Sometimes people need a ton of help

[Tyler Robinson]

Sorry if I can't articulate this, I'm autistic. 

Sometimes you should not help people because they are in a position where they are broken, damaged, dysfunctional, vulnerable, confused and just down. They probably need a lot of help than what you're estimating. And if you're not fully equipped to understand how much help they really need and if you are awfully underprepared and you're still taking on the helper role, it can actually mess up a delicate situation and make it worse. 

Three analogies/examples to understand this - 

First example 

Imagine if you are climbing a mountain, and you are exhausted and trying to reach the top and someone offers to hold your hand and pull you to the top. You struggled to come that far up. Now you trust this person and hold their hand and they suddenly realize that they can't really get this done and just release your hand and you fall further from where you initially were and now you will have to start all over again and you're worse off than before. 

Second example - 

You're homeless and hungry and a nearby shelter is offering food only for a day. Someone comes along and says they wanna help you and they want to offer you food and tell you to not bother visiting the shelter. So when you arrive at their place, they don't want to offer you food anymore and the shelter that was actually going to help you is closed as well. So you end up hungry. If this person hadn't made false promises of helping you, you would have at least turned to the shelter for food. 

Third example 

You're helpless at an unknown place and you want directions to go visit a relative who will be helping you. This unknown place is still not a bad place, it has a store for food and water. And there's a gas station where you sleep. Now while asking for directions to your destination you meet a well intentioned stranger who tells you that they will accompany you and help you get to the new place. They offer to give you a ride. But halfway through the ride, they come to a bridge and they feel overwhelmed and they decide to just drop you off on the bridge in the middle of the night. They decide to just leave you there. You feel stranded because there's just nothing on the bridge, no store for food or water and you're too exhausted to walk. You feel like the stranger should have never bothered to help you because now you are in a much worse situation than when you were at the place of the gas station. 

Does this resonate? Do you relate to such experiences metaphorically where you felt like it was better for the person to have not helped you rather than being overconfident in their ability to help you and then leaving you feeling worse than before because they underestimated the demands of your situation and now you are having to pay for their mistakes. 

 

[Eyowey]

Sometimes people don't need help. If someone wants to ''help'' you with toxic drugs or lobotomy then you should run.

[Aaron p]

I heard a story of a man who seen a small butterfly trying to break out of its cocoon...his intentions were good, but when he cut open the butterfly's cocoon to release it, it couldn't fly...and died. It needed the struggle of pushing through its cocoon to develop adequate strength to survive in the real world. It's a nice little analogy 

[Tyler Robinson]

@Aaron p that's a beautiful analogy too. 

My analogies are convoluted and shitty. 

[Ulax]

@Tyler Robinson Yes. But the dunning kruger effect is a ball ache.