If something is meant to be helpful but turns out to be not.
Rite
New
Hello everyone,
I am new to this forum. For a long time I have this question in my mind and although I could find some answer myself I am not sure if my reasoning is correct. I don't actively practice any religion. I don't meditate. Although I feel a deep connection with Buddhismus and its philosophy and/or the concepts, I have a similar connection to other religions. E.g. the concepts of humility, dedication, love, empathy in various disguises and masks they appear in all religions and I believe that they are extremely helpful when it is about the way we deal with our experiences. However, Buddhism appeals to me most in that sense that apart from certain "laws" like action and consequence it doesn't refer to an external power like "god" whom one has to obey and who in his punishing or forgiving nature seems to me to be rather a reflection of our wish to "establish" and "enforce" some morals and rules. All this has little to do with my question but maybe it is useful to understand a bit about my thought background. It probably is also the reason why I don't fully understand the concepts that I use in my thoughts in order to understand the world and myself.
I will try to explain and I hope that I manage to outline my confusion.
If with the intention to help someone I do something that I in that moment believe is right but in a longer perspective turns out to be rather causing more suffering in that person or because of the actions of that person in other people, then to what extend are the negative outcomes my responsibility?
For example, I met someone, we liked each other. I noticed immediately that this person was emotionally unstable and extremely confused, angry, defensive, aggressive. I noted many similarities with my younger self and I wanted to help him to learn the things I learned in a softer, less painful way. In our relationship I tried to provide a mentally safe frame where he could feel loved enough to let loose of the defences. Since he was so insecure I also felt that it was necessary to "protect" him from any rejecting experience. However, two things happened.
First I entirely overestimated my ability to understand the danger of the situation and I got badly hurt in a way that will have lifelong consequences for me. Second, by that I strengthened his believe that he is a bad person that is doing everything wrong. Third, in another way I also strenghtened his ego in his view of being all powerful and a victim of his manipulative mother who now understands everything and has the right to judge others. It happened since I wanted to strengthen his sense of self. But what I really did was strengthening his ego. I am not conclusively sure if my thoughts are correct. Since, I believe that particularly people with traumatizing experiences need to be reassured that their perception about what feels wrong to them, feels wrong to them and that it is right to not like it. Although the path to becoming angry and revengeful is very narrow. Acknowledging the pain inside is the first step in healing.
But, moreover, after some months passed, I understood also that while in the beginning I felt hurt and violated, in the end it became clear to me, that by my attempt to help him, I was in some sense actually also abusing him to prove myself how powerful I am in my skills of understanding and guiding others.
Now, recently I learned about the importance of arguments. If we hide ourselves and try to become what we think someone else needs - like I did in the above example - it is also manipulative and we take away that part of the relationship that could be called a real encounter and thus if it is made with an honest, friendly, loving person could also become a healing/transforming encounter. By now I think that it actually is our "task" to be as truthful to ourselves as we can be and that by solely being who we are and thus providing others with an honest reflection of their effects on us we are already "teaching", "helping" much mure than we could do by "deciding what the other person needs" and then adjusting to it.
Nevertheless, I didn't know this at that time and I did at that time what I thought was right to help somebody to have an easier path than my path was.
That was the first part of my question. The second one seems to be even more complicated to me.
In my life I encounter difficult people almost every day. People that are different and how society would say confused, difficult, bad, abusive and so on in ways that are at extremes of many varieties of human behaviour. I don't avoid them. I seek them. I try to confront them with my "non-violent" nature. However, first it always means that I allow them to treat me in ways I maybe shouldn't be treated, but somehow I feel that I cannot be hurt. I have been hurt in so many ways, and I know the people that have hurt me so well, that I deeply understand that their actions are not directed against me. It is their self-defense mechanisms that make them act like that. Second, I also truly believe in building bridges and if I act revengeful it is me who is refusing to build the bridge. On the other hand, if I stick to such people I often find myself in a situation where I seem to do everything while the other persons are expanding themselves more and more. It is exactly because by my wish to build bridges they don't have the need to do it.
