Helping yourself by helping others

Altruism is the moral practice of concern for the happiness of other human beings or animals, without regard for the impact on one’s self. There is debate in scientific literature about whether we can be truly altruistic, because the altruistic action typically makes people feel good. Practically speaking, that’s the part that matters to me: helping others feels good.

It particularly feels good to help others who go through something similar to what you go through. There is a unique reciprocity in meeting someone who you might never meet in any other context of your life and feeling a sense of connection with them. In addition to the connection, if what you know about yourself and your suffering can uniquely offer them a different perspective and contribute to their healing, it feels especially good.

We are hardwired for prosocial behaviors. Toddlers as young as two-years-old pick up on the emotional cues of other people and show concern and empathy when they see suffering. They enjoy sharing, cooperation, and the opportunity to help. Rather than it being a moral imperative, it’s just part of our nature that we evolved in small groups of people who depended on helping one another to survive. It makes sense that helping others feels good for ourselves.

Anxiety and mood disorders are self-focused illnesses. They aren’t selfish. They are self-focused in the sense that when you are suffering a lot, your mind and body naturally want to focus its energy on itself. While that works well if you have a broken leg or the flu, when it comes to mental health, the more time you spend in your head self-focused, the harder it will be to recover. Community Time pulls you out of your self-focus on your illness and offers you the opportunity to feel empathy, compassion, and connection with others.

Individual psychotherapy is an important part of recovering from an anxiety or mood disorder. Through individual psychotherapy, you have the time and space to explore the patterns that uniquely maintain your distress. The individual psychotherapy relationship is a therapeutic form of attachment that can help you heal from attachment relationships that have caused you suffering in the past. That said, many people have not had positive experiences being part of a group. The experience of showing up to a group of people and feeling like you fit in, you belong, you can learn from others, and you can contribute can be a healing experience that you can’t get through individual treatment.