Do Good to Feel Good, Part II

Now I'd like to play a couple rounds of Devil's Advocate.

Let's put it on the table. Is there such thing as too much giving? After all, some of us are already helping people. All. The. Time.

We volunteer at the retirement home, we bake for the neighbors. Perhaps we run a little NPO on the side that distributes funds and clothing, or join every other community hesed committee, or run off to a wedding hall in the middle of the night to pick up and distribute the leftover food.

Or maybe we do some or all of the above, PLUS we've found our life's calling in one of those pointedly-named Helping Professions --as a social worker, therapist, nurse or charity office manager. What could be better? We are assured an opportunity to help others, every day, and often in the most moving and meaningful ways. We take care of others' bodies and souls. We sooth mental anguish and relieve financial burdens, advocate for the disenfranchised and restore human dignity. We do all of this without pitying or patronizing.

So is there such thing as helping too much? We love our life's work because it is life-giving, meaningful, significant. We believe our professional role is right and yes, a kind of moral obligation. But we often resent the conditions: Low pay, little recognition, case overload, stressful work environment.

I'm thinking about yet another phenomenon. How do you do it, how can you work here, with such sick kids? someone will query in admiration. Kol haKavod (Bravo!), that's amazing! They don't get it. I can do this work because love this work, and when I'm doing it, my life feels meaningful and significant.

The problem comes later, when I get home. Sometimes it hits me, how sick those kids really are, and I am exhausted. Weighing me down are all the patients I didn't have time to work with. The parents I didn't get back to. That uncomfortable exchange with a short-tempered staff member. The feeling of being constantly on call -- encouraging, empathic, organized and authoritative -- but not too authoritative. These things can all but wash out the day's many successes.

Worse, I often find myself unable to regroup and focus by the time I've finished my commute home. My own kids need me. They need someone to give them lunch and watch their gymnastics practice and blows their noses and help with their math homework. They don't feel my own need to go to the bathroom and then sit down for five minutes, alone, over a hot drink. Whatever went on in my day until now is completely irrelevant. They expect focused, energetic Mommy, ready to go and full speed ahead.

The work itself is not the problem, it's maintaining my strength to give and give, all morning and afternoon, and then give again into the evening. It's keeping up the required enthusiasm at home to do all the day-to-day tasks, with the patience my kids deserve from me.

Sometimes I fantasize leaving for a well-compensated, "normal" office job, or locking myself away in my studio, "arting" around all day. I imagine opening a small craft business, or private therapy work with a limited number of clients. But getting down to it, I know I would only do such a thing if I were to reach the conclusion that the price had gotten too high, that I could no longer keep up both ends of the giving spectrum, and that giving at work was always at the expense of giving at home.

And here's where I have to admit it. For all its difficulties, hospital work gives me a sense of status and accomplishment that, for whatever reason, I cannot always seem to muster at home. Maybe that's the fallout for some of us girls who grew up in the Seventies on Sesame Street and Free to Be... You and Me. Or maybe it's just that at work, I'm an experienced professional, a figure of authority, a source of knowledge and understanding, while at home, I'm "just" Mom.

Their only Mom. Full speed ahead.

Keep the balance,

ALN

____

For more on why we help one another, this is another interesting NYT piece, especially the part about the role of the sclera (whites of the eyes) in human altruistic behavior.

Do Good to Feel Good, Part I

Here it is (again), this time via the NYT: Scientific evidence that giving works.

And let's face it, we know this. We all know it, from the inside. Giving promotes health. Thinking about others promotes health. (Thanks again, Prof K, for your insightful reminder).

The article's examples there are numerous. Here's a personal favorite:

An array of studies have documented this effect. In one, a 2002 Boston College study, researchers found that patients with chronic pain fared better when they counseled other pain patients, experiencing less depression, intense pain and disability.

Anyone who has been chronically ill, or who has spent time among the chronically ill, will readily note that a sick person does not want to be the focus of people's help and attention all the time; she wants to listen to others and be there for them. In other words, she wants to feel normal, and being able to help others restores our sense of normalcy.

Unless you're a celebrity, being the constant focus of others is not a normal state of existence. I'm not convinced it does much good for celebrities either, with their constant complaints of telephoto lenses sneaking ou from behind the trash cans, and all those pop songs lamenting the paparazzi. But heck, it's a living.

Turns out that being stuck in your own misery can lead to somatic harm.