However, it is with these people that I learn most about my illusions. It is these people that somehow allow me to disentagle my fantasies from reality. They are somehow empty with respect to the fact that they allow for any projection. They are also empty with respect to the fact that their reflections of me are more of a reflection of their own inner world. Now the weird part of my thinking starts 
I somehow feel a strong and deep connection with them. I can understand how as a human one can start to hate this world. Hate and contempt are not my way, but I can fully understand how these feelings arise and that they are justified. It is with these people that I learn most and where I feel this deep spiritual connection. They are teachers to me. The teaching is painful and maybe unusual in many respects, but I want to grow and with them I grow fastest and it is where my heart naturally wants to be. However, I also ignored my intuition with all of them. My intuition gave me warnings each time. I just decided against it. But, if I listened to my intuition and avoided them, I would not have gained such a deep insight into their, our, my experience and nature of things.
These thoughts lead me to the question if not actually every person to whom we feel drawn to is in some sense a teacher to every one of us. And such we are "teachers" to everybody around us in a natural way. Then my first question above is already answered. I was who I was at that time and thus I provided him with the lessen I could teach him at that time. Since he felt drawn to me then maybe it was exactly what he was looking for? However I also feel that the thought is dangerous since it also might lead to the justification of bad actions. However, what are bad actions? My suffering in these complicated relationships was bad, it was real suffering, at the same time after years of processing it, they turned into something that made me more free than I was ever before. Also more lonely, since with my experiences of the last years and with all the thoughts following from it, I feel incredibly lonely. And I just know that know it will be very difficult for me to connect again. First since I don't trust anymore, second because I feel, that other humans don't have anything I want or need.
So, loooong text Thank you very much for your time and for reading.
Comments
I wanted to edit, but apparently the time was over. So I just post a follow up...
These thoughts lead me to the question if not actually every person to whom we feel drawn to is in some sense a teacher to every one of us. And such we are "teachers" to everybody around us in a natural way. Then my first question above is already answered. I was who I was at that time and thus I provided him with the lessen I could teach him at that time. Since he felt drawn to me then maybe it was exactly what he was looking for? However I also feel that the thought is dangerous since it also might lead to the justification of bad actions. However, what are bad actions? My suffering in these complicated relationships was bad, it was real suffering, at the same time after years of processing it, they turned into something that made me more free than I was ever before. Also more lonely, since with my experiences of the last years and with all the thoughts following from it, I feel incredibly lonely. And I just know that now it will be very difficult for me to connect again. First since I don't trust anymore, second because I feel, that other humans don't have anything I want or need. Also with all these thoughts, I somehow feel unable to engage again. My bonds are strong - maybe my attachment to the thought of building bridges, of being able to help or change something (however, I have also seen situations, friends and so on, where I could help/change something). Nevertheless, without engaging in relationships I would avoid the world. From an enlightened perspective one cannot reach anyone. By claiming to have the enlightened position one is already out of everything that is real since one is denying the own human nature. This means that in principle there is no other way than living, interacting, not withdrawing... But I feel that I cannot anymore. I lost interest in almost every person. I am emotionally attached in the sense that I want them to be well, but I don't want to interact anymore. Any apart from the fact that I miss somebody, I actually don't miss the presence of anyone. I just have been alone for a long time.
So the point is that. I want to go outside. I know I have to. I also desire to interact. I just somehow don't want at all anymore? Since in my environment these thoughts are hardly understood I can only superficially throw some comforting insights. I act on a superficial level only. Like a robot I am smiling, answering and providing some help in understanding to people who come to ask for it. That I can do and it seems others are liking it. I however feel disconnected and drained. Tired. Empty and sad. I don't want anything anymore. It is not a depression
It is rather an understanding about how meaningless all these little games that we play every day really are.
Welcome @rite. Hope you find something useful here.
