I have a friend and I’m not sure how to help them with their problems. They’re the kind of person that always has to help everyone out when they’re down and never has anyone for themself. Counselors don’t help and parents are part of the problem itself. They can’t leave because the parents are overprotective and thus don’t trust the person (with no justifications of course). And sometimes when you have to listen to everyone else’s problems your whole life you feel bad talking about your own because it sounds like complaining, thus everything stays inside. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to deal with a problem of this nature? Any help would be greatly appriciated.
Welcome, Ressl. Since you’re new here, you might not have realized this, but the General Questions forum is for questions which have a factual answer. You’ll probably get a much better response over in our “In My Humble Opinion” forum, which deals with matters of opinion, advice, and emotional matters, among other things. I’ll move it over there for you.
Welcome to the boards. This is tough, partly because you haven’t given us much info to go on. Is this a cirlce of friends of which you’re a part, or do you not know anyone else this person is friends with? Is this person showing signs of stress or depression? You say counselors have not helped; why not? How many has he/she been to? Has this person tried a therapist/psychiatrist? How old is this person? He or she? You keep using “they” like you’re trying to conceal the person’s gender.
Not knowing the answer to any of these questions, the first thing I’d do is sit down with he/she and have a long talk, something along the lines of, “Hey, I’ve been kind of concerned about you lately, is everything ok?” You’ll have to muddle your way through the “Everything’s fine” stuff, but at some point, if you keep pressing in a tactful and sensitive manner, he/she will probably open up. The point is to find out what the problem is, then go from there. Heck, depending on what it is, I may even ask permission to tell his/her/our friends about it. If it’s extremely serious (e.g., suicidal thoughts, drugs, major depression) I’d probably go to the parents (or some adult with her interests in mind), as much as he/she may hate me for doing so.
Speaking as someone who’s kind of in the same spot your friend is in (i.e. I get to play therapist for all my friends, but none of them can really help me when I have problems.), the best thing you can do is to talk with your friend and try and help them through their problems. Don’t suggest a solution, but try and guide them to the solution that they already know they have, but aren’t sure if they should do it. The other thing I would suggest, and its what I’ve been doing, is get them to be a member here and they can post their own problems on this board and get lots of helpful answers and support. (I speak from experience on this one. Dopers are great for helping out other Dopers when one of us has a problem!)
Tell your friend I said it was okay to complain. Complaining can be fun and good for you. If your friend helps others, they will be really glad of a chance to return the favor.
And ** Tukerfan **is right—your friend should join the board. It really helps if the problem can be specifically explained and updates help us to help as much as we can. And we want to.