The Jan­u­ary 28 col­umn, “Ill-in­formed ‘help’ may cause more harm and hurt,” ad­dressed is­sues that prompt­ed a com­menter, whose con­tin­ued sup­port I en­joy, to share some in­sights with the pas­sion of one who tru­ly ap­pre­ci­ates the prob­lem of our “pre­scrip­tive, judge­men­tal and se­vere­ly crit­i­cal” at­ti­tude to­wards those who de­serve our com­pas­sion.

My first it­er­a­tion of this in­stall­ment was a pre­sen­ta­tion of her let­ter with com­men­tary. But adding my voice dis­rupt­ed her thoughts, so I de­cid­ed to al­low you, with her per­mis­sion and the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, the full ex­hale.

“Thanks for your col­umn,” she be­gan.

“I want to ex­pand on the sub­ject. The pre­scrip­tive ap­proach you men­tioned is an in­ter­est­ing point, which struck me.

“A lot of us who are judge­men­tal, se­vere­ly crit­i­cal, and pre­scrip­tive, de­liv­er­ing pre­cepts based on what we con­sid­er best for (peo­ple) with men­tal health chal­lenges, are just sheer ar­ro­gant. Best for whom? Can it be that, from time to time, what we con­sid­er “best” stems from self-ar­ro­gat­ed pow­er to is­sue rul­ings in ac­cor­dance with our pre­scribed “norms,” with­out so much as a care for and about the truth of a per­son’s lived ex­pe­ri­ences?

“While an ar­ro­gant re­sponse to some­one’s men­tal con­di­tion may be bla­tant and there­fore recog­nis­able, there is an­oth­er type of re­sponse, with no hint of ar­ro­gance but un­mis­tak­ably pre­scrip­tive and equal­ly in­ap­pro­pri­ate­—masked and nu­anced.

“Some­times, these pre­scrip­tions are writ­ten not from the heights of su­pe­ri­or­i­ty and big­otry but from the depths of dis­com­fort and fear of vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty.

“We may choose the pre­scrip­tive route be­cause, which is eas­i­er to do:

• Blithe­ly and dis­mis­sive­ly make any one of the fol­low­ing ut­ter­ances:

Just think pos­i­tive;

God doesn’t give you more than you can bear;

Con­sid­er your­self lucky be­cause if you think you have prob­lems, there are those worse off than you;

That re­minds me of some­thing I too had to deal with, and then turn all the at­ten­tion on us?

• Or ner­vous­ly but res­olute­ly chal­lenge our­selves to take time and ef­fort to fo­cus on the per­son, to lis­ten to what the per­son is say­ing and, in so do­ing, hear al­so what the per­son is not say­ing?

“You ac­knowl­edged the hard work in­volved in ‘see­ing oth­er peo­ple’s hu­man­i­ty’. Yes, such sight en­tails a will­ing­ness to dis­play em­pa­thy; to feel with some­one, more than feel for some­one; a de­ter­mi­na­tion to prac­tise ac­tive lis­ten­ing, not per­func­to­ry at­ten­dance; and an ap­pre­ci­a­tion of and a re­spect for each per­son as a unique soul, with all her/his strengths and weak­ness­es.

“On oc­ca­sion, we may just not have the ca­pac­i­ty to pro­vide the nec­es­sary sup­port. It may be that we too are in the midst of tak­ing care of our own men­tal well-be­ing or that we sim­ply do not have the req­ui­site tools.

“Ac­cord­ing to the site you cit­ed, ‘You do not need to have all the an­swers’; and I’ll add: you may have no an­swers at all. If we are not up to the task of tru­ly show­ing up for some­one who’s show­ing signs of men­tal dis­tress, let’s just be forth­right and ad­mit that we’re not in a po­si­tion to help.

“What is to­tal­ly un­ac­cept­able is to take it up­on our­selves, im­pe­ri­ous­ly, con­de­scend­ing­ly, well-in­ten­tioned or oth­er­wise, to pre­scribe ad­vice that is less than ben­e­fi­cial to the per­son, if not down­right in­ju­ri­ous to the per­son’s health.

“There are some of us who pre­fer not to lend a hand, not be­cause we do not wish peo­ple well, but be­cause our in­ner voice is whis­per­ing (maybe even scream­ing) that we too are not de­void of in­se­cu­ri­ties, we too are not whole. In such a case, if we dare to reach out to make a per­son feel seen and heard, then we pos­si­bly, most like­ly, prob­a­bly, will be oblig­ed to ac­knowl­edge that the per­son in the mir­ror bears an un­can­ny re­sem­blance to the per­son to whom we’re busy prof­fer­ing ad­vice. For so many of us, that’s a scary re­flec­tion.

“Are we then pre­pared to chal­lenge our­selves, do the hard work, and risk bar­ing our souls and our vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty? How can we feel safe un­in­hib­it­ed­ly in­dulging in that kind of nu­di­ty? In whom can we re­pose our sa­cred trust?

Who will ac­cept and em­brace us as naked as we are, with all our hu­man frail­ties ex­posed? The thought of con­fronting such vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty be­comes al­most paralysing when, for quite a while, we stead­fast­ly por­trayed an AI-en­hanced ver­sion of our­selves, en­dowed with all life’s an­swers and with pic­ture-per­fect poise.

“Is life not that much sim­pler if we just con­tin­ue in our role as ‘pub­lic pre­scriber’? It’s easy to ig­nore our need to fix our­selves, or should we say it’s palat­able to do so and there­fore not have to in­gest any of the bit­ter, nau­se­at­ing con­coc­tions or the triple-lay­er hon­ey-coat­ed plat­i­tudes which we con­sid­er best for oth­ers.

“Look­ing af­ter our men­tal well-be­ing is life-long med­ica­tion, to be tak­en sev­er­al times a day – be­fore, dur­ing, and af­ter each anx­ious mo­ment in our lives. Ar­guably, such a pre­scrip­tive ap­proach is con­sid­ered best for us.”

Thanks to this read­er/sup­port­er and all who read and write to me, ei­ther thank­ing me for my work or of­fer­ing in­sights, as in this case.