Constructive vs. Unconstructive Caring

I wrote in my previous post about how people focus more on screaming for others to change than thinking about things that they can do. There’s no doubt that most people care about issues—even though many are either pretending or grossly exaggerating their concern (The Office poked fun at this well when Ryan falsely professed his deep love for Smokey Robinson’s music when he believed that he had died). But the deeper question is what are healthy or constructive ways to handle when you do care about issues that you might not be able to magically solve by yourself? So today we’re going to talk a little bit about healthy vs. unhealthy caring and how you can try to remain positive and constructive when handling deep-seated emotions.

Caring is a powerful force. Effectively, caring is how people place meaning on something in this universe. As a result of that attribution of significance or meaning, they behave in specific ways toward it. You will treat a person or thing with the proper caution, respect, and attention when you care (hence the word “careful” when referring to ensuring that you don’t harm or make a mistake with something or someone important). When you care, your emotional connection and attachment to the person or thing kicks in. Some people handle it well, such as showing kindness toward a person that they care about and focusing more time and attention on them. Others don’t know how to handle it and do the opposite, such as when children who like someone as more than just a friend for the first time will pick on the person instead of being nice to them.

So what can you do that’s constructive vs. unconstructive (or even destructive) when you care? While it depends on the thing you care about, here is a list of unconstructive behaviors followed by constructive behaviors when it comes to expressing yourself:

Unconstructive

• Empty Gestures – These range from what is commonly known as “paying lip service” (i.e., saying the right thing but not doing anything) to the more modern version of joining in on social media virtue-signaling (e.g., “I support the [current thing]!”) or—worse—participating in a viral video craze for personal gain.
• Complaining – While venting can feel cathartic, complaining about the problem in and of itself does nothing to lead to a solution unless it’s accompanied by a solution-oriented conversation (with action).
• Blame – Placing blame feels constructive because it feels like assigning responsibility for solving the problem, but at best it gets others knowing the real problem and at worst it involves people giving themselves permission to do nothing since it’s someone else’s problem or fault.
• Shame/Guilt – Shame and guilt are useful social emotions because they ensure that people either behave appropriately to avoid the emotion or do something that makes up for what they did to alleviate the emotion. However, unless one of those two things happens, just feeling the emotion by itself is not constructive, and many people beat themselves up long after they do something without any benefit to anyone.
• Attacking – Like shame, guilt, and blame, verbally or physically attacking someone does not solve anything unless it is in direct defense of someone in the moment. Even then, it’s still destructive but is at least the option that minimizes unjustified harm to someone.
• Addictive Substances and Behaviors – Some people drown themselves in alcohol or some other dopamine-related activity to try to ignore or bury issues rather than address them.
• Control-Related Behaviors – Many people who care deeply about things that they cannot control will compensate by controlling something that they can to an extreme extent. Anorexia and other control-related disorders are often a result of caring deeply about something that they have no control over.
• Picking on Someone – There is playful teasing of someone to build relationships, but of course there is a delicate line between that and pushing someone around because you don’t know how to tell someone you like them.
• Violent Means of Driving Change – While protests-turned-riots feel justified in the moment, all it does is hurt the small businesses and taxpayers who have to pay for whatever is damaged or destroyed during the mayhem. There are rare extreme circumstances such as revolutions against tyrannical regimes, but it’s so hard to explain the line where that would be justified that we won’t try to draw it here.

The are many, many more, but hopefully this provides examples of things that do not actually lead to better outcomes and, therefore, make a situation even worse.

Constructive

• Healthy Stress Outlets – While any pleasurable activity can be abused, it is much less likely to abuse activities such as meditation, relaxation, sunbathing, exercise, and other healthy ways to handle your emotions than the instant-gratification options like food, drugs, television, and other outlets.
• Volunteering – The famous saying, “You’re either part of the solution or part of the problem” is a more in-your-face way to say this, but the point is that if you actually devote your time and effort to solving a problem such as helping feed the homeless or cleaning up after a natural disaster, you can provide a lot more value than simply acknowledging or worrying over it. Note: it’s important to remember the economics principle of comparative advantage: it might be more valuable overall to do your regular job and donate money to people who specialize in solving a problem than doing it yourself. If your time is worth $20/hour and it only costs $10/hour to compensate a non-profit employee, for example, everyone is better off if you work 2 hours in your job and donate 4 hours’ worth of someone else’s labor.
• Donations – As mentioned in the note above, donating money can help push a cause forward. Just be wary of whom you’re donating to, as many organizations take money and do not actually provide the value that they claim to provide. Worse, some are incentivized to keep the problem alive to continue to justify asking for money to support—errr…“solve” it.
• Express Yourself – When you care about a person, sometimes just saying that you care is enough to help them feel better or to give them an opportunity to reciprocate if they feel the same way about you. The goal here is to deepen a relationship with someone, so this is a constructive way to do that.
• Meaningful Gestures – While there is some subjectivity as to what is “meaningful” vs. “empty”, a meaningful gesture for a loved one would be to go out of your way to do something that the person likes (or to do something that they don’t like/want to do for them so they don’t have to) to show that you care. It’s why people buy flowers and perform other gestures when the goal is to make someone else feel better during a time of great stress, which has value. It is generally considered to be empty when it only benefits yourself to say/do the thing to make yourself look good.
• Build or Create Something – Some of the greatest pieces of art, solutions, or movements came out of tragedy. For example, many musicians write their best work while in pain; John Walsh is famous for taking the tragedy involving his son and turning it into a decades-long effort to protect children. Making something beautiful out of tragedy is a great way to turn a negative into a positive.
• Peaceful Means of Change – Petitioning, fighting a battle in court, starting a worldwide peaceful movement of positivity, and running for office to change laws are all examples of ways to try to drive change in a positive way.

Again, there are many more ways to express yourself in a positive way when you care. This is just a partial list.

The goal of this post is to give you a toolkit of constructive ways to respond when you care about something or someone. When you have a cause that matters, try to actually help with the problem by providing support directly to people who need it vs. complaining to an authority figure to solve it (unless that actually does directly solve the problem, such as calling the police to stop a fight). Volunteering, donating, starting a non-profit, providing services to people who have the issue, and having a healthy outlet for the stress are all positive, constructive ways to take the strong feelings that come from caring about something and direct them toward an improved outcome.