The art of helping

The Art of Helping I

"I want to say something about the art of helping. Everybody can help, of course. The basic model of helping is that of parents and children. Parents do almost anything for their children and children can expect almost anything from their parents. For a while. Then the parents frustrate the children and the children get angry with the parents for a while and this is the way they grow. They grow by separation. The first model for this is birth. We grow by being separated from our mother, and therefore connection and separation depend on each other. That’s the basic pattern of happiness and unhappiness. Connection with, then separation.

And as we grow up we have many experiences of connection and separation all the time. There can be no connection without separation. Many clients come to a helper in order to resume former connection. Therefore they present themselves as a child in need of a mother or a father. Now, if the helper agrees to take up that position, what happens to the client? They cannot grow. And the helper cannot grow because by agreeing to such a therapeutic relationship he refuses to be separated.

To console someone – anyone can do that. The question is whether anyone is really helped by being consoled or by being treated as a child. So, the helper must be separated himself, from his parents and from his expectations of happiness connected with childhood experiences. He must be grown up and then he can face a client as an adult. Then he demands action. The question is not how to deal with a feeling, but what can be done. Then we have an adult relationship and both are working out what can be done, the client and the therapist. Here I demonstrate adult relationships in psychotherapy. And since much of psychotherapy is entangled in that image that a helper must behave and have sympathy like a mother or father, they cannot help in a real and powerful way."

Bert Hellinger