Help-Giving

As a teen or young adult, you’re likely to confide in a good friend to talk about your troubles. When you and your friends turn to each other to talk about problems, you depend on each other for advice and guidance.

One positive aspect of our growth and independence is making the important decision to help our friends and commit to looking out for each other. However, this also gives us the responsibility to learn what it means to help friends. It also means we need to learn how to recognize when it is time to address a problem, or share with a parent or trusted adult a difficult situation that our friends might be going through.

As human beings, we are dependent on connections with others for our happiness, as well as our emotional and physical health. Our connection with others undergoes an important change as we enter our late teenage years. Our attention and time spent with people often shifts toward spending more time with friends and less time with family. We will, more often than not, still be deeply attached to our family, but our friends — and then ultimately romantic relationships — will continue to play bigger roles in most of our lives.

This is also a crucial stage in the development of help-giving as a life skill. Older teenagers are entering a time in life when many issues begin to emerge. Personal problems can become more complicated or serious. Teenagers often find themselves in circumstances where they need the help of those closest to them: their peers. 

Identify signs

The first step toward helping others is to identify that they need help. It’s common to have periods of difficulty throughout our lives. Difficulties are often no more than brief challenges that are part of growing up. However, sometimes common issues can intensify and lead to more serious problems that require more help. It’s important to learn how to identify when to help a friend who is struggling. Perhaps they don’t feel like hanging out as much or, when they do, their mind seems elsewhere. There are other cues that you can also pick up on, signs that friends are not acting like their normal selves, for instance. It may seem like they are always anxious. Maybe they are taking more risks than usual, seem irritable or have developed a negative outlook on life. It’s important to pay attention to friends and to be prepared to act when you’ve picked up on signs that all may not be well. 

Listening to others

The next step toward helping others is to listen. Being mindful of how well you listen to others will be an important consideration throughout your life. As young people, when we begin to communicate more with others, we learn when and when not to speak. We also begin to develop the skills that help us pick up on signs that someone is or isn’t doing well emotionally. Actively listening and paying attention to others when communicating (verbally and non-verbally) helps us learn more about others and our environment. As an individual learns these skills, they may be better equipped to understand when a peer is or isn't doing well.

Listening is dynamic; it is an active process that requires us to simultaneously listen and critically consider what others might be saying to us. It also means that the listener tries to understand what the other person is feeling or experiencing and attempts to see things from the speaker’s perspective. In a world full of distractions, it can be easy to get sidetracked and lose focus on the person or people in front of us. Listening and paying attention to others when they speak is a sign of respect and a skill that will lead to deeper and better relationships. You’ll also probably learn a lot more about your friends and your environment by actively listening to others.

Most of the time we think of “communication” as two people saying words back and forth to one another. But lots of meaning comes from the unspoken, such as facial expressions, gestures, and body postures. These are called nonverbal cues. Sometimes it helps to display positive nonverbal cues when listening to others and help-giving. This means focusing on the person in front of us. It can be demonstrated, for example, by shifting our bodies so that we are facing the person we are listening to, looking them straight in the eye, and putting down our phones! The person who is talking can feel as if they are being respected, listened to, and have your support simply by picking up on the non-verbal cues you are displaying.

Taking responsibility and taking action

You don’t need to be a trained mental health professional to recognize and do something for a friend who is struggling. However, there may be times when you’ve listened to a friend, and given them advice, only for them to tell you they’re okay, or they tell you they’re “dealing with it.” Sometimes, even when a friend tells you “everything’s okay,” there’s something — your intuition, your gut instinct — that tells you everything isn’t okay. This often means it’s time to get professional help.  

Some key signs that tell us it is time to get professional help include:

● Problems are severe or intense, last a long time, or keep getting worse

● Difficulties seem to be repeating themselves, interfering with normal (day to day) functioning

● The usual ways of dealing with things are not working

It is always good to encourage a friend to get help. If they are not ready to follow your advice, the best thing to do is to share your concerns with someone you trust, like a member of their family, or another friend. If you’re unsure where to turn, another good resource would be a counselor, teacher or coach at school — they are usually familiar with the problems that teens face.

You might feel bad about going behind a friend’s back to talk about their private struggles, and you might worry that you’ll ruin a friendship by “ratting them out.” Try to remember that if your heart tells you that your friend needs help, this is not the time to keep secrets. It is always sensible to go with your gut and get advice when you can’t ignore your concerns. You shouldn’t have to feel bad about showing concern for a friend. In a strong friendship, your friend will be grateful for your help once they feel better.