Post #1882953

When you get a driver’s license in Germany, one requirement is that you go through a first aid course. The notion being that a random stranger that has received an afternoon of training and is there at the moment an injury occurs is often going to be of more help than a trauma physician that needs 20 minutes to arrive, after which the victim might already be dead. I think everyone understands that concept intuitively. When people go through hard times, for example with depression, in many cases their friends or acquaintances might end up being the first people they talk to, especially in cases where professional help has months or even years of waiting lists associated with it. The consequence of this is that untrained people will essentially end up providing counseling based on their own intuition, which can of course go all kinds of wrong but is in a lot of cases the only thing that is really available and can, at least I believe that, often be better than nothing. When I indicated here last week that I didn’t feel well, two people contacted me and offered to talk. You know who you are, and while there were reasons that taking you up on those offers wasn’t super viable at the time, and I thankfully also didn’t need it that much, I still remember that the realization that I have that kind of network now, did provide me with significant comfort, since it means that I can expect to have that if I ever do really need it. (I have plenty of experience with needing this kind of network but not having it and that is one of the reasons I nowadays try to be available for others.) The thing is that I’m told that I am good at supporting people , but it’s hard to evaluate that and I can really only go by what feels right and wrong in the moment. And I feel it would be a good idea if there was a similar thing to a first aid course: What should I do and what should I avoid? Reading about PCT, my approach seems to have some similarities, but then there are also clear differences in that I do tend to try to give advice, because sometimes I feel that that is what the other person needs. And then there are things like the non-zero number of people with various forms of plurality that I have talked to. I’m a singlet, so I cannot speak of my own experience there, but these systems still consist of people I care about and I want to help them. So I might suggest that trying to create a harmonic relationship between different alters is probably a good idea. But is it? Intuitively it feels right and I get the impression that harmonic systems manage better, but am I just encouraging a further opening of the split? And if so, is that a good or bad thing? And there are so many other problems people have where I want to help, because there might not be anyone else available for them. Historically I would have said that if you have to come to me, you really are scraping the bottom of the barrel, but I’m not sure this holds any longer. Still, I don’t want more people having to cry themselves to sleep every night because they have no one to talk to… But it would be nice if I could get some training on that…