Yoke

With my job, I have to help people who are going through tough stuff. That's what I'm paid for. Most of the time I do a pretty good job of dealing with it during the work hours and not letting it consume me. Every now and then, though, I go through these cycles where I feel compelled to solve everyone's problems for them. Not just at work, either. Between my 40-hour-per-week job, my 10-hour-per-week counseling practicum, my family, and my friends, it seems everyone's facing some kind of crisis. Well, okay, that was a blanket statement - not everybody. But a lot of people. And a lot of the crises are very serious. And I take on the yoke of pushing up my sleeves and trying to solve the problem single-handedly.

Now, the problem is not so much that I want to help. I should want to help. I'd be a little worried about myself if my attitude was one of, "No way, that's your problem, get out of my comfort zone. I don't want this to get in the way of me camping out on my couch and watching Desperate Housewives." (For the record, I don't watch Desperate Housewives. Nor do I have a couch - not a real one anyway. It's just a hyperbolic example. Work with me, people. It's all about imagery and exaggerating the absurd!) The problem is that I've lost my sense of balance between the two. These crises are not mine...the electric shutoff notice. The cancer. The broken arm. The abusive relationship. The destroyed home and missing relatives. The burnout of my coworkers. The elderly killed in the bus fire. The blown transmission. They belong to the people they are happening to. Most of the time, I cannot solve them. I don't have the capacity to fix the entire problem. And being a benevolent control freak, this is sometimes a reality I don't want to face.

What can I do? I can pray. I can ask God to help me serve these people. I can call periodically to show people I care. I can pick up a prescription, accompany someone to a scary doctor's appointment, cover a home visit for the coworker with car trouble...I can do little things...under normal circumstances. Lately, though, it seems like even the little things are hard to do with the many other demands I have on my time, energy, and sanity. I am frustrated because I cannot help as much as I want to, cannot do even the little things that I normally would be able to do. Heck, I can't even meet the demands of my own life. I can't seem to make up the time at work that I'm having to miss for my practicum. I have to be VERY careful with my money right now if I want to get my own bills paid. I have to take care of myself so that I'm strong enough and present enough to be useful to those around me. And I don't think that's selfish. When I was a lifeguard, we were taught that we should never attempt a rescue if we were somehow disabled or there was some kind of threat to our safety. For example, if I saw someone face-down in the water, and there was a downed power line also in the water, would it be smart of me to try to rescue that person? Of course not, because then I'd become electrocuted and there would just be two people to save.

That's kind of how I'm feeling right now. I feel disabled in the helping department, and I need to resolve that before I can help anyone else too much. Maybe right now is my time to feel okay about depending upon others, even though there is so much strife in the world around me. I hate, HATE that thought, but I have to come to terms with it.