When Helping isn't Helping, Me or You, Continued

Trigger warning for curse words as I make points of emphasis.

Today, I resigned from leadership roles in my faculty union.  I just can't, right now.  These reflections have been part of why.  I volunteered "to be helpful," and I am rethinking why I do that.

A lifelong survival strategy has been "making myself helpful."  I talked, two days ago, about the caregiver role asked of me as a child.  I think of it this way.  My mother was brave enough to put her own safety first, to divorce her abusive husband.  As punishment, some family "disowned" her.  To follow her own needs (for safety, for happiness) meant ostracism.

I wasn't going to let my grandparents do that to me.  So I became good at mowing lawns, at shoveling, at helping grandpa jack up the sagging southwest foundation of the home every year (with a literal jack under the corner of the house).  There's a metaphor for you.

"Helping" my grandparents was about loving them (public face), but also about manipulating them into meeting my security needs (shadow).  I belong here.  You won't let me go (subtext, like you did mom) because you need me.

...

Fast forward 30 years.  I'm a vibrant, diversely engaging intellectual (public face).  And yet:

• I'm on 25% of all MA committees in my department, even as I am 7% of the graduate faculty.  I belong here.  You won't let me go because you need me.  
• I direct a half dozen independent studies each year.  I belong here.  You won't let me go because you need me.   
• I coordinate internships.  I belong here.  You won't let me go because you need me.  

"Helping" students is about loving the relationship that can come from mentoring (public face).  It's also about manipulating the institution into meeting my security needs (shadow).

...

"I belong here.  You won't let me go because you need me" has ripple effects in personal life.  

A divorced man dates single moms.  Single moms have lots of ways to be helped.  One sweetheart, heated in her language when she was angry, said to me once:  "You have me at a disadvantage.  I can't argue with you, without risking losing your help." 

I spent time wondering "How can it be a bad thing that I am driving her child to dance class?  I like the child.  I want her to rest after work."  That was me, looking onto my public face and saying "I'm a helping person." Looking onto the shadow, though:  I was trying to force her to meet my security need by making myself helpful.  I belong here.  You won't let me go because you need me.     

... 

I genuinely love(d) my great-grandparents, my then-girlfriend, and (most of) my students.  The public face of these good works is real.

But as I established yesterday, each of these good works includes a desire to control the way other people feel about me, to fill some need in me.

This blogging is about recognizing the tension between the conscious intent (in the light) and the unconscious motivations (in the shadow).  Recognizing the ways these two forces work against each other, and the ways they wreck things, is Enantiodromia, the process I think I am working through as I write this.

...

So, time to step back, to stop deploying "helpfulness" as a way to try to control the responses of others, including at work.  This means resigning from a task I took on "to be helpful" that brings me no joy.  I'm sorry, UEA.