The Helper and the Helped--And Never the Twain Shall Meet
I have occupied two spaces, two places, two halves of the same sphere-I have been both helper and helped.
Most of us have occupied these two spaces, sometimes simultaneously. Nearly none of us have been given cultural permission to inhabit them both.
Those who help are seen as strong, capable, courageous, able. The helpers have unlimited access to resources, unlimited time, unlimited energy, unlimited commitment. They are often lauded, sometimes beyond all reason, for their helpfulness.
Those who are helped are seen as incapable, unable, devoid of resources, devoid of strength, weak of spirit. They are often pitied, criticized or denigrated for their helplessness.
Their helplessness is often intensified by the efforts of the helpers to help, such as when people receiving social services are required to follow the rules-rules which might keep them from satisfying needs for autonomy, such as turning a hobby into a small business or living with an intimate partner--or else they won’t receive needed assistance.
The helped are not seen as able to help.
I am a visibly disabled woman. As such, I am assumed to be in need of help, or childlike (what’s with viewing children as helpless, anyway?), or somehow lesser.* I’m always aware that when entering the public sphere, I may be talked down to or people may attempt to make decisions for me.
I am a visibly disabled woman, yet people turn to me for advice or support. my dog depends on me for devotion and food. My partner depends on me for love, companionship, bill-paying…and food. My family and friends depend on me for…something. I have thoughts, opinions, and knowledge people in my little sphere seem to want. Friends have turned to me to support them through horrendous times. I have offered caring and information to strangers through volunteer work.
I don’t ask to be lauded for any of this. But I do ask not to be seen as helpless because I can’t read the specials on the chalkboard in my favourite restaurant, or because I require shopping assistance in stores, or because I don’t always respond when spoken to (because I couldn’t hear, or didn’t know I was the one being addressed). I ask not to have it assumed that I cannot give, that I cannot be remunerated for giving (AKA that I can’t join the workforce), that whatever I do give is automatically tempered by by assumed inherent neediness as a disabled woman.
Those of us lumped into the helpless camp often do feel the need to enumerate, as I did above, the ways in which we are needed, the ways in which we help. We do this not out of a sense of ego, but out of a desperate sense that we will be subsumed, swallowed whole, rendered invisible by assumed neediness. If we splash really hard and loud, maybe we won’t drown in the pool of other people’s assumptions…maybe.
Helping and being helped are, I think, part of a circle. They are reciprocal; they complete each other. They cannot complete each other if they are two separate camps. Rather than being polar opposites, two magnets drawn together to complete the force, they instead form two halves of a planet in orbit, so where they are in relationship to the atmosphere around them is always changing.
No, I think it’s even mushier than that-perhaps like a virtual puzzle which recreates itself, the slots for the pieces always changing, the solution never being the same twice.
You see, reciprocity is not an either or. There are no two camps of helping and helper. These camps have been created by the helper, by those in power, to keep the helped down. We see this in history time and time again. Only one example of this is the taking over of birthing care by male doctors (who cannot birth so therefore will never need birthing support) from female midwives, most of whom did give birth, often many times over.**
There are multiple kinds of help, and multiple ways of helping.
This topic comes up a lot in my house, inhabited by two visibly disabled people who are both actively engaged in the world, who both provide help (whether it’s solving customers’ problems at a tech job or answering young people’s sex ed questions just to name two ways). The helper-helpee puzzle recently underwent a radical shift (the great computer programmers in the sky decided to write a new game at our expense) redefining how help was given and received.
I was thrust into helper role, a different one than I usually inhabit, and my partner was thrust into the being helped role. He sustained an injury, requiring hospitalization, rehab, and a lengthy recovery period at home. Suddenly, I was responsible for caring for our household all on my own, plus ensuring that my partner’s new level of need was being met (both by me and by his medical and rehab team).
The combined shock of suddenly being thrust into this situation, worry for my partner, and increased mental-energy expenditure of figuring out how to do household tasks that had previously been his domain kept me in a state of tension, anxiety, and what I can only describe as hypomania. There were practical tasks I really did need others’ help with (carrying a worn out rocking chair down the stairs to be taken out to the trash is beyond my physical capabilities) and there were others I just needed to convince myself to do. The cultural image of me, visibly disabled woman, does take an emotional toll sometimes. There was no more-able man to do things, though, so I had to figure things out myself. It’s also worth noting that I feared being seen by medical professionals as unable to adequately help my partner through his recovery because all they’d see was a disabled woman, not an adult partner of their patient. So, hello stress.
