Dealing with emotional people

Sat Naam Ji

Dandauth Bandhna ji,

 

over the years we have me various people in need of emotional support and have dealt with it in different (better) ways over time.  When we were about 15 our Dad was unable to go to a funeral ceremony so he requested that I go.  So we went to the house and people were everywhere, women were wailing and others were very upset at the death of the husband/father.  We were not expecting that, it was the first time we had gone to someones house after a death.  We remember getting very upset and feeling horrible, so horrible that we rushed home and had a bath to wash off the horrible feelings (didnt know about negative energy in th ose days).  And told our Dad NEVER to send us again!!  

 

When we were about 18 we stayed with our aunt in canada to find her sobbing away one morning after her husbnad had left for work.  She told us of domestic abuse towards her - physical and emotional.  We didnt really know what to say to her, other than we felt alot of sympathy towards her and a lot of negativity towards her husband and other unsupportive family members after that.  Also when we see someone upset it upset us as well.  We said to her to do Paat to remember God but she kept saying "why? what for?" we said "to be with God, to be in the light" she said "why do i want to meet God?"  We couldnt really say anything else to her.  [Over time she did get divorced, remrried, and did do a lot of simran and paat].   But the point is that we were getting effected by her emotinal story in an emotional way which was not good for us.

 

Over time, whenever we have met other people as well and found that we used to take on a lot of their issues and started doing extra prayers for them as well as giving them what seems like practical solutions.  But it used to weigh us down.  We remember in around 1995 we used to work with a young punjabi lady who was also being phycially and emotionally abused by her new husband.  We listened to her , prayed for her, asked her to doo paat [which she said she couldn't so we did an extra japji for ehr everyday and went gurdwara for 40 days to pray for her - that was all we knew to do in those days].   She ended up getting very attracted to us, to which we said no - which then upset her even more and made me feel bad as well.    We tried to give her lots of practical solutions including leave her husband - none of which she did and made us frustrated a bit.  [her husband left her in the end and she had an affair with our manager, of which i didn;t really approve, she told the manager and he tried to punish me by stopping our career development.  Then we prayed to God and later that day the manager was fired on the spot for various things that had come to his managers attention!!!!] 

 

We have also helped other people to in our sikhi days, and found ourself getting attracted /falling in love with them and then that became a thorny issue for ourself, but never went too far in reality.  One white guy we worked with was going out a with young mother who had separated from her husband.  He used to work with them both and they were going through a rough patch, she came to him for support, he fell in love with her and she left her husband because of him.  Counselling others is not easy as we have our own issues and can easily become part of the problem.

 

We remember seeing Sant Sheesha singh ji at various peoples houses collecting money, but obvisouly people were telling him their problems and giving the money in the hope of getting his blessings to resolve those problems.   We said to our mum at the time that We cant even handle listening to one persons problems without gettnig emotionally overwhelmed, so how does the Satn do it?  she replied that "its water off a duck back", that for a Sant, these issues dont drown them as they do for us.  We thought Sants are DHAN DHAN.  They are the real lifeguards who save the drowinng ones, wereas i am the one who is still learning to swim, but jumps into save others, but almost drowns as well.

 

Over the last few years with this Sangat we have of Baba ji, of Dassan Dass ji and of leanring reiki and doing becoming more stable within ourself, we dont really get emotionally involved with anyones issues anymore.  But we have ways and means of helping them without drowning ourself, of staying detached and passing it upto God.

 

Here are some tips we would like to share with the sangat when dealing with emotioanlly upset people:

 

1) make sure you are in a good emotional state yourself.  Cant help others if you are stressed out yourself.  Also be careful if the issue the other person is raising reminds you of a raw or unresolved issue you yourself have.  Eg if you have been abused, then listening to someone elses story of being abused is going to get you really angry, or emotional as it opens up those issues from your own past.

 

2) Recognise your own limitations. That sometimes peoples issues are more than you can handle.  That you haven't been trained as a counsellor, that you are just an amateur who knows a few things from gurbani , but doesnt really know how to help anyone as we haven;t become a Sant ourself.

 

3) Dont try and give solutions to other peoples problems.  They say that when women are upset they just want the other person to listen.  But men listen a little bit and then start giving solutions, then the woman gets frustrated becasue the man is not listening.  The man gets frustrated because the women is not putting his advice into action. 

 

4) Dont start telling your own lifestory and what worked for you etc etc.  The other person is trying to tell you how they feel, but we end up spening most of the time talking about ourself and our spiritual expereinces and our spiritual path and how it helped us and so on.

 

5) Dont believe everything that the other person is telling you, remember you are only hearing one side of the story.  It doesnt mean the person is lying to you.  But they may have misinterpreted the situation and hence are upset for the wrong reason.  Also they may have done something to provoke the situation eg the punjabi lady who was getting hit by her husband used to provoke him to the extreme  (not justifying what he did, but saying it takes "two to tango").

