Have you ever tried to help someone only to see things get worse? Has your compassion for a self-destructive person ever led to more self-destruction?
The problem is that the brain learns from rewards. Your compassion is rewarding to others. If they get your compassion when they act badly, their brain wires itself to get rewards by acting badly.
Compassion is good, but the pendulum can swing too far the other way. Your good intentions lead to harm if they reinforce self-destructive behavior. Whether it’s someone in your life or people you don’t know in person, your quest for compassion can be part of the problem. You have the power to do something different. You may do more good in the long run by rewarding good behavior instead of enabling bad behavior.
Give a man a fishing poleWe all know the expression that it’s better to give a fishing pole than a fish. But what if you give someone a fishing pole and they never fish? What if you compassionately offer fishing lessons and replace the pole whenever they break it, but they keep criticizing the pole and the lessons and still don’t fish?
You may blame yourself. You keep trying to improve your offerings and grieving over their lack of fish. Maybe you are part of the problem. When you hold yourself responsible for their outcomes, you teach them they are not responsible for their outcomes. You teach them to get fish by attacking your efforts to help because that’s the behavior you keep rewarding.
Everybody wants to be a heroWanting to help is natural. But when you want to help more than the other person wants to help themselves, you substitute for their personal power instead of adding to it. The harder you row the boat, the less they row.
Psychologists call this enabling, enmeshment, codependence and “the drama triangle” (or “the rescue triangle”). Many of these insights came from addiction-recovery work, because it was observed that addiction exists because the addict is enabled by others. Enablers pride themselves on their compassion. They hate the results, but refuse to do anything differently because it’s not “compassionate.” They go down with the ship.
Compassion
You can define compassion in a new way. You can reward healthy behavior instead of rewarding unhealthy behavior. It’s hard to do. The rescuer is typically as addicted to rescuing as the receiver is to needing rescue. In the long run, it’s more compassionate to model healthy choices than to perpetuate a destructive loop. You have power over your own choices, not other people’s choices. You can act like a hero, or you can re-direct your compassion in ways that do more long-run good.
There's lots more on re-directing your compassion in my new
