Idiot Compassion: When Does Helping Become Hurting?

Have you ever helped someone and deep inside knew that it was the wrong thing to do? Have you ever felt the need to be compassionate and cold reality fighting in your heart? We all have. That is why we need to understand our limits.

Counselors use a variety of phrases to capture the essence of the dilemmas we face when we are involved in the problems of others. One such term is co-dependency. One of the most important challenges for co-dependent people to recognize and avoid is the compulsion to rescue others.

Why?

Because co-dependency disrupts equality in relationships and leads to abuses of power over and through other people. Almost inevitably, we become intertwined in their problems, many times in uncomfortable ways we would not have predicted. And, unfortunately, often in our attempts to rescue someone from a near-term problem we condemn them to continue on a path of long-term destruction.

We help others because we know we need help too.

It is said that the best way to get a person to change their behavior is to let them suffer the consequences of their own actions. Easy to say. But, as family, friends, and understanding co-workers, we often feel compelled to intervene. Such an instinct is understandable because we too often need help in our lives. At some level we recognize that by helping others we ensure that help will be available to ourselves when we need it as well. It is part of the unwritten social contract of being human.

But when compassion leads to the sustainment of a pattern of destructive behavior or leads to the abuse of friendship, it changes in nature. It loses its healing quality; it becomes a part of the problem.

When does our help become idiot compassion?

People with unresolved addictive orders of all kinds have an uncanny, and almost infinite, ability to use others. It is part of the disease of addiction, like a drowning person who holds on to their rescuer to the demise of both. When our compassion provides an unhealthy protection to others and prevents long-term rescue, it is no longer charitable compassion. It becomes idiot compassion.

I learned the phrase idiot compassion from the American Buddhist nun Pema Chodron. But I have read that the phrase was coined by the late Tibetan teacher Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. Idiot compassion sustains the destructive behaviors of others and puts our own lives at risk.

It is compassion that has lost its voluntary quality, its provision as a gift to someone else. Instead, it often becomes an expectation. Why does the receiver expect it? Because once given help often becomes integrated as part of the dysfunctional support system used to support unhealthy behavior. Once integrated it can become a crutch for continued dysfunction, not a ladder for escape.

The phrase idiot compassion warns us of dangers.

It reminds us that although compassion has an important role in our lives it also has limitations. It has been said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. When we provide the same help over and over to someone else and there is no change, we have become a part of the problem.

Worse yet, continued demands for help can erode our own willingness to help others. We become like the donor who has been asked too many times to contribute. We simply begin to refuse all requests. Instead of reaching out, we begin to withdraw. We become cynical instead of charitable.

But, even when we withhold material support from others as a form of tough love, there is no need to withhold emotional support. Idiot compassion is when we give someone something they want, instead of giving them something they need. Idiot compassion sustains poor behavior, true compassion sustains good relationships. The gift of true compassion is not a cell phone bill paid or a car payment made, it is the gift of being present in someone else’s life. It is the gift of time. It is the gift of acceptance. It is the gift of understanding.

James McGinley, PhD is a professor, author, certified life coach, and licensed counselor. He is interested in cross-cultural and applied psychology, whether at work, as a part of a team, in our personal lives and in our relationships with others, or when we face adversity in life — whether from stress, addiction, or exposure to crisis.

For more insights see my books and blog at https://www.jamesmcginley.com.

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