5 Ways Helping Can Hurt

We’ve all heard the old saying, “The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.” But even familiarity with the idiom doesn’t help us think of ways helping can hurt. I mean, how does that work anyway? Aren’t they antonyms? Surely helping can’t make things worse, can it?

How Helping Can Hurt

Looking for an unexpected plot conflict? How about having helping someone go wrong? That’s surprising, right?

Ok. Ok. There are a few situations where having helping backfire is predictable:

• Picking up a hitchhiker
• Helping a stranger load something into a car
• Holding the door to let someone into a secured building
• Falling for a sob story and giving out confidential information to someone who shouldn’t have had it
• A hero with an archnemesis helping someone and thereby making that person a target for the archnemesis

We’ve seen those before, haven’t we? A nice person helps a stranger (usually) and ends up inadvertently helping the villain.

But how can helping hurt when it’s not a stranger? Is it always a security or target issue? Can it hurt the person you’re trying to help if it’s not?

The answers are 1. See below. 2. Nope. 3. Yep.

Something Breaks

Ever broken something you’re trying to clean or fix? Or broken something completely unrelated? Like knocking over a fragile vase or hitting something against the wall and making a mark. Leaving an indent or a hole even.

Yeah… that’s not helping.

The cost of the repair or replacement and the reaction of the owner (and/or the owner’s relatives or lawyers) drives the nature of the conflict. The bigger the cost and their reaction, the bigger the conflict.

Well, that and whether anyone’s injured. Or killed.

False Accusations

Often, helping someone means being alone with them. Maybe for a moment or two. Maybe for an hour or two. However long it takes, the only two people who know what happened in that time are the helper and the helpee (Not rly a word, but you get what I mean).

That leaves openings for false accusations. It could be from the person helped. It could be from the cops after that person is found dead, and you are the last one to have been seen with him/her.

Ruh-roh.

Enabling or Crippling

There are a couple of different ways this one usually plays out. The most common one is…

Addicts

This is the traditional example: someone keeps bailing the addict out over and over again, keeping the addict out of jail, flush, and out of trouble (as possible).

Giving the addict no real motivation to change.

Now, the addict getting bailed out once doesn’t really count. This situation only exists when the addict continues the same behavior, and the “helper” continues to shield the addict from the repercussions.

Kids

Have you ever met people who do so much for their child that the child never learns to be self-sufficient?

Those are the kids who get to college and don’t know how to make their own schedules, manage their money, make their own decisions, make their own sandwiches, or even do their own laundry. They definitely don’t know how to handle any trouble that comes their way!

So did doing everything for them help them? It was meant to.

Injured, Disabled, or Old

Another prime example is when someone is illness or has an illness or condition that makes it difficult to do things. The instinct is to do it for them: to help them and save them from pain.

That’s ok to an extent. But if someone always always does it for them, why fight the pain or weakness to do it themselves?

That’s not gonna help them heal or gain strength. In fact, it can even take away their motivation to try.

That’s pretty much the same for all of the examples in this category: by helping the person, you’re actually removing their motivation to change, learn, or work. And the end results, well, they’re not always that helpful.

Don’t Do It Right

The gist of this way of “helping” is that you do something for someone but do it the way you think it should be done instead of the way that person thinks it should be done. Not always a good mix. In fact, the only time it really works is when the person being helped doesn’t really care how it’s done so long as it gets done (which is, honestly, rare).

Here are two specific scenarios.

The Stereotypical Husband

Is it really helping if someone else has to re-do everything you did? Or is that just plain annoying? (Here’s a hint: It’s annoying!)

Of course, not only husbands do this. That’s just a stereotype. No, anyone can do this, and no matter who does, it’s annoying.

Bureaucracy-related Stuff

Jenny has a friend/coworker who’s overloaded with stuff to do, so she offers (demands) to take part of the load. And she does. The only problem is that a boss/partner/legistlation requires that the job be done a certain way. Which, of course, Jenny knew nothing about (having assumed she knew how to do it and ignored her friends instructions).

Now, Jenny’s friend’s in big trouble.

The solution to either of these situations is to listen to the person being “helped” and do it the way that person wants it done. That removes the irritation and/or bigger problems and makes the action actually helping.

Disrespecting the Person’s Autonomy

If you’ve ever had someone insist on helping you – to the point of not taking no for an answer – then, you know what I’m talking about. Hell, sometimes, people will even do things “for you” without consulting you about it.

So here’s the problem. When you do that, you’re actually impinging on people’s individual rights to make decisions for themselves and their belongs. So if you do that to someone often (or multiple people do that to the same person regularly), then, it gives the impression that the person can’t or shouldn’t make those decisions.

Honestly, it’s treating people like they’re incompetent. Like they’re children. And that can really hurt a person’s feelings and self-confidence.

Worse, hurting someone that way is absolutely not the intention (unless you’re a jerk). Which is why this is a great example of the road to Hell quote: people don’t realize that “helping” in this way can be so hurtful. In fact, if you told them that their “helping” was actually hurting the person in question, they might even be irate and offended at the idea.

By the way, this is one of the methods that abusers use to convince their prey that they aren’t smart enough or competent enough. So while it’s obviously a lot worse to do it on purpose (morally speaking), doing it by accident can still have plenty of negative outcomes. Worse, if you combine this one with Don’t Do It Right, the outcome can be really bad.

In a humanity sense, that is. In a plot conflict sense, it could be really good.

Oh, well. That’s writing for you.

-Em