Once the initial medical crisis had been dealt with, and his pain was being managed, my partner spent a good deal of time checking in with me and encouraging me to meet my own getting-help needs. I don’t do well emotionally in medical settings (way too many negative helplessness-promoting associations from childhood) and my partner knows this about me more than most people do. Plus, though our household is simple, simple is more complex for one person than for two. So once his mind was clear enough, he was sure to be as emotionally present for me as he could.
Our discussion of the helper-helpee relationship at this time was prompted by an exchange on social media in which I posted about how beneficial my trip to my massage and energy work provider had been. My partner responded with a “yay!” My provider responded encouraging my partner not to worry about me and only to worry about getting himself better.
My partner was perturbed by this. Couldn’t he, after all, focus on getting better and support my efforts to care for myself? Did there have to be this giant divide in which I helped him, but got support from everyone except him? I can imagine that he may have perceived this as reinforcing his helplessness, that he felt the implication that his life must stop for his injuries, that because he was injured he couldn’t still provide support to his life partner. (Physically and emotionally, his life did change drastically for a while, but that’s all the more reason to maintain some normalcy when possible.)
If anything, this change in our lives shook things up in a good way, breaking us out of long-held, stultifying patterns and changing our understanding of how each of us can help the other.
The social construction of helper and helped reinforces arrogance among the helper, and frustration among the helped.
*While children do need the help and protection of family (whatever that family looks like), I believe that we generally need to be seeing children as capable. Our culture has a stunning lack of respect for children and young people.
** I’m stating this gender-binary (men don’t give birth, women do) as a reflection of the beliefs in the 18th and 19th centuries when this medicalization of birth began, not as the truth we know in the 21st century about the gender continuum.
faerie_spark continues to look for ways to turn this helper/helped binary on its head, and welcomes input from her readers.
This has been my entry for therealljidol.
Most of us have occupied these two spaces, sometimes simultaneously. Nearly none of us have been given cultural permission to inhabit them both.
Those who help are seen as strong, capable, courageous, able. The helpers have unlimited access to resources, unlimited time, unlimited energy, unlimited commitment. They are often lauded, sometimes beyond all reason, for their helpfulness.
Those who are helped are seen as incapable, unable, devoid of resources, devoid of strength, weak of spirit. They are often pitied, criticized or denigrated for their helplessness.
Their helplessness is often intensified by the efforts of the helpers to help, such as when people receiving social services are required to follow the rules-rules which might keep them from satisfying needs for autonomy, such as turning a hobby into a small business or living with an intimate partner--or else they won’t receive needed assistance.
The helped are not seen as able to help.
I am a visibly disabled woman. As such, I am assumed to be in need of help, or childlike (what’s with viewing children as helpless, anyway?), or somehow lesser.* I’m always aware that when entering the public sphere, I may be talked down to or people may attempt to make decisions for me.
I am a visibly disabled woman, yet people turn to me for advice or support. my dog depends on me for devotion and food. My partner depends on me for love, companionship, bill-paying…and food. My family and friends depend on me for…something. I have thoughts, opinions, and knowledge people in my little sphere seem to want. Friends have turned to me to support them through horrendous times. I have offered caring and information to strangers through volunteer work.
I don’t ask to be lauded for any of this. But I do ask not to be seen as helpless because I can’t read the specials on the chalkboard in my favourite restaurant, or because I require shopping assistance in stores, or because I don’t always respond when spoken to (because I couldn’t hear, or didn’t know I was the one being addressed). I ask not to have it assumed that I cannot give, that I cannot be remunerated for giving (AKA that I can’t join the workforce), that whatever I do give is automatically tempered by by assumed inherent neediness as a disabled woman.