Have you ever noticed that a doctor's motto is, "Do no harm?"
The motto is not "do good," it is "do no harm."
The desire to "do good," which can be very subtle and very wily, is something everyone (Buddhists too) have to straighten out. How? My vote is: Stop and take the time to reflect. Pay attention. Take responsibility. Over time, the lesson comes home: You can only be yourself, correct what you can and move forward. Doing "good" is what one person may say of another. It would be a mistake to say I myself have done "good." But that may just be my take. Being yourself, with added applications of attention and responsibility, is the best anyone can honestly muster.
Here's a story taken from the Internet:
Thank you
It is a funny coincidence that I just read this story yesterday. Maybe there is something I should understand. Maybe I have to be more patient with respect to conclusive answers and maybe there won't ever be any answer.
Try to not overthink things.
The past is unchangeable, all we can do is reflect on the experiences and learn from them.
The future is impossible to visit or contemplate. There's no point trying to predict any outcome, or wish for any result.
Things unfold as they unfold.
Sure, make plans. Just be prepared to change them according to contingencies.
"The Man who deliberates fully before taking each step will spend his entire life on one leg."
Do not regret your actions regarding this other person.
You might like to look through this thread, for elaboration....
And don't think you can work anything out to its Nth degree. It's too complicated to do so.
Relax.
And by the way - you should not dismiss 'depression' as a possibility.
You may even have an instance of PTSD.
It's easy to presume one can self-diagnose.
However, it's also a mistake to believe ourselves correct in doing so.
@Rite
You might find this of interest...Pema Chodron discusses her book "When things fall apart" plus other things with Oprah...
Metta
Maybe we will find better questions. For example, 'what is your game?' is one of the first we meditators have to answer ...
You cannot force someone else to take your path. They are on their own path and they have to find their way. We cannot/should not interject ourselves into the lives of others with an idea that we can save them. That's not our job. Sometimes the best thing we can do is leave someone alone. A lot of the time our idea to help (even with good intentions, and we know what they say about good intentions) comes from our ego. The best way you can be of help to those around you is to just live your life by example. Not by getting into relationships with people who don't share your values in an effort to help them see the light. That's not your job. You can't recruit people to your way of viewing the world. It doesn't work. People especially resist being told their way is wrong, no matter how wrong it appears to the rest of us. Be what you want the world to be, as Ghandi basically said. Don't try to force the world to be as you are. You cannot save someone else. I don't know if you are female or not, but this is very typical of younger women in relationships. They always think they have the power to change someone else, that if they love that person enough, then they will change and see the light. We can't operate that way.
@federica thank you
I definitely had a depression due to physiological reasons but this is now treated (not with antidepressants) and I don't feel depressed anymore. If it is not due to external triggers, such as headache, stress with work and so on, I am in a quite happy and confident mood. And, although I got quite disturbing news on Thursday, I was already singing on Saturday - ok, sometimes also crying, to be correct, but also singing while walking through the apartment. Just now, e.g. I gave myself a small concert with the teaspoon and my coffee cup. If you put the coffee cup on a tissue (I wanted to prevent coffee spots on my table) then the sound vibrations are like bells. Try it 
It is amazing. Well, with these kind of small entertainments for myself, I don't think that I am in a depression. I know how depression feels and I am far away from that.
Yes, I cannot change the past and things seem quite complicated. On the other hand I already understood so much, that I hope I can understand more and that maybe some day things will fall into their place. It is just that in some sense I have to redefine my own position within my relationships and somehow get lost with all the responsibility I feel. I am trying to learn from my mistakes, but therefore it is important that I reflect on my "mistakes" in the past because the only thing I can change is myself and therefore the response I get from the outside world.
@Shoshin thank you
Yes, that was the direction my thoughts were going.
@lobster Thank you as well
I am not sure if I understand the question correctly, or better who is the "you" in "What is you game". The way I understand it now my answer would be "relativity".
