Helpless is a feeling. That having been said, it is a subset of “feelings” that I have written about (and that Deb and I have written a book about incorporating all of my feeling blogs). Describing helpless as a feeling is the best way I can define helpless, just as all words representing deep feelings are undefinable. While you can’t define such feelings, you can see the effects of these feelings, and the outgrowth of these feelings in some kind of expression. Expressions of feelings are always physical, emotional, cognitive, or active. I want to discuss the nature of this very important feeling, which means primarily the effects true helpless has on an individual or a group of people. I will also touch on other topics that relate to helplessness, which are genuine depression, feigned helplessness, the value of genuine helplessness, and how to handle helplessness. But first a couple of stories.

Stories of helplessness

This past week I have had no less than three men speak of feeling helpless. One man, a Catholic priest, chose to seek my counsel regarding the effects of the current pandemic had on him and on his parishioners. He reported that he had two issues: the feeling of loss and the fear of the unknown effects of the virus. Then he told me first of the worries he had about catching the coronavirus, or perhaps his sister catching the virus together with the effect that such a thing would have on her family given that she is a single parent. While painful, he could see himself coping with dying, or tragic as it might be, he could cope with his sister dying because he could see himself through these possibilities. However, what was most challenging for him was to think of how he might be called upon to serve his congregation. He noted, for instance, that many of his parishioners were seniors who could be most susceptible to becoming ill. If that were to happen, he thought, what would he do to serve them: stay at home and talk to them on the phone; visit one of them or a group of them at their homes or in the hospital, visit their relatives, or what? Secondly, he noted the concern for the forthcoming Holy Week, namely the week leading up to Easter, which is the most significant week of the church year. He wondered how he might handle Easter? As he spoke of these concerns, particularly those related to his congregation, I asked him how he felt. Helpless, he said. Then all changed in the conversation. Somehow, oddly, he felt better. We discussed, back and forth, certain theological and biblical matters related to fear, love, trust, and faith, but the lasting feeling he came to was helplessness. We discussed, for instance, how God is yet in command of the universe, and that we are but His servants in some way. But aside from the theological part of our discussion, he continued to feel “better” having admitted to feeling helpless. Just admit to feeling helpless. This priest’s helpless is essentially spiritual, i.e. seeing how God is in command, not he.

I saw Jack this week and heard the “H” word from him but in regards to a very different situation. Jack is married and desperately wants to stay married after seemingly been happily married for 30-some years. However, his wife is planning to leave him, apparently as a kind of separation, sometime soon. This I’d devastating to Jack. First, he is an evangelical Christian, and feels that such things are just wrong, but equally important he doesn’t know what he has done wrong, much less what he could do now to forestall such a drastic action as being separated. Jack is a very outgoing guy, a person who has been quite successful in his working years even though at the present he is working at a job that does not suit him. Jack has been successful in ministry, sales, and general management over these years and has generally been highly regarded. He has no particular addictions save one, which might call a food addiction. He is bereft of any understanding of why his wife is leaving him and has worked to hear what she has said about what she thinks he has done wrong. Yet nothing really makes sense to him even as he tries desperately to figure out what is going on with his wife. Our recent discussions have centered around the fact that he is a “we” person and then a “you” person despite his extraverted ways. (You might profit by reading my blog on “We, You, I people”). This means that he looks for connection, and when he can’t find it, looks to what is going on with his wife, always coming up with zero understanding of why she should be doing what she is doing. He feels helpless. Jack’s helplessness seems rooted in the fact that he has a deuce of a time coming out of his “we” and “you” orientation towards an “I” orientation, meaning who he is, how he feels, what he does, and what he says. Jack’s helplessness is his difficulty, almost impossibility, of looking at himself rather than his wife and their relationship.

The third man I saw this week speaking of helplessness is a person who, indeed, is suffering from a Major Depressive Disorder (MDD). You must know by now that I use this diagnostic label, or any diagnosis for instance, very rarely and with great caution. People use the term “depression” so freely, as with all other popular diagnoses, that the word is meaningless for the most part. The symptoms of MDD are disturbances in three areas of life: sleeping, eating, and energy. True MDD sufferers may suffer from all three or just one, but the primary symptom of MDD is energy, usually low energy. We call this condition anhedonia, which means lack of energy, fatigue, or lack of interest and drive. Such is the case for Bruce. More specifically, when we were working together, we addressed an early family situation that was less than functional, and so I asked him how he felt when he was a child in this situation. “Helpless,” he said. This is a guy who survived and thrived in life somewhat based on a life of “just doing what is needed to be done,” and how has collapsed. Why? He ran out of energy. Anhedonia. His brain is saying something like, “It’s time for you to take a time out and rest until you can finish all these feelings that you have necessarily repressed for decades.”

