Ensuring Good Intentions Help Instead of Hurt (or Motivational Quotes Are Not One Size Fits All)

In my previous self-help writing, I talked about how much harder it is to face trails if we are facing more than one trial at a time. When those trials become cumulative, or one piling on top of the other before the first ones are resolved, it wears you down and makes it harder. When you are dealing with so many issues at once they begin to conflict with each other, or more than one needing attention at the same time, it can just about destroy you. The longer this goes on, the harder it gets. I coined the term multiple, cumulative, conflicting issues to take my readers to the place where they understood this when I used that term. The truth of the matter is, I don’t know if you can really understand it unless you’ve lived it. I hope I’m wrong about that, because understanding increases compassion and empathy.

I am going to share some of the story that brought me to that level of understanding even though I run the risk of someone saying I’m feeling sorry for myself or haven’t healed from what happened. For those who have said that in the past and might say it in the future, let me assure you I’m not feeling sorry for myself. I didn’t have that luxury, because time wasted on that would have prevented me from surviving. As for healing, I’m still in that process. It takes time. I am well over fifty percent healed, so I’m working on it. I have never sat on my butt and made excuses. I will keep working on it until I’m healed, like I always do.

I was born into an Appalachian family who was still fighting generational poverty. I was born handicapped and some problems with my surgeries led to health problems later in life. Those health problems were greatly exacerbated by an environmental exposure. My father was handicapped due to child abuse that happened because of a history of mental illness in the family. He was also illiterate. My mother had an eighth-grade education. This meant every day of their lives was a struggle. Even my health problems became their struggle since parents manage their children’s health and medical care. I was aware I didn’t have the things other girls had and that my life was harder than most of my friends, but I didn’t truly understand hard until my parents became ill in their elder years and needed me to become their caregiver. I think I didn’t truly realize how hard life was before they became ill, because my Mom was such an angel that she took more of the load on her shoulders as well as made me so happy that I didn’t notice the trials as much. My greatest trial by far has been losing her.

After I became a caregiver, I found that I was facing multiple new issues, many of which my Mom had managed before me. The stress of that may be why she passed away at a relatively young age. Those issues were piled on top of the issues I was already experiencing by being born ill and handicapped into an under-educated family living in multi-generational poverty. I was terrified at the thought of taking care of an elderly person with PTSD from childhood abuse, because I knew I would be facing difficult behaviors. That ended up being the easy part, because he recovered under my loving care. What was hard was how those in the family who didn’t manage their mental illness kept repeatedly introducing abuse into the situation, how the physical trials of caregiving combined with that abuse caused my handicaps and health to deteriorate further, how much harder it was to be a caregiver as I became more ill and my pain levels increased, how our obvious weaknesses brought out the worst in unhealthy medical care providers who were more interested in power than compassion, how poverty forced me to work so hard to put food on the table and medicine in the daily pill reminder box that my own house deteriorated, how that deterioration forced me to spend a couple of years killing myself doing repairs when it was all over even though I was already diagnosed with exhaustion from the efforts of caregiving, and how I was dealing with those house repairs while working with the State to bring abusive care providers to justice while feeling the deep grief of losing several people in a row, etc. etc. etc. By the time the multiple, cumulative, conflicting issues reached a manageable state, I was diagnosed by a doctor as having chronic clinical exhaustion. Each day I feel the terror that another trial I can’t control will hit me while I’m in this state of exhaustion. I know my reserves are so depleted that a repeat of what I’ve been through will likely kill me.

In spite of all of this, I did such a good job with both advocacy and care that healthy and balanced medical providers praised me. They referred other caregivers to me for advice and resource referral. After a while, some of those caregivers referred other caregivers to me. As I grew more exhausted from adding helping caregivers onto the cumulative trials, I referred caregivers back to those I had previously helped. I knew they had experienced the trials and understood enough to have the compassion to help. After I grew too exhausted to help directly, I began to write in the hope that I could continue to help with less physical effort. That is what led to me starting this blog as well as other writing. As hard as it was, I’m grateful for the understanding I developed that allowed me to help others as well as better help myself. Once the trials were over, I understood enough that I was able to set the right boundaries with people who had needs less than my own, which is a skill I never had before.

