We come into helping or caring roles because we want to support people, and we nearly always have ideas about what kind of changes might be beneficial.
Sometimes we are in explicit agreement with the other person, where we both have a clear and shared idea about the direction we want to head in together. Sometimes we invite the other person to at least consider options based on our experience or expertise that we believe may be helpful.
It’s hard to do this work without hope. Hope communicates faith – in the person and their future – and optimism. Hope is energising, giving us the stamina to hang in there through the slow process of change.
But hope can also bring a sense of pressure, an expectation that something should change, and often something specific. Our hopes can get in the way discovering theirs.
A stance of non-attachment can help. This is different to neutrality (being neither for or against the change) or indifference (not caring about the change). Non-attachment requires us to hold our hopes lightly, to unhook ourselves from becoming invested in them.
We might appreciate a beautiful sunset but we don’t try to make it last longer. All we can do is be as present as possible to savour the passing moment. Equally we can build our own capacity to be present, without getting as caught up in our own ideas about what could or should happen next.
One way to become less attached to the outcome is to shift the focus from aiming for a specific outcome to supporting the person to make a truly informed and considered decision that they can live with, coming from a place of kindness and acceptance toward themselves.
Now our hope and optimism can be directed towards the belief that such a decision is possible, fostered by a curiosity to discover what that decision might be. Even if the decision is not what we might have chosen for ourselves.
Helen Mentha 