These three stories just this week, and many more in previous weeks. I did my best to help these guys feel helpless. Help them feel helpless, you say? Why? More later. Now, to discuss some helplessness that is really not helpless.

False Helplessness

This is a delicate discussion. Delicate because I am loathe to use words such as “false,” much less lazy, avoiding, addicting, lying, and such that are derogatory with no real value. Such words only serve the speaker, not the individual. This having been said, many people have fallen into a genuine feeling of helplessness because they have not grown up. Not grown up; what does that mean? It means that some element of emotional/social maturity has eluded them for some good reason. The two origins of failing to grow up (emotionally and socially) is deprivation or indulgence. Plus, both of them always lead to shame. The deprived child puts up a big fuss because she is not receiving what she needs, and then she is shamed for wanting what he actually needs. The indulged child puts a bit fuss because he thinks he should have everything that he wants, and then is shamed for wanting more than he should have. Whether from deprivation or indulgence, a child comes to view him/herself as helpless in life: helpless to get what he wants or needs. We can call the indulged child spoiled or the deprived demanding, but both of these children are just wanting to get from the world what they actually need. The deprived child needs to have nurturance and guidance; the indulged child needs to be limited. However, when one has had either of these unfortunate circumstances (and some children actually receive both, oddly), it is rare that they ever find a way to get away from feeling helpless because they continue to think/feel that the outside world should provide to them what they want. There is little distinction between wants and needs in such children, nor in the adults they become. Even though we who have received a modicum of limitation and encouragement might think otherwise, people in this feeling of helplessness truly feel and think that they are not able to do something. At this point people in this emotional/social immature condition find some kind of reasoning or addictive behavior that keeps them helpless.

Of the many people I know who truly feel this false helplessness I know of a woman who feels completely at the mercy of one or more physical ailments she has, a man who “can’t” find a way to get a job, a young girl wo at 14 really “needs” someone to help her remember to flush the toilet, a boy of 7 who thinks that he should win every game and it is “unfair” when someone else wins, a person in poverty thinking that rich people should give him money, and a wealthy woman who thinks that she has to protect her millions from the dangers of such people.

It is a challenge to feel any kind of helpless, but when a person has had a life of feeling helpless, it is extremely hard. And it is hard to befriend such a person, and harder yet to deal with such a person in your family.

A personal story

So do ever feel helpless? Not much, not often, and not for long, that is until recently. I am not at liberty to discuss the exact nature of my feeling helpless except to note that it has to do with what I should do and should not do in dealing with a particularly challenging family member. (By the way, this is not Deb, as she also feels some of the helplessness in this situation.) Given that my value system is “God first, work second, wife third, friends fourth, and family fifth,” I have found that I have needed to examine how I need/should deal with this family situation. It has been much like that I heard of from my priest patient, and it has brought me to my knees more than once. I feel a certain common feeling with him as I traverse these murky waters. So this brings me to the “so what” and “what can we do” part of this blog.

What can we do about feeling helpless, and perhaps get over it?

1. Absolutely #1: accept that you feel helpless. If you don’t do this, you will not be able to manage it, find ways to survive, ultimately find ways to thrive, and ultimately find a place for normal helplessness in your life. This goes for the short-term helplessness of the coronavirus, the intermediate term helpless of serious depression, or the lifelong feeling of helpless due to indulgence or deprivation
2. Come to grips with the fact that you, along with every other person in the world, feel helpless from time to time. It is the way of the world. How many people have you heard on the street who have said in regards to the current epidemic, “You have to accept what you have and get through it.”
3. Avoid a tendency to try to fix helplessness. Helplessness can’t be fixed. It has to be faced, felt, and finished, just like every other difficult feeling. Face it; feel it; finish it. You don’t fix it.
4. Share your feeling of helplessness with just one trusted friend, hopefully someone who will not think that s/he has to fix you, but can share with you this feeling, just as we need people to share our loves and our losses.
5. Find a way to accept this helplessness as part of the way the universe unfolds. For me as a theist, I find that it is profitable for me to remind myself that “God is yet in control the last time I checked,” noting that I certainly don’t like all that God does, nor should. For people who are nontheistic it is equally possible to find a way to see that, as Einstein said, “The universe is friendly”…eventually.
6. Note that your feeling of helpless decreases when you begin to accept, talk to someone, allow it to run a course, and find a real solace in God or the universe at large.