Thread by @LetsGoCNote

I've thought a lot this year about supporting family and friends in their intense development difficulties.

A thing that comes with personal growth is that you begin to see what others need and perhaps start to feel like you want to fix them.

Truth is, you can't or shouldn't.

In coaching, I support people who are at a certain point and actively trying to grow.

In many cases, the person you're trying to "save" is not looking to be saved.

They've identified with their suffering or see you as too close to them and see you as a threat unconsciously.

Even if they're blaming and asking you to save them it's unlikely they'll listen because you're too attached to their attachment of their own suffering.

That's like sending someone to war to cure their PTSD.

So what to do?

Well, I think you have to let them be in their suffering and back away.

It's kind of like gravity as a force... you can hold your arms up for a little while resisting the force of gravity but eventually you will need to surrender to the ever-present force.

In this way you'll need to let their suffering play itself out, as surrender eventually comes but if you keep holding up their arms for them they assume they can resist forever.

For their own good, you stand back and let their arms fall and they can then reconcile with it.

This is what people pay me for, pay coaches for, to help them determine why and how to get out of their own way to show that it's safe to surrender into their own truths.

They come to me somewhat conscious of their problem.

I help them reveal the rest slowly and safely.

To point out an unconscious behavior can be alarming and even dangerous as the unconscious doubles down on what is keeping it safe.

Like waking up a sleepwalker.

They have to find a way to become conscious through seeing for themselves how their strategy isn't serving them.

This is what the Enneagram, for example, is intending to do.

Showing you what personality strategy you cling to and when you need it, gives the solution for how to move from vice to virtue or better yet, unconscious to conscious.

Fear to courage, avarice to non-attachment, etc.

But basically everyone goes through exhausting or satisfying what we think we need.

Frankly, we have to get tired of our own shit.

The paradox being that if someone points out our personality flaw, we double down on it.

Your family member or friend will double down on it.

So when I use the word surrender I mean it as an opposition to the resistance of what your personality strategy is protecting.

I don't mean surrender as a means to give up on life or give up on your family member.

But to give up on the idea of growing for anyone but yourself.

When clients come to me for help, the worst thing I can do is make it personal.

Because what we look for when we look for advice is for someone to do the work for us, a magic pill, or some shortcut to enlightenment or freedom from our feelings.

For me to make it personal would be for me to give them what they think they want.

And me keeping my distance and boundary is what makes me a good coach.

And that's what makes for a good family member or friend, someone who lets them deal with what they need to deal with.

And you'll have to deal with a few things yourself.

You won't get credit for fixing them.

They may dislike you for a while.

You may feel guilty or selfish.

But by continuing we enable dependency, which becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy regarding "Selfish."

And to be clear, caring for yourself is not selfish.

Having self-focus makes sense.

You spend more of your life with yourself.

You're born not knowing anyone and you die within yourself.

It's a good idea to enjoy yourself.

Self-focus is a sharpening of the sword to provide better support and care.

Boundaries keep them from hurting you in reaction, wreaking your ability to support and care.

Enabling them creates dependency, hurting them and you.

Dependency creates the selfishness in actuality.

Do you want to keep brushing your kids teeth until they're 30?

How about putting on their underwear?

Solving their relationship problems?

No, eventually you need to let them figure it out for themselves but if you enable dependence, nearly every human being will take it.

And we'd take it because we'd love to have something to blame to point the focus away from ourselves and our personality strategy.

What better way to not get "found out" then to use a psychological human shield.

You can't be their shield anymore.

Shields eventually break.

They'll thrash at first.

Things may get worse at first and they'll cling to strategy.

They'll beg, scream, kick, and claw but will see that the strategy isn't working anymore and will need to change.

Your only job is to be patient, guide, keep your distance, and not judge.

After thrashing is surrender.

Surrender is a choice to live.

Resistance is no worthy life.

Always fighting the truth, arguing, competing, bathing in drama, blaming, defensive, and clinging to substances, caffeine, sugar, sex or whatever makes you feel peace for a moment.

And I'm not saying pleasures are "bad" but they become "bad" when given a purpose...that purpose being to further resist which dilutes the joy we could receive from it.

One piece of candy could feel like eating 10 if the joy isn't attached to avoiding pain.

Pleasure in pain provides temporary peace.

Peace is what we're truly after.

That's why we want that friend or family member to be better...as that leads to our peace through their peace...revealing our own personality strategy.

If they're a mess, we can stay a mess.

Our peace becomes dependent on their peace just as their peace is dependent on whatever they're also externally focused on.

We continue to think the strategy we need is for someone or something else to hold our arms up longer to better resist the gravity of whatever is truly happening.

This could mean personality strategy, a religion, a movement, social peace, whoever is president, or fixing family.

It turns out the answer is in plain sight and that's to let the arms fall to realize that you don't gain anything by continuing to resist.

There was ground beneath you the whole time and you had nothing to lose by letting go.

Once you do, others see that it's safe.

If you try to convince someone to eat something but refuse it yourself, why would they eat it?

"Okay, so be the change you seek to make."

Not quite. The desire to change "else" is depriving the deep internal personal self growth that would benefit anyone.

Be and let be.

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