A family in crisis, if they live in an active community of family or friends or both, will find themselves fielding regular offers of help. This is so many orders of magnitude better than the alternative of living in isolation, surrounded only by one’s own panic, but offers of help are not nearly as good as actual help, delivered while requiring as little as possible from the people who need it.
Article after article have been written about “ring theory,” the idea that, using a map of concentric layers around a person or family in crisis, support and comfort go in and complaints and requests go out. At the center of the circle is the person with the core issue; in the example of a family with a sick child, the child is at the center. While a parent might find their child’s howls of pain excruciating to hear, she would never dream of complaining about them to the child himself; more appropriate would be to complain to a good friend.
Illustration by Wes Bausmith / Los Angeles Times
This is common sense, but sometimes, the farther out from the center, the harder it is to remember.
Everyone knows not to complain to the parents of a sick child about how much work it is to support them and their child during this crisis, even though it is indeed HARD to be involved in a crisis, however little it really touches your own life. Being around fear and anxiety is, itself, traumatic. Still, we know, as ring theory tells us, to “dump out.” It becomes trickier when it’s not so much “dumping” our complaints as it is “dumping” the hard work of finding out what our struggling friends really need. Continue Reading…
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