How to whistle for help
Whistles aint cheap. Gimme $2.
This week’s question comes to us from Betsy Streeter:
How can you be of help to someone when they don’t want anyone to help them?
You can’t.
Unless they’re drowning, trapped under a building, inside a flipped car, or some other life-threatening situation, most people will not accept help that they haven’t asked for.
There’s lots of reasons for this, and we’ll go through a few, but the most important one is that you don’t get to decide when someone else needs help. Even if it’s totally obvious—to you—that they need it, someone has to decide for themselves that they need it, before they’re even open to the conversation. So when you offer to help somebody that doesn’t believe they need it, they’re not going to take it. Because in their mind they don’t need it.
They may just not want to admit they need it. To themselves or to you. And while we can debate whether this is pride, or stubbornness, or mistrust, or some other thing—all of which we can do without passing judgement, by the way—it ends up having the same effect. They will not take the help.
One of the guiding principles at Mule is the “ask vs offer” rule, which is something that we picked up from a long-forgotten (by which I mean too lazy to google) article in a newspaper that’s probably run by fascists now. The rule is that you can’t offer people help. They have to ask for it. Which sounds almost cruel, but I assure you it’s the exact opposite.
Let’s run through a scenario. Someone is trying to use the printer and it’s not printing. All-too-common scenario. They start muttering under their breath, they start negotiating with the printer, they start pulling paper trays and opening little doors on the printer looking for a jam, and then slamming those doors shut. Just a little louder every time. And because this is happening in an open space, everyone can hear it, and is thrown off whatever they were previously trying to do. Eventually, someone will ask “Hey, do you need help?” And the person at the printer will say something passive aggressive about how they’re just trying to get the printer to work. Until the second person eventually walks over, after a big huge sigh, mostly because they’d like the noise to stop. That’s “offer” culture. You need help, but you don’t want to ask for it, so you’re waiting for it to be offered. And even when it’s offered, you attempt to shrug it off, even though it’s the thing you’ve been passive-aggressively looking for the whole time. It’s exhausting.
In “ask” culture, the person who’s trying to use the printer encounters the problem, tries a few routine fixes (if they know any), and then says “Hey, I need help with a printer jam.” And someone would say “I had one of those a few days ago. I can help you in five minutes.” No one else is bothered. No one is wondering if help is needed, because it was asked for. Everyone can stay focused on whatever they were doing, which was probably playing Snood. (The old games are best.)
Asking for help is often seen as a weakness. And we all carry around memories and traumas of times when we were brave enough to ask, and got shot down for it.
The other part of “ask” culture was that you have to respond to the request for help. And unless it was needed immediately, like someone about to drop a large jug of water you were intending to load into the water cooler, you could let people know when that help was available. Thus “I can help you in five minutes.” Of course, the real lesson of being about to drop a large jug of water, was to ask for help before attempting to lift it by yourself.
Asking for help is often seen as optional, even though needing help is not. A two-person job will always be a two-person job, even if one person is willing to see if they can make it a one-person job. I am so guilty of this. I’ve carried refrigerators up flights of stairs on my back, rather than ask for help. Mostly because in the moment I believe asking for help will slow me down, and it might, but it also vastly decreases the odds that I’ll end up crushed by a refrigerator. I am not a good role model for asking for help.
It’s also important to understand when people are actually asking for help, and when they’re just venting. I’m part of a secret little friends’ community where people do a fair share of complaining. (Look around, there’s a lot to complain about.) Sometimes it’s about work. Sometimes it’s about the world. Sometimes it’s about home. Sometimes it’s about the insane bureaucracy of dealing with a medical problem. We’ve gotten good at asking “Are you venting or looking for help?” when this happens. Sometimes people just need to get it out. And because we’re helpful people, who like to solve problems, we tend to immediately jump in with a solution. But if someone isn’t looking for help, they’re not going to take it. Which then makes us all upset that we offered help and it wasn’t taken.
Help must be asked for. So when someone tells us they’re just venting we say carry on, and then throw some hug emojis on their message to let them know they were seen. It’s fine to vent, as long as the audience is open to being vented to.
