off due to budget cuts (as the social workers are always the first to go).

There are, of course, many counselors and social workers who are good at their jobs because they developed smart instincts through experience (not school). Even so, their jobs are often thankless, poorly paid, and grim. Being a social worker, like being a nun or a Walmart greeter, rewards sacrifice with more sacrifice (all three face poverty, crappy clothes, and periods of uncomfortable celibacy). Most of those who don’t quit end up with so much contempt for the people they were trying to help that they let off steam by beating children with rulers.

Helping others is a noble pursuit that, without a strong set of independent and protective values, can do much more harm than good, and social work school rarely provides the preparation one needs. You may want your kid to want to help people, but not this way. Teach them to be cowboys instead, and at least you’ll get free steak.

The wish to help others is a powerful motivator and source of self-esteem that can be realized on many different levels of human interaction, from helping a relative be happy to ending conflict between those we love to improving the world. At each level, the desire to help can easily backfire if what we wish isn’t realistic and if we don’t think carefully about risks and consequences. If you accept the fact that helping others is sometimes impossible, you’ll become more helpful, even if the most helpful thing you let yourself do, at times, is nothing. True helpfulness often isn’t satisfying, but if you’ve taken the time to evaluate what you’re doing, and your values put a higher premium on being helpful than feeling helpful, then you have a right to feel you’re living up to your ideals and doing the correct thing.