Those of us lumped into the helpless camp often do feel the need to enumerate, as I did above, the ways in which we are needed, the ways in which we help. We do this not out of a sense of ego, but out of a desperate sense that we will be subsumed, swallowed whole, rendered invisible by assumed neediness. If we splash really hard and loud, maybe we won’t drown in the pool of other people’s assumptions…maybe.
Helping and being helped are, I think, part of a circle. They are reciprocal; they complete each other. They cannot complete each other if they are two separate camps. Rather than being polar opposites, two magnets drawn together to complete the force, they instead form two halves of a planet in orbit, so where they are in relationship to the atmosphere around them is always changing.
No, I think it’s even mushier than that-perhaps like a virtual puzzle which recreates itself, the slots for the pieces always changing, the solution never being the same twice.
You see, reciprocity is not an either or. There are no two camps of helping and helper. These camps have been created by the helper, by those in power, to keep the helped down. We see this in history time and time again. Only one example of this is the taking over of birthing care by male doctors (who cannot birth so therefore will never need birthing support) from female midwives, most of whom did give birth, often many times over.**
There are multiple kinds of help, and multiple ways of helping.
This topic comes up a lot in my house, inhabited by two visibly disabled people who are both actively engaged in the world, who both provide help (whether it’s solving customers’ problems at a tech job or answering young people’s sex ed questions just to name two ways). The helper-helpee puzzle recently underwent a radical shift (the great computer programmers in the sky decided to write a new game at our expense) redefining how help was given and received.
I was thrust into helper role, a different one than I usually inhabit, and my partner was thrust into the being helped role. He sustained an injury, requiring hospitalization, rehab, and a lengthy recovery period at home. Suddenly, I was responsible for caring for our household all on my own, plus ensuring that my partner’s new level of need was being met (both by me and by his medical and rehab team).
The combined shock of suddenly being thrust into this situation, worry for my partner, and increased mental-energy expenditure of figuring out how to do household tasks that had previously been his domain kept me in a state of tension, anxiety, and what I can only describe as hypomania. There were practical tasks I really did need others’ help with (carrying a worn out rocking chair down the stairs to be taken out to the trash is beyond my physical capabilities) and there were others I just needed to convince myself to do. The cultural image of me, visibly disabled woman, does take an emotional toll sometimes. There was no more-able man to do things, though, so I had to figure things out myself. It’s also worth noting that I feared being seen by medical professionals as unable to adequately help my partner through his recovery because all they’d see was a disabled woman, not an adult partner of their patient. So, hello stress.
Once the initial medical crisis had been dealt with, and his pain was being managed, my partner spent a good deal of time checking in with me and encouraging me to meet my own getting-help needs. I don’t do well emotionally in medical settings (way too many negative helplessness-promoting associations from childhood) and my partner knows this about me more than most people do. Plus, though our household is simple, simple is more complex for one person than for two. So once his mind was clear enough, he was sure to be as emotionally present for me as he could.
Our discussion of the helper-helpee relationship at this time was prompted by an exchange on social media in which I posted about how beneficial my trip to my massage and energy work provider had been. My partner responded with a “yay!” My provider responded encouraging my partner not to worry about me and only to worry about getting himself better.
My partner was perturbed by this. Couldn’t he, after all, focus on getting better and support my efforts to care for myself? Did there have to be this giant divide in which I helped him, but got support from everyone except him? I can imagine that he may have perceived this as reinforcing his helplessness, that he felt the implication that his life must stop for his injuries, that because he was injured he couldn’t still provide support to his life partner. (Physically and emotionally, his life did change drastically for a while, but that’s all the more reason to maintain some normalcy when possible.)
If anything, this change in our lives shook things up in a good way, breaking us out of long-held, stultifying patterns and changing our understanding of how each of us can help the other.
The social construction of helper and helped reinforces arrogance among the helper, and frustration among the helped.
*While children do need the help and protection of family (whatever that family looks like), I believe that we generally need to be seeing children as capable. Our culture has a stunning lack of respect for children and young people.
** I’m stating this gender-binary (men don’t give birth, women do) as a reflection of the beliefs in the 18th and 19th centuries when this medicalization of birth began, not as the truth we know in the 21st century about the gender continuum.
faerie_spark continues to look for ways to turn this helper/helped binary on its head, and welcomes input from her readers.
This has been my entry for therealljidol.