I think I have one of the most beautiful professions in the world. Every day I help people get rid of fears or develop into a hypnotist or free themselves from beliefs that hold you captive. Helping other people has become almost second nature to me and I have even made it my job. Every day, therefore, I notice the many benefits of helping other people. I would like you to be able to enjoy those benefits as well.
In this article, I will discuss what benefits you can experience when you help other people and ways you can help other people.
Benefits of helping people
Helping other people has all kinds of psychological benefits. Research shows that people with MS who gave other people with MS mental support over the phone for three years had some marked improvements after three years, namely:
Providing telephone mental support increased overall confidence, self-confidence, self-awareness and they felt stronger in their role as a telephone service provider to other people with MS.
In the process, they also had fewer depressive symptoms than people who only received support and did not give it.
It also changed how people who supported others viewed themselves and also how their relationships are with others. A major change took place in the way they experienced their illness and the values they considered important in their lives. As a result, their quality of life became much better (1).
If you have a chronic illness where helping others is possible, even if only through telephone support to other people with the same illness, it helps you cope better yourself and manage your life with it.
As a chronically ill person, helping people with the same problem can give you a better quality of life.
Helping others can also have great benefits for (former) addicts . American research on the benefits of AA meetings shows that when alcoholics help other alcoholics stay off the booze they are significantly less likely to relapse into addiction than alcoholics who join such a group who do not yet provide help.
As a former addict, helping other people with addiction problems can keep you from relapsing.
Strengthen family bonds by helping each other
Helping others is also good for strengthening family ties. A family can fall apart after family trauma or the loss of a family member. When a child in the family dies, it can have a major impact on family togetherness and maintaining family ties.
Research has also shown that when family members help each other it can actually strengthen the bond instead of the family falling apart(2). In this, you also don't have to think that compassion and helping only happens within the family. Helping other people with a trauma or problem in their family can also help keep your own family ties good.
Helping your family after trauma can make the bond more intimate.
In the process, helping family members for female adolescents can also have good effects, even if your family does not experience adversity. In adolescent girls, there is a correlation with helping family and physical health; in adolescent boys, unfortunately, there was no such correlation(3).
With boys, there were psychological benefits in helping the family. This made them feel more like their lives are going in a certain direction, have better social relationships and boys are more accepting of themselves as they are.
Adolescents who help people gain a better sense of direction in their lives and better socialization.
Helping people as you age
When you're retired, you have an awful lot of time on your hands. If you want to enjoy your retirement as long as possible, it's a good idea to help other people. Your family, your neighbors or even complete strangers. In fact, research shows that older people who help other people in some way are less likely to die than older people who don't or who only get help (4).
The study involved support where you do chores and also give emotional support to your husband or wife.
So it was about giving someone an elevator, running errands, babysitting and helping with homework.
Those who give, live!
When elderly people help people around them, it can make them live longer than elderly people who do not help people.
Helping people at work
By helping people at work and not needing help often yourself, it is possible to achieve higher status at work(5).
Research shows that different types of people handle this differently, and that people who characterize themselves as people who care a lot about what others think of them and therefore often help others and ask less for help themselves tend to have a higher status in "the group" as a result.
Helping other people at work can provide just that little bit of promotion, and also knowing who is helping with what can help when you once don't know the answer.
Helping people at your work can ensure that you gain higher status.
Misconceptions if you want to help another person
As you can see, there are all kinds of benefits to helping people. Yet sometimes the barrier to helping others is greater than it needs to be. This is because some beliefs about the usefulness of the help you can offer and the importance the other person attaches to it.
For example, you may have the belief that what you can do for the other person is nothing and therefore you don't do it(6). This is very unfortunate because everyone appreciates help.
By helping people, you find out that you are more valuable than you think.
The reason why helping others helps increase self-confidence and sense of worth, for example, is because it proves your wrong beliefs wrong.
In the process, helping others can also promote bonding with them.
Group pressure and the benefit of helping someone
In society, there are often attitudes about groups. In the Netherlands, people are quickly labeled and you can get a stigma. For example, in the past, and also now, people with a disease can get a stigma. People living in poverty get a stigma and I could go on and on.
By helping each other, those lines disappear from the social ladder and you find out that everyone is facing the same problems (7). Therefore, helping others can change your view of peer pressure, making you more likely to do what you want instead of what they want.
Helping others and setting goals together helps build rapport.
By helping someone from a different social class, you are helping to blur the lines.
Why volunteering is good
Volunteering can be useful at many times in your life. First and foremost, volunteering can give yourself a better idea of what is what. It can eliminate prejudices about people you help, and in the process, prejudices that people who get help from you have about you can also be reduced.
In addition, helping others is also good for a variety of psychological factors. It can boost your self-confidence and cause you to suffer less from depressive symptoms. This applies to both healthy and people with illnesses who help others.
If you are older and unfortunately do not have the luxury of being able to help your own family members with all sorts of things, volunteering can help you live longer. This could include helping your neighbor with the mail when they are on vacation or giving them an elevator.
Start helping people
If you want to start helping people but find this exciting, you can start with your own family and friends first. For example, you can tell them that you would like to help more often with one thing or another. For example, if you can babysit sometime, iron laundry or help someone with an elevator they can tell you.
If you suffer from an illness and want to help people who also suffer from the illness, you can look for organizations that help people with your condition and contact them. There may be opportunities there for helping other people.
You can also look for initiatives in your area that require volunteers.
It may well be the case that you don't enjoy doing something. Then look further for an activity where you can help people and have fun doing it, too.
Want to learn more about mental techniques to feel more confident and happy in your life? Then come to a seminar or check out Hypnosis Institute Netherlands' training courses.
Sources:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953699000490
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01488376.2011.564035
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10902-008-9098-1
http://pss.sagepub.com/content/14/4/320.short
http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/psp/91/6/1123/
http://search.proquest.com/openview/2713d486cf7d6204ecf25e935558344b/1?pq-origsite=gscholar
Arnold den Dulk
on Nov 20, 2016