 

6) Dont use the other persons weakened state of being for your own advantage - knowingly or unknowingly.  Eg like the guy who instead helping to solve the womens marital problems took her for himself.  Also even telling them about our spiritual path and our guru and how it helped us etc is still coming close to taking advantage of them - even though we think we are just helping them.  This is pretty much what Christain missionaries all around the world do, raise funds ni the west, start a school or hosptial etc in some poor and remote village in India or Africa or South Amercia, then put the condition on people that they can use these facilities only if they start changing their beliefs. 

 

7) Dont start judging the other people in the story that is being told to you.  dont start thinking how terrible the other person is for hitting your friend, or for dumping your friend or for whatever esle they have done.  firstly we havent heard the other sisd eof the story and secondly its not for us to judge anyone anyway.  Thirdly, we can make things worse for ourself.  Because even though the other person is putting down their partner for being so terrible, if we start agreeing how terrible their partner is they are not going to like it!!   One guy who i worked with was very upset because his girlfriend decided she wasnt goting to mary him and didtn want to be with him.  we spent lots of time listening to him a tlunchtimes, we taught him to meditate and told him so many practical things to do, when he told us how badly she was treating him (using his money, dumping him) he said to me "you must think she is so terrible"  and we replied "No , actually we dont think anything about her."    [Over time he did get back to gether with her and they are happily married now and he got naam from radhasoami guru in the end as well].   If I had said, "yes she is so terrible, you should thank god for saving you from a girl like that, you are better off with out her , she just used you , abused you and spat you out!!"  If I had said that, and at times i was thinking like that, then it would have made him feel much worse than better.  Becase deep down he still loved her and hearing other people put her dowwn would have hurt him inside, rather than made him feel better.

 

8) Dont start giving lots of relgious philosophy even saying things like "its karma" or "you did it to her in a last life" or "it will come back to you" , or even "you have been saved now from what could have been even worse".    dnt even say stuff like "your a man, be strong"  , "you'll find someone better" and so on.  By saying all this kind of stuff it doesnt really help the person at this time.  It may be something that will help them when they are in a better state of mind and look back at things and try to come to terms with things that happened in their past. but right now when they are emotinally upset its not what they need.  So what do they need?

That brings us to the last point we would like to share with the sangat and that is this:

 

Just recognise how they feel and sit and do simran/reiki with them to help them calm down mentally and emotionally.

 

So simple.

 

That's all you need to do.  No relgious philosophy.  No judging the other people in the story.  No judging of even the person infront of you.  No trying to solve their problems.  No getting emotionally involved with them. 

 

God puts all of us int he situation were we end up helping family, friends, even strangers at emotinally upsetting times, so these are very good skills to have.

 

When someone comes to us and are upset , wether it is our child or an adult all we need to do is to understnad how the feel and let them know that and to do simran/reiki with them.

 

So for example, a few weeks ago our younger daughter tavleen got upset at bed time.  She wanted to sleep with her mum and sister, but they told her to sleep in her won room and i would put her to bed.  she came out and started crying and maknig a bigg fuss.  I was sitting in the other room and normally would have told her to "get up and get to bed, she knows the rules!"  then i would have snapped angrily at my wife for upsetting her again.  Then my wife would have got upset at being told off, our daughter would have got even more upset that i'm telling her off as well. But with Guru ji;s kirpa now we understood that we just had to recgnise her feelings and not to give her "rules" , we went upto her. We said to her in a kind voice "you are really upset aren;t you" she replied "yes" and we added "you wanted to go to sleep with them but they didnt let you"  she replied "yes" and her crying calmed down.  Then we picked her up "come on lets pick you up and lie down".  ANd she came with us really nicely and went to sleep. 

 

This was a huge achievement for us. So simple and effective.

 

The same is with counselling somone.

 

They tell us their story, all we have to do is ignore the story and the characters (past) and just focus on their feelings right now (present moment).  When we say "so right now you feel really upset, you are broken hearted, that must really hurt, yes you really loved her, it must be hard to understand why she did that to you."  And so on we actually help the person to release their pain.  When people are quiet and upset they get overwhelmed becasue there re too many thoughts and too many emotions tearing them apart like a pack of wolves at a piece of meat.  But when they can talk to someone about their thoughts and feelings, it forces them to slow down their thinking and to put things into order i.e. talk about one thing at a time. 

 

And as counsellor all we can do is say back to them how they are telling us they are feeling to show we understand.  We can also help to guide their thoughts by giving them a structure.  Meaning if they say their girlfriend left them and took their money ater we have understotd their feelings and they have calmed down, we can ask them "so what are your options?"  They reply "well i could ignore her now, or I could phone her to find out why? "  and we could reply "Well how would you feel if you ignored her"   and then ask "how would you feel if you phoned her"   Andwe carry on like that and let them work through their OWN optons and their OWN feelings and let the decide what they want to do next.

 

Its very important NOT to tell them what we should think they should do, beasue we do not know the full story.  we have not heard the other persons side of the story.  We could get upset and tell the women to leave her husband, but really all she wanted to do was to make up with her husband, we could make things worse.

 

Also in sangat we get people who are emotionally upset and everyone in the sangat has a wealth of expereince and shares it with the best intentions inthe world, but really nothing needs to be said except for sympathy, understanding, praying for the person and doing simran and reiki with them to calm their mind and emotions down.  

 

dust of your feet

 

Harjit