Trouble

I love this. It is a lesson that took me a long time to learn, too. Particularly over my sister and nephew’s troubles, and my own children’s problems. I used to tell their teachers, “I don’t rescue” when they would call in concern over the kid’s grades, and I don’t. I believe people need to be (or become) responsible for their own actions or inactions. We can’t take on other’s problems ourselves without becoming codependent. It is a hard, hard lesson to learn….

BlogLily

For a very long time, I responded to the knowledge that someone is having trouble by becoming so invested in helping them get out of it that their trouble became my own. My own troubles and needs? They did not seem to exist anymore.

This is the sort of thing that made me a terrible litigator. When the client’s trouble became my trouble it was as though I was the one being accused of terrible wrongdoing. I would be defensive and upset every time I responded to the lawyer on the other side. Never mind that I was not the one who displayed the poor judgment that got the client to the place where they needed to hire my law firm to defend them. Their mistakes felt like my own. Their setbacks? Mine.

Gradually, and mostly because I stopped doing that kind of work, it dawned on me that someone else’s trouble was not my trouble. It was generally not my fault, and although I could feel sympathy for the person in trouble, I did not need to become them. I could say, you and your lawsuit live over here — in a place that is not mine. You got yourself into this mess, not me. There is a hand gesture that goes along with this thought. If you have trouble with this issue, you might want to try it:

Cup your hands together, and place the trouble you have been taking on inside the space in your hands. (Obviously, you must pretend, this being a symbolic exercise.) Now stretch your hands as far away from you as you can — across my desk is where I mostly do this. And then gently deposit it all at this far away place. Now sit back and repeat after me: This is not my trouble. This does not belong to me. It is not of my making, nor is it my fault. I can help, if I choose to, but only if I am clear that this is not my trouble.

Knowing where I end and others begin has been the single biggest challenge I have faced as an adult. That, and learning not to eat every last bite of the chocolate cake just because I can.