By contrast, being self-centered may be damaging to health. In one study of 150 heart patients, researchers found that people in the study who had more “self-references” (those who talked about themselves at length or used more first-person pronouns) had more severe heart disease and did worse on treadmill tests.

I believe it.

I don't usually do this, honest, but I'm even going out on a limb and referencing Dennis Prager's take on happiness, flippant as it sounds, since I think he's got something too.

(I do take issue with his use of the term moral obligation. I don't usually view the use of antiperspirant as a moral obligation either.... a social obligation, maybe, but moral? An exception might be when working with people, such as those on chemo, who may be exceedingly disturbed or nauseated by strong smells. And on Egged buses during the summer months -- OK, that might just be a moral obligation).

Call it CBT, call it common sense, call it a serotonin-inspired warm fuzzy feeling -- the evidence has long been out there. Actions determine mood, and not the other way round.

Keep the balance,

ALN

"I'm the Oldest Person I Know."

I'm 95 years old, and you know what? That's old.

I'm the oldest person I know.

That's Grandma. As a kid, I can't say we got along. There were some strong opinions involved, some -- shall we say -- incidents. Like the time she called my mother from 100 miles away insisting that we wear sweaters "because it's cold over here." Or the time she entered my room while I was away and straightened it up "just a bit." I wanted to kill her.

Grandma has always held strong opinions about everything. She was into raw foods and organic produce long before the rest of California discovered them. She firmly believed, and continues to believe, that fluoridated water is evil reincarnate, and that women who do not make efforts to "look smart," (that is, dress well and apply make-up) are doing humanity some sort of general disservice.

Through the years, her letter-writing has had me in stitches. There's the time I wrote her from summer camp to report on my recent swimming lessons, and received a reply that she, too, was learning to swim. At age 70. "But," she confided, "I don't like to put my face in the water." (I could relate to that).

And not one of my fellow campmates received, as I did, letters signed with the valuable but ill-timed advice, "Remember to eat lots of organic lettuce!" I neglected to return her counsel with the sad but true reality that at camp we were lucky to get some limp iceberg with our suspiciously-tinted beef patties and soggy fries.

This year, my grandmother is, as she puts it, "really feeling my age." Everything is a process; getting dressed, preparing meals, even -- I assume -- going to the bathroom, although this has yet to come up in conversation. A couple of months back she fell down in her kitchen and, in typical Grandma style, refused to tell anyone about it for fear she'd be dragged to the hospital for endless tests (eventually that is exactly what happened). She's okay now, having rested at home for a short time, after which she systematically rejected the help of every home care nurse and social worker available.

During her recuperation she refused to go outside, for fear she would be spotted using a walker by one of her fellow retirement community-neighbors in her, and subsequently be labeled an old lady.

* * * * *

The other day I asked Grandma for her insights about aging.

Grandma: I don't like old people. Even myself....I have to listen to myself all the time, and I get tired of it. I'm always trying to change things.

Me: What do you mean by that?

G: I would realized what I'm doing, and change what I'm thinking, and reject it.

Me: Like what?

G: Like walking like a duck. I reject it. Like being critical about people. Things really aren't that important, you know? I'm trying to resist some of the earmarks of old people.

I once read in an old copy of New Scientist, a British popular science weekly, that neurological imaging at different stages of life has shown that older people have a tendency to "mellow out" over time, not getting as worked up neurologically about those little things that get under the skin of most the rest of us. In other words, over time, older people gain perspective, at the most basic neurological level.

Sometimes, after a frustrating conversation with Grandma, my family will say, "Oh, she's acting like an stubborn old person again." But I'm not so convinced. No question, she's still stubborn, way beyond the rest of us, but she's always been like that. If anything, she's calmed down a bit over the years.

She's not acting old -- she's acting Grandma.

If you'd asked me as a child whether my grandmother would ever mellow out, I wouldn't have answered positively. I wouldn't describe her as mellow now. Despite her refusal to receive help, for the most part her obstinate behavior benefits her. She's already lost some of her mobility, much of her eyesight, and most of her friends to old age. But when she tells me she's gained a new perspective on herself and others, I believe her. She just wants her body, and her life, to stay just the way they are. Don't we all?

(Get to know Grandma a bit better in Imagine the Alternatives and At Least I Can Explain Two Tin Cans).

Keep the balance,

ALN