I know these few paragraphs can’t possibly make someone understand the true day to day trials of living multiple, cumulative, conflicting issues. If I gave the complete list of everything I had to face, the list alone would fill up a book. I just hope that it makes people understand enough that it will make them more mindful when they meet people in similar situations in the future, whether it be caregiving or some other trial(s) causing it. I hope sharing this much of my story will help people understand enough to say and do things that are helpful. If they can’t be helpful, I hope they will at least become mindful enough not to be harmful.

Speaking of helpful versus harmful, one of the most painful things I faced during that time was the judgmental things people said. This was especially true with motivational quotes/memes. I can’t tell you how many times I found my inbox full of motivational quotes/memes that were actually blaming when seen from the viewpoint of the person receiving them. Therefore, I will start my discussion about helpful versus hurtful with the subject of motivational quotes/memes. Quotes and memes that can’t help without turning the situation into something it can’t be is another form of magical thinking. Magical thinking doesn’t help anyone who doesn’t own a functioning magic wand.

As one of potentially hundreds of examples, I want to share a motivational video someone shared with me when my trials were so great I lacked options. In a state of having no options, this video was actually blaming and insulting. This is especially true when I remember the judgmental words of the person who shared it.

Before I share it, I want to say that motivational quotes/memes can be great - but none of them fit all of the people all of the time. I will try to increase understanding by giving the flip side. This is a great motivational video for someone who has the options and opportunities to handle their stress better but hasn't yet learned that skill. Not everyone falls into that category. When I was a caregiver, two hours of sleep a night was not an uncommon occurrence. When you are the sole caregiver and have no one to ask for help, you can't say to a sick person, "Sorry, but I'm putting my feet up until tomorrow. I'll deal with your pain and your wet diaper then." It doesn't work that way. You do what you have to do no matter how tired you are and no matter how heavy the load is (or in the case of this video, the glass). I might send this video to a caregiver who has a light work load due to assisting a person who is still functioning at a high level. I would never send this video to a 24/7/365 caregiver who never has a minute to themselves and has lived on a diet of stress and caffeine for years like I did when I was a caregiver. I hope my story and this example will help people discern the best thing to say and share when someone is in a multiple, cumulative, conflicting trials type of situation.

With that said, here is the link to the motivational video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01BBbRgHcq8

If you are in a situation that truly limits your options and opportunities, don't accept these types of motivational quotes/memes as advice from others, even if they are sharing them with the best of intentions. Don’t allow your lack of options and opportunities to make you feel guilty because you can’t take the advice in those quotes/memes. Definitely don’t let anyone make you feel guilty by judging you for not being able to take that advice. After a while, I began to say, "You are absolutely right. This is my list of what I have to get done today. Which things can you do to help me, so I can take your motivational advice?" I quickly found out who was simply judging and who was willing to help. Even better - the sharing of motivational quotes/memes with me that could never fit my situation slowed down dramatically.

In a situation where a person has few options and opportunities, such as a complex caregiver situation, this motivational video is not meant for them. In that case, this motivational video is meant for the people around them (the people who are likely to share it instead of learn from it). I say to those people, the person with few options and opportunities has been holding the glass that is discussed in this video for years. Their arm is about to fall off. Don’t share the motivational video with them. Learn from the video yourself. Take that glass from them and give them a much-needed break.

If you are in a situation where you have options and opportunities, put the glass that is talked about in this video down. If you are in a situation where you have few options and opportunities (whether it be as a caregiver, being in an abusive situation, handling mental disease in your family, etc. - and especially if you are handling more than one of these situations at the same time), tell the person who shares the motivational quote/meme to take the glass that is talked about in this video from you, so you can get a break. Motivational quotes/memes are not meant to put people in difficult situations in their place so that others won't have to deal with them, so please don't let anyone use them in that way to judge your situation.

There is one motivational quote/meme that I particularly like, because it emphasizes my belief that motivational quotes/memes are not one size fits all. There is a motivational quote that says, “Don’t change so people will like you. Be yourself and the right people will love the real you. Unless you’re an asshole. Then you should change.” I shared a picture of that quote/meme as the picture for this blog post. Many motivational quotes/memes are meant for people who are facing trials, trying to build self-esteem, learn boundaries, etc. Those quotes/memes may offer some help to people in those categories. Give those quotes/memes to the people who prey on those types of people, and situations will be made worse instead of better. As this quote/meme so clearly says, don’t motivate an asshole to be a better asshole. Use motivational quotes/memes wisely.