@karasti thank you
I don't know how to explain it. I don't try to change people. I never did. I never was with anybody because I wanted to change him or her. So many people have tried to change me, that I am quite sensitive with respect to that and I avoid people that try to tell me a) who I am and b) try to change me. This is why I am as careful as possible when it is with respect to other people. The only thing I do is offering my thoughts and hoping that the other person might find something in there which is helpful. Of course I cannot be sure that I always live up to my expectations. But generally I am conscious and careful about not changing people. I like them. I want them to be as much who they are as possible. I am amazed by the functioning of the human mind. I like to learn and listen to shared experience.
E.g. my sister; she had a very difficult phase. It was almost impossible to have a relation with her. She was very sensitive, easily offended and immediately attacking. Not answering phone calls for months. I understood early that I cannot help her in that state of mind, since everything I said would seem like "trying to change and or criticize her" which I would not, since despite the difficult time she went through, I knew about the things that made her that way and that she is incredibly strong and that things/life simply have been difficult. But I simply knew that I cannot do anything about her current state of mind. So what I then decided to do was at least not leave. So when I called regularly and even when she didn't call back. I told her that I am although she is not responding I am just calling such that she knows that I am thinking about her. The only thing I wanted to and knew I could do was trying to show her that she is not alone in this dark time and maybe strengthen her with a balancing additional opinion on her self-criticism.
The change that I am speaking about is something else, at least how I understand it and it can also be that I am having illusions. Most people seek interaction. By sharing experience one is automatically changing. The moment we speak with somebody is already a moment we are changing. This is how we can learn from everybody we encounter every day. The only thing which I consciously "manipulate" in situation is that I am very careful about not hurting the other person, not violating the openness with a careless or judging remark. Recently I read a some quote but I don't remember the origin anymore
"Before you judge a man, you have to walk a 1000 miles in his shoes"
For me this is imperative. I have been judged so many times in so many different ways that I don't judge. I have done bad things, very bad things, I know the mindset that leads to many actions. I don't judge. If I meet people where I feel that I would judge them or simply don't like their way of thinking I am not seeking friendship or relationship with them. In a polite way I avoid them.
The problem with respect to my first post in this thread is that I don't really know what effect the words I say have on somebody. And if, when I feel that I want to comfort somebody in a difficult situation and thus avoid conflicts, it is not actually counterproductive. Maybe this is the misunderstanding. Up to three years ago, I was always avoiding conflicts by all means by adjusting myself. Now I believe that this was wrong.
Since only by not avoiding conflicts we actually learn and make new experiences?
But this means that when I am consciously avoiding to be lets say too considerate I am also risking more to hurt someone... but when I avoid conflict, when I always do not confront but deescalate and compensate, then I don't allow the other person to grow with me. That is what I meant with "enlightened" position. When I am all understanding such that I can compensate the attacks or instabilities from the other person, I am actually avoiding any real relationship.
That is the dilemma.
But some people, their path in life at this moment is to be angry and aggressive. Trying to help them see a better way isn't necessarily helping. Often it only cements them into their current position. Just like we see happening with Trump and his supporters when protesters confront them. It certainly doesn't make those people more open to thinking and learning another way. It only cements them in their anger and defensiveness. Why would you knowingly enter, or stay in, a relationship with someone who is unstable, angry, aggressive and so on just because you think you can help him? that isn't your job, unless you are a therapist, and even if you are, it's not your job to put yourself in someone's life to try to get them to see another way. That is why therapists are there for people to seek out. They don't go seeking out those who need help. Someone has to ask, first. They have to know there is another way and want to obtain it. We can't just move in and try to teach it to them.
We should always interact positively with people, openly and vulnerable. But do it just to do it, and not with expectations or ideas of how you are trying to make the other person feel. Be open-hearted and generous and kind, but don't treat people with kid-gloves and don't put yourself into situations and relationships where people don't share the values you operate out of. It's no different than someone who is a recovered alcoholic insisting on moving in with someone who is in the throws of nightly benders. Your presence isn't enough to save them. They have to want to save themselves, first.
