Helping others but not ourself.

Question:

Hi Sylvia, I have a few questions but to start with, How do I help my friends out of debt? It's very taxing on my mental health and I feel like I have to work for their sake and not my own. When is it appropriate to help yourself when the needs of my family feel more important then my own? and I guess in a more general sense i'm asking when should I put my own desires above others? - Hoodman.

---

Answer:

Dear Hoodman,

you have stumbled upon some of the most challenging questions one can ask oneself in life. Where do my needs end and where do others' needs begin? It is a tricky question to answer for oneself as there are several different factors to take into consideration.

I always used to say that the only person we have responsibility for in life is ourselves. However, as I have grown older, I now also include ones children and ones animals.

Helping a friend out of debt does not require you to pay it off for them. Supporting your friends doesn't equate to you sharing all of their burdens all the time. Being there for them, letting them know that you care, that you understand that right now, they are in a shitty situation is support.

If I were to provide economic support for all my friends and family whenever they got into debt, I'd be without money in a heartbeat. If one gets into debt, one must get oneself out of debt. Relying on others to solve one's own mistakes is really unfair. One must take responsibility for one's own actions.

If you do want to help your friend out economically, why not buy them a meal? Does financial support have to be physical money? Can it not be as simple as filling up their gas tank once in a while? Why does it have to be all or nothing?

Reverse the situation, do you expect every one of your friends to work their ass off in order to get you out of debt? If you said yes to that, then I think they deserve you to do the same. If not, well, standing by the sidelines and not abandoning them is support enough.

We go through life looking at all the people around us and think that they have it either so much better than us or that they have it so much worse than us. Helping out with small things economically is fine, but when you give so much time and energy of your own that you start feeling restrained, exhausted and ashamed, you cannot keep going like that.

It is not sustainable for you to have all this responsibility on your shoulders. I strongly feel that in the end, if you keep that up, you'll land yourself into your own bed for the next few years, being exhausted and incapable of doing much of anything.

Putting your desires above all others does not mean that you will turn a blind eye to their needs or that you indeed don't care. It simply means that in order for you to be able to help others, you need to be in a good place yourself. That's why they tell you on planes to put your own oxygen mask on first before you help someone else with theirs.

You seem like a very caring person but you must realize that you need to care for yourself. If you don't care for yourself, you will not be able to care for others. Please, care for yourself when you can decide to do so, otherwise you will end up in a place where you'll be forced to only care for yourself.

And who knows, maybe your friends and family will understand exactly how taxing it is for you to carry all this by yourself? You'll never know unless you start that conversation.

I wish you the best of luck!

Warm regards,

Sylvia.