I don't want to fix you

My husband did a volunteer job related to psychology up until the end of last year. One of the things that he was trained to understand both in readings that he did and in the job itself was that it was not his role to "fix" people or to solve their problems. His part was to attempt to help people find their own solutions to their problems.

To a lot of people with problems who seek psychological help, this approach is very frustrating. They don't want to find their own answers. They want to be told exactly what to do to fix their problems. I can certainly understand this desire, and I believe it drives a lot of the self-help industry including weight loss culture. It's why there are so many diet books out there and people who try to tell you exactly what they did to succeed. Though I do not read them, there's a reason that there are blogs which detail every minute of exercise a person does and every morsel that goes in their mouths. Some people want the answers very specifically and directly. They want a road map with every detail outlined and a complete path highlighted for them to help them get from where they are to where they want to be.

When it comes to problems, humans prefer simple answers. In fact, they so strongly desire a simple answer that they will choose simplicity over effectiveness. One of the reasons people often fail to change in all areas of their lives is that they choose one direct and unsophisticated yet ineffective solution after another. It's far more appealing to keep looking for new simple answers than dive into the pool of byzantine options that come along with complexity. This is what people want from a therapist. They want a concrete cause that created a certain effect and then a definite cure. You can find a counselor who might be willing to do such a thing for you, but there's a good chance you won't feel helped in the long run unless they so happen to recommend choices that coincidentally end up working for you.

The problem is that all of the cures for all of the woes in the world won't work if they are not an option for you. There was once an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation in which a moon was falling out of its orbit causing environmental chaos on an alien planet. Q, a formerly omnipotent being who had been demoted to a life of morality, suggested that the problem could be fixed by changing the gravitational constant of the universe. This was something Q could once do, but the mere mortals on the Enterprise were incapable of accomplishing. When it comes to dealing with our issues, weight-related or otherwise, we are all mere mortals and being told that we should do something beyond our scope is the same as no answer at all.

One of the reasons that my husband's volunteer job stressed allowing people to find their own answers to their problems was that only the individual knows what he or she is capable of doing. The answer for me may not be an answer that you are capable of taking advantage of and vice verse. This is the main problem that I have with weight loss blogs in general. People tend to be very directive about what works and what doesn't work with little regard for the fact that not everyone can make the same choices. Lip service is offered to people who have physical disabilities. They are let off the hook when it comes to exercising their way to weight loss, but no empathy is offered for those with emotional impediments. "If I can do it, you can do it," is the strong message. If you can't do it, you aren't trying hard enough, are weak-willed, or lacking in sufficient motivation.

I'm not presenting myself as any sort of saint in this regard. I've been guilty of similar thoughts and sentiments. I certainly had my share of impairments when I started to try and lose weight in 2009 and I felt that, if I could manage with my inability to walk for more than a minute or two without being in agony and if I could manage with no special diet foods or support, then others should be able to manage as well. That was my self-centeredness and arrogance talking. You'd think that anyone who was as deeply rooted into the psychological aspects of change would know better. The truth is I did know better, but my ego overrode my better sensibilities.

We all tend to believe that we have hardships and limitations which exceed those of our brothers and sisters and, if we can triumph, they should be able to as well. Recently, I've had to continually remind myself that we are all constitutionally different and circumstances under which I would flourish are those under which others may yet fail. This is not because they are weaker, dumber, or in any way lesser than me, but rather because we all live in a skins with unique properties to the processes operating within them. I haven't had to remind myself of this in terms of weight loss as I tend to have good empathy for those who struggle with weight, but I have had to remind myself of this point when looking at people who suffer other problems who are living lives of greater ease and affluence than mine.

So, I don't want to fix people by asking them to follow my banner, but I do want to help them become capable of fixing themselves in the ways in which they personally feel broken. This remains one of the reasons that I talk so much about mental aspects over mechanistic processes. My goal remains to help people make the choices they can make rather than to encourage them to make the ones that I made.