You came to the conclusion that you did so with this person because of ego and power to prove how well you could help someone. But I think there is more to it than that, and I'd be asking why you thought you could help him at all without knowing he wanted to be helped in the way you thought you could. It wasn't that you didn't have enough skills to do so. It's that you shouldn't have put yourself in a relationship with that person on a basis of trying to help him. Someone who needs help with those issues isn't a person capable of being in a relationship at that point in time.
Great post, @karasti ...
@Rite, you need to discern the difference between Idiot Compassion and Wise Compassion.
One enables the dysfunction, the other, liberates.
I am not consciously seeking them. It happens. The attraction always seems to be much stronger than the warning part of my intuition. But it happens so regularly that I started to accept that apparently complicated people seem to be my path. So currently I trying to learn how to protect myself. And while on the one side I like them and on the other hand now that I have learned how hurtful it is for me I became so sensitive with respect to all kind of dysfunctional behaviour that now I don't feel attracted to anyone anymore.
He wanted it. He had a strong need to talk about his things and I listened, comforted tried to help him understand while trying to understand myself at the same time. But this is normal in any relationship, isn't it? We talk, we share and exchange thoughts. I came out of a relationship with many problems. He only was in my region for three months. It was meant to be something friendly after these problematic years. At the same time I learned not to get involved into the dynamics of someone else. And that is where I feel I used him, I wanted to prove myself, that I am strong enough to resist these entanglements.
Maybe it helps if I say that this relationship was in 2011. Since then I have been more or less alone. So I understand all these thoughts and now e.g. I would not engage with him anymore. On contrary, I hope I would run. He was using and manipulating me. But I understood that after not before. Still, I have met other people after him. Dysfunctional in other ways.
Nevertheless, although he used me and his actions were destructive, I didn't want to close my eyes in front of the fact that I also used him. Because that is how I need to grow. Learn about my illusions, instead of concentrating on others illusions.
I suppose it depends on how you look at it. I think everyone is dysfunctional in one way or another. But that is because we are looking at life from a realm of normal and trying to find where the boundaries are of what/who lies outsides of it. When really it's all normal, it just depends where we happen to be at in our own lives. Sometimes our dysfunctions work well with someone else's and we can balance each other out while at the same time working on our issues. But that is different from thinking we are fine, and someone else really, really isn't and that we can help them. It usually just creates more dysfunction.
It's normal to converse with people of all sorts, of course. Especially those we are in close relationships with. But it's not the same as realizing someone has serious issues and thinking we can help them with those issues.
I need to think again about what I wrote... therefore I edited the text away. I hope this is ok.
Martin Luther King Jr. once observed more or less, "It's not what's wrong with the world that scares people. What really scares them is that everything is all right."
It takes some effort, learning how to NOT fix things.
Welcome @Rite.
All that verbiage around here..sums up as "Life happens". When it happens as planned or hoped, nice. When it happens otherwise (as is often the case), we picks up the pieces, we regroups, we carry on.
Of course, if it 'ain't broke', why all the effort to fix it? Hard habit to break sometimes.
As far as editing - you wrote it, it is yours to edit.
Peace to you
Its nice to see that mostly the responses I've read turned out to be a nice way of laying it down and I'd say are decent views.. I agree to most of it,( I think :-))
REAFFIRMATION:
Upon careful and unbiased assessment on things, if its positive and personally and strongly believe you have the sincerest and purest intention of the decision. , follow your heart.
People , things and life's experiences happen so that we can be better and know who we are, what we really want and where we want to go. ( To some more advanced souls, they already figured this out early on) :-)
Take the first step in faith,You don't need to see the whole staircase.
-Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
The Star serves as a guiding post for navigators.. It helps us not to be lost.
-unknown( i honestly forgot where I've heard or read that)