“You cannot save anyone. You can be present with them, offer your groundedness, your sanity, your peace. You can even share your path with them, offer your perspective. But you cannot take away their pain. You cannot walk their path for them. You cannot give answers that are right for them, or even answers they can digest right now. They will have to find their own answers…"
Jeff Foster
Edmund Osterloff - Miss Curiosity, 1908.
Such statements as the above are little windows into a kernel of truth.
There are many other statements reflecting different aspects of what is being said.
A more negative articulation would be might be that “people don’t change”.
As a physician and therapist, I have struggled with these concepts.
My job is to take away the pain, to promote healing. I disagree that we cannot help and or take away pain.
But as we know the first order of business is the person in pain needs to be present with us. That means something has to happen whereby they seek companionship or help be it professional or otherwise.
There is another saying that goes “when the student is ready the teacher will appear”.
This certainly isn’t always true as the teacher never has to appear. Much of life is luck and happenstance. We do run out of time and there may not be teachers.
But even as a therapist or as a healer of physical ailments if someone comes to you there has to be an exchange of information and communication of ideas that are mutually understood.
Much of the time this goes routinely and smoothly, and information is exchanged. Those seeking help benefit from advice.
I won’t put a percentage on it but on the other hand, there is much miscommunication and misunderstanding.
As far as psychological problems or psychological pain the problems didn’t materialize overnight.
How many of us, even though we understand the theory behind a good habit, actually change what we do? Even when changing that habit is important if we want to improve our health or relationship. How many of us, nevertheless fail constantly in implementing such change in our life and at times not even being able to take the first step?
I’ve had people understand deeply their formation. How the consequences of their abuse and abandonment can be logically explained, in detail, and how they might begin to extricate themselves from the bonds of their memory. This may happen but it can be the case that although they can accurately write a book about it very little seems to change. This is what we learn through the hard work of trying to change and trying to help people change. And of course, we find that it is the hard work of everyone healer and patient alike. It is the accumulated knowledge of the last 100-plus years of understanding how we are determined.
There is always this tension between reason and emotion. That tension is our biography. Our history, and our memory, define who we are.
But reason tries to dictate to us that if we would only follow instructions everything would be OK. This is probably truer for the person trying to help than the person in pain. The helper continuedly falls into the trap of thinking that if they could only impart the knowledge, they have the person would improve.
In a way, traditional psychotherapy and psychoanalysis address this by not engaging with the patient. Letting the patient explore through a minimum of prodding their own mind I’m coming to conclusions.
For the most part, this is gone by the wayside, and I always thought that it was good that I did.
I think so because I’m certainly not convinced that nothing, we do makes a difference. And the opening quote does not claim that. People engage friends, relatives, and professionals and even pay good money for advice. So I’m not saying we can’t help anybody or that people aren’t helped. What is more the case is that it is so much a process and often one should never expect great change from the process. That does not mean that great change never happens. And sometimes medication makes all the difference.
We shouldn’t expect a lot because it comes down to so much not being logical explanations or formulations but as the introductory quote suggest that just being there is what is most important.
Interest is the impediment to ongoing pain.
To steal another phrase:
“It is a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one's life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than 'try to be a little kinder.”