Sometimes they’ll come back later and tell us that now they’re ready for help. Sometimes they’ll come back and say “Hey that venting really helped me sort it out in my head and I figured it out.” Which means that just listening to people is incredibly helpful.
I’m going to say that again: sometimes just listening to people is incredibly helpful. So many people just need to feel heard.
Sometimes when we complain that people won’t take our help what we really mean is they won’t follow our instructions. We can’t assume that’s what people need. Sometimes people just need to be heard. They need to hear themselves describe their problem, or see it typed out by their own hand. And when we jump to giving them instructions that weren’t asked for we’re telling people that we don’t believe they’re capable of figuring out by themselves. Which they might not be, but coming to that realization on your own opens you up to receiving help in a way that having help imposed on you, even with good intention, tends to close people off.
I think sometimes our offer of help is really about people not doing something the way we would do it, or with the same efficiency that we would do it. Any parent who’s struggled watching their kids learn how to tie their shoes is familiar with this, and also knows when to let them struggle a bit to figure it out, and when to jump in when they’re exasperated. (Yes, there’s a point where you need to just open the can of beans for your kid.)
So maybe the answer is to sit down with someone first, bring ‘em a cup of coffee and a donut and just chat. Hear what they have to say, and if the moment presents itself ask them if they need help. And even if all signs point to them absolutely needing it, you have to be okay with them saying that they don’t. Maybe follow it up with “let me know if things change.”
Be careful not to say “if you change your mind” because that implies that you are being a fool for not accepting my help. “If things change” leaves open the possibility that the situation got worse than anticipated, and sometimes that just enough mental wiggle room for the person you’re trying to help to eventually take you up on your offer.
Also, believing that someone needs help doesn’t necessarily make it true. You might be imposing your own values on someone who’s perfectly fine being how they are.
But look, if your goal is to help people, boy do I have good news! There’s a ton of people out there right now asking for help. Whether it’s people you see on your way to work, or organizations looking for money, or groups that need your help cooking meals for people, or a scout troop looking for troop leader, or a local teacher who could use help in the classroom. There are literally people in front of stores asking for money so they can eat. All those people are willingly asking for help. I suggest giving it to them and giving it to them on their terms. When someone is asking for money for a sandwich it’s because they’re hungry. Are there larger systematic issues that put people in that position? Absolutely, and you should work with your community to help solve those. But right now that person needs a sandwich. When someone tells you the kind of help they need, believe them.
My friends and I are currently looking at resources on how to make ICE warning kits, which I’ve had to ask a friend in Chicago about. We’re doing this because we’re trying to help our neighbors. The fascist thugs making it necessary to do this are invading our cities under the pretense of helping us. Which of course they’re not. But we also once rounded up Americans of Japanese descent “for their own protection.” So much of our planet is still trying to recover from American “help.”
Help isn’t always helpful. America has a long history of “helping” people that ended up being anything but. In my own city, I’ve seen mayor after mayor attempt to “help” the unhoused by clearing away their belongings and moving them to where they wouldn’t hopefully be seen. We have a history of help that gives help a bad name.
I’m glad you want to help people. Many of us need it. Many of us are capable of offering it. The first step in helping someone is building trust, and we have a lot of work to do there.
🇳🇴 I’ll be in Oslo next week giving a talk. So I’ll be taking a newsletter break. Meanwhile…
🙋 …it would be amazing to come back to a new mountain of questions to pick from. Got one? Ask it!
📣 Dan Sinker, who’s been dealing with this shit in Chicago, was kind enough to pass along the info for making Whistle Kits from the good folks at Pilsen Arts & Community House.
🥶 Here’s a really stupid sweater I designed that you can buy.
💀 …and a really stupid zine that you can also buy.
📣 Oh, and I have a few slots open for the next Presenting w/Confidence workshop.
Most importantly, since this newsletter is about helping people…
🍉 Please donate to the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund. The ceasefire is a fucking lie.
🏳️⚧️ Please donate to Trans Lifeline.