Volunteering is not a cure
July 22, 2009 by Juliet Chase
Filed under Health and Happiness
There is a lot of advice out there that has about as much depth as the message in a greeting card. It sounds good on the surface but when you go to apply it, something doesn’t fit. Years ago I was unhappy with the region where I was living and where my career was going so I looked around for some tips on feeling better. What I found was a lot of advice, similar to this article by Susan Jeffers that promised that the path to feeling better about just about anything was to stop thinking about yourself and volunteer for anything – just serving others would fix everything. The real problem with this kind of advice that speaks to ‘everyone’ is that if you’re a person that doesn’t fit that mold it’s not socially acceptable to speak up. When was the last person you heard say ‘I volunteered at X and I hated it.”
While I’m all for volunteering as a form of social participation, it isn’t a treatment for depression or any other form of mental illness or social anxiety unless it’s being coordinated by a counseling professional. Sometimes a little more thought about self, and dealing with personal issues, may need to come before extensive thinking about others. Again, an issue of balance more than one extreme over another. If you hate your job and you volunteer after work to feel better about it – wouldn’t everyone be better off if you found a job you liked and did only a little volunteering? Angry, frustrated, unhappy volunteers can be a drain on the very people they’re trying to help. And in a sense, they’re not there for others but rather to use them to make themselves feel better.
The other fallacy that’s out there is that all volunteering is the same. It isn’t by a long shot. I’ve tried enough of them to know it’s ok to say this one isn’t for me and try something else. Organizations hate that because they hate training as much as any company but everyone will win when you find the right fit and you will eventually. Sometimes it’s a matter of the work, sometimes it’s values or maybe just the way it’s run. I briefly volunteered for an organization that did horse-back riding therapy for disabled kids – I shared the values, loved working with the kids and had no experience with horses whatsoever which the organization just waved away. When a horse reared away from another inexperienced handler in front of an oncoming car I had to conclude that their need for volunteers had outweighed good safety standards and training. Sometimes good intentions aren’t enough. The organization closed down a few years later. I love the volunteering that I’m doing now – it suits my skills, my personality and my lifestyle. In part that’s because I took time out ( a few years) to work on myself and what I wanted out of life first.
If you volunteer and love what you’re doing, great! But if you’ve not felt ‘that feeling’ that ‘everyone’ describes then maybe that’s a sign that you have other things that need your attention more; maybe you need to volunteer with yourself for awhile or find another opportunity to give your time that may be a better fit. Keep any existing commitments though – it’s not doing anyone a good turn to just walk out.
