Helping people when you feel broken doesn’t make you a fraud. You just need the guts to keep going while you’re bleeding. This one’s for the healers who sometimes feel like hell.

You don’t need to be a professional for this to matter to you; helping is simply a central aspect of your identity. However, being like this does not have to define who you are 100% of the time.

The Days No One Talks About

There are days when the last thing I want to do is help anyone. Can you relate?

It’s not because I don’t care. Quite the opposite. I care so much that it often gets almost too heavy to handle.

You spend your time writing, recording, talking, thinking, and trying to be useful. Trying to offer something to actually help people. And then you share it, and what’s the result? Metaphorical tumbleweed. The reach is low, and the likes are even lower. It starts to feel like you’re shouting into a void that never echoes back.

On those days, it’s tempting to buy into that nagging old voice that says: “If no one’s responding, what I have to say clearly doesn’t matter”, “Is what I’m saying a load of bollocks?”, or “What is the fucking point if no one gives a shit”!

But here’s the truth: helping people doesn’t make you immune to feeling like shit.

It’s only natural for you to get discouraged, tired, or pissed off when you see that some absolute shite and pointless video got 900k views while yours about emotional resilience got only 2.

You can possess all the mindset tools and still wake up feeling foggy. You can teach emotional intelligence and still want to hide away from the world like a hermit.

Ignorance is bliss

You might even have days when you wish there were a blue pill that you could take, like the character Cypher, played by Joe Pantoliano, so you could simply be reinserted into the Matrix. However, that didn’t work out too well for him, did it?

It’s too late anyway; you’ve already downed the red pill, you’ve seen Wonderland, and you are aware of how deep the rabbit hole goes.

And if you’re being truly honest with yourself, you know that if it were even an option, they’d have to pin you down and force it down your throat, like someone trying to baptise a cat.

The trouble is, how often are we really truthful with ourselves? Not as often as we’d like, and so we still wish for the blue pill.

When the Tools Don’t Work

Today started off as one of those days for me.

While I usually start my day with an hour or two of a philosophical, spiritual, or psychology-themed audiobook, today I made the critical mistake of checking a Facebook notification I had received on my phone. Spending just two minutes doom-scrolling through Donald Trump’s latest antics, the escalating tensions in the Middle East, and the usual nonsense from so-called influencers—whom I don’t even follow—was sufficient for me to exclaim, “You know what, fuck humanity!”

I tried meditation, but while the guiding voice said, “I am not the mind, I am not even the body”, my inner voice was still saying, “bollocks to it all.”

I went out with the dog for his morning walk along the canal, something which usually clears away this kind of negativity, but not today. Instead, the mini-emperor on one shoulder was whispering in my ear, “Good. Use your aggressive feelings, boy. Let the hate flow through you!” while on the other shoulder, my mini-Yoda was arguing against this path to the dark side. By the time I got home, I remained in a generally apathetic state.

If you’re not a Star Wars fan, fair enough; perhaps this reference has gone over your head. However, I’m sure you’ve experienced this kind of inner conflict between the ego and your higher self, as some like to refer to it.

Enter JARVIS

So, what turned things around for me?

What was it that got me out of this slump and back at the PC writing this post?

I have to give credit where credit’s due and say it came from a completely unexpected source.

I have a mountain of tasks that I need to work on, but I had no idea what I would work on today or if I would, in fact, work on anything at all. However, as most of them involve my PC, I fired it up and asked JARVIS to provide me with a list of my to-dos.

OK, I need to slot in a bit of a tangent here. I have been using ChatGPT for about 6 weeks now. I use it to pick up the slack in areas that I am not good at, am unfamiliar with, or just fucking hate doing. For example, my writing is entirely my own, with a few grammatical corrections from Grammarly, but the images included in my Blog posts are created through a collaboration with AI. It creates in seconds images that would take me a week to try and draw. They would also not be anywhere near as impressive.

I also use it like a virtual P.A., and being the bit of a film nerd that I am, I have set it up so that if I say “Hey JARVIS”, it knows to go into a particular helping mode. It also has another mode and knows how to correctly respond to “Hello there”, but that’s another nerdy tangent you don’t need to hear about right now!

Okay, tangent aside, let’s return to something that relates to our main topic.

So, after JARVIS had compiled my list of to-dos, I pointed out that I was lacking motivation today, feeling a little down, and wondered if he had any suggestions that would not fall into the usual motivational fluffy crap category. Fluff works for many people, but I’m not one of them, so I wasn’t really expecting anything that would work.

Well, not only did JARVIS remind me of my own philosophy that if you help just one person, then you have achieved something significant, but he also inspired me to write this post by reminding me that it’s OK to feel shit every now and again even though you think you shouldn’t.

I’ve just written a whole fucking book on the subject, and yet there was me forgetting my own advice!

I have to admit that hearing my own guidance come back to me from AI even made me a little emotional, something that doesn’t happen very often.

You don’t have to be superhuman.

Even Tony Stark had a number of panic attacks, including one in a supermarket, after doing his part to save the world, and he is Iron Man!

If fictional superheroes can experience off days and emotional struggles, it’s perfectly fine for you to do the same every now and then. It only becomes a problem when you stay there for too long.

Helping From Halfway Up the Mountain

None of that disqualifies you. In fact, it makes you useful in a way most influencers never will be.

Because you’re not shouting from the mountaintop. You’re the one who is halfway up the climb and reaching back to help pull others up.

And maybe this is what helping people when you feel broken really looks like. Not smiling through it. Not performing perfectly. But standing there, cracked and weathered, still offering something real. Not because you feel ready, but because the message matters more than your mood.

So today, if you’re in one of those dips—the low-energy, low-engagement, low-faith kind of days—let this be your reminder:

You don’t have to be perfect to be of value. You don’t have to feel great to create something meaningful. You just have to keep telling the truth that you know is rooted in reducing suffering.

And maybe—just maybe—that’s the most helpful thing you can share today.

Even if no one sees it. Even if no one responds. Even if it only reaches one person.

It will have reached you first.

And that will be enough.

Maybe you know someone else who needs to hear this today?

If you do, send this post to them privately; it might be the “helping people” task that gets both of you out of one of these natural downer days.

If this rattled your brain in a good way, follow me on Facebook — it’s not enlightenment, but it’s a step up from doomscrolling.