Abstract
This paper is dedicated to description of my personal model of helping people. It is based on analyzing the way in which this model was formed, the stages I went through on the way of final model formation. Besides, the possible techniques and approaches that should be changed are distinguished along with the kinds of problems that can be addressed through this model and population that can make use of it. In the course of forming my model of helping three stages were passed: unconscious, interference and denial. After this, based on the experience gained in them the final model was formed, based on individual approach to every person who needs help and finding appropriate instruments for each case. The ways this model can be applied are numerous due to the personal approach and absence of strong limit. The main limitation of the model is the dependence on the openness and qualification of the person who applies it.
Keywords: models of helping, helping people, psychological help.
For many years in my life, I have been trying different kinds of helping people, until I found one model that suits me most. In this paper, I will present this model and show why I have chosen it and what else I want to improve in it.
At first, I did not know whether someone needed my help or not. When someone asked me for help, I liked to give it to him or her, although being afraid that it would not be enough or something that they really required. I did not think this way then, but now I see that my fear was based exactly on this. Sometimes, I was too careful and did not give help, finding some excuse. Overall, this period of my helping can be called unconscious.
Then there was a period in my life when I gathered certain experience in different spheres of life, I wanted to help everyone, give advice to them, no matter whether they required this help or not. At that time, I thought that I know a lot that has already made me happy and I wanted everyone to be as happy as I was. I saw some problems people had around me and started to recommend them what to do with these issues. To my surprise, not everyone wanted to follow my advice and accept my help. I thought: “Why? If it makes me so happy, why others don’t want to become as happy as I am?”
What surprised me even more was that for those people who accepted my help and decided to follow my advice, their problems were not solved as I supposed to, and sometimes they even got worse. Moreover, I became guilty of those failed attempts, as people who took my help somehow passed to me all the responsibility for failure. It was very difficult for me to handle such situations, to understand that my experience that I gained sometimes hard was not suitable for everyone.
At some point of my life when I was using this helping model, I started doubting whether I can be useful for anyone at all and started to doubt my own positive experience. If it proved to be wrong in so many situations, maybe it was not so good in reality. I remember how hard it was for me in that time, as then I decided that if people either did not use my help or used it in such a way that it did not bring any positive results to them, I should just stop helping people.
It was also a difficult period for me, because in fact I like to help people a lot and always feel great when I see how my help changes people’s life for the better. In that period of crisis, I did not want my help to ruin someone’s life, make it ore complicated. I decided to keep calm and quiet and not interfere with anyone’s life. I became miserable in that time and after a while understood that such keeping calm and quiet was not for me, maybe for someone else, but definitely not for me.
Then I started to analyze my experience, trying to understand why my active advice when I wanted to help everyone did not work, as I wanted it to. I saw that I had my unique and special life path. I developed my instruments of handling problems that were very effective in my life path. I understood that I did not take into account that every person has some unique path in life (Ellis, 2003). What works well for me does not necessarily bring good for others. Apart from having unique experience, I also saw that everyone has his or her own instruments, possibilities and opportunities. It means that my instrument that I recommended is not implemented in the same way. It means that even if the instrument is right for the person, the way that it is applied can make a real difference.
After understanding all of it, I saw what I could do not to get to overwhelmed and to be effective in helping people when they require it. Since that time, I stopped giving advice or help when I was not asked to do it. I learned how to see the appeal for help even if it is not expressed in words. Moreover, I saw when people in fact did not want assistance, but asked for it. It is still new to me to distinguish some hidden appeals, and it is the sphere that I want to enhance further.
In case of people asking me for help, I also try to specify what kind of help exactly they need. I do not go in for teaching them how to live, do not go too deep into my own experience, do not describe them my own choices if it is inappropriate. One and the same appeal can in fact be calling for hundreds of different kinds of help. Not to get lost, not to make some critical mistake, it is really necessary to ask a person more about the help they need, maybe rephrase what I have hear to understand whether it is what they need (Ellerman, 2009). Of course, this process is not repeated every time, but I try to always do it, as it helps to save my time, nerves and become effective helper for people in different situations.
After specifying the kind of help, I apply my experience, knowledge of some general mechanisms in life that help to choose the required assistance and realize it in such a ways that a person is happy with the result. Today I think that I became successful in helping people and it goes easier for both people and me who ask me for help. I do not generalize, or at least try not to and always assume that I do not know a thing about the situation. It allows me to clarify all the necessary information and not to act based on my fantasies.
The model can be successfully applied in relationships between clinician and a client, as it presupposes help to different people of various backgrounds and levels of development. It allows the clinician to find the kind of help that is required exactly by the client so that he could feel good and solve some personal problems. Multicultural issues can be addressed as well, all due to the individual approach to each and every situation.
The spheres that I would like to work on still is the distinguishing of real appeal for help, finding more ways of help, reading the people’s real emotions from their faces and gestures. All of this will help me to be more effective along with expanding my knowledge base about different situations and mechanisms in people’s mind. My general view of helping is the following: help should be rendered only when it is really needed and in the form that is most suitable for the person, in which case it is effective. My model can be applied in different situations and for diverse population, as it presupposes individual approach. Its main limitation is the qualification and openness of the person that applies the model.
References
Ellerman, D. (2009). Helping People Help Themselves: From the World Bank to an Alternative Philosophy of Development Assistance. Michigan: University of Michigan Press.
Ellis, A. (2003). Helping People Get Better Rather Than Merely Feel Better. Journal of Rational-Emotive and Cognitive-Behavior Therapy, 21(3-4), 169-182.
