To the Mentor: A Pain Observed

A mentor is not a therapist. A therapist, however, may be a mentor or offer care through a mentoring method.

But let's be clear: A mentor is not a therapist. And yet, some therapeutic chapters might never have needed to be written had there been a listening ear available, a steadying hand, and an occasional shoulder to lean upon.

By the time a person has lived for at least four or five decades, they have had at least a few small tastes of life's experiences, both the sweet and the bitter. Earlier this month, a dear friend of mine decided to end her life. And this is no the place to diagnose, philosophize, theologize, judge, or pry. The loss is beyond imagination. It would serve no helpful purpose to describe any of the private details, except this one: she knew pain.

This deep loss leaves me in a sobering mood concerning mentoring. I want to make my sadness mentionable.

Mentors are entrusted with the raw materials of the human life, in all its dramatic possibilities, for better and even sometimes worse. Protégés will often entrust you with their wounds.

Having worked alongside this emerging leader in several key decisions and witnessing the effect an expanded horizon offered with caring support can have in leaders' lives for decades, it was exciting to see new energies emerging, and the sunlight of hope breaking through clouds for this particular individual.

And yet, there remained pain.

Again, while a mentor is not a therapeutic professional, a mentor is nonetheless a human being. As a human being, we are equipped with the capacity to identify with pain. Compassion is a real option when you consider that you never know what burden or hopes a person may be carrying with them. Mentoring can be a partnership of compassion.

Let me offer a few practices that may be important to mentors as their empathy is called upon while attending to a protégé’s life, with all its vicissitudes of hopes and hurts.

Try these:

1. Make emotions mentionable. It is my practice to lace mentoring moments with rich emotional language of "glad, mad, sad, and ‘afrad’” (a memory device for “fear” or being “afraid” and the other dominant emotional sources). When I express and model anger at the right moment in response to a protégé’s mistreatment, I make mentionable anger as a healthy way of being in the world, as a healthy way of engaging injustice and a boundary for transgressions. To the degree that the emotional range of protégés may be shallow or confused, the modeling may be formative and even suggestive that therapeutic work might be a useful and accountable mentoring assignment.

2. Call things by their proper names. Some of our worse memories, traits, and plans benefit from unexamined aliases. Rationalizations, denial, defects, insanity, duplicity, addictions, and lies deserve first/last names and addresses so that "conversational background checks" can be conducted. Counterfeits, cheaters, and all the usual suspects can be reported and turned into the wisdom and honesty of the proper authorities. Take the truth seriously and turn over ideas with protégés until the most powerful motives are improved by the light of community conversations.

3. Faithfully oppose bad ideas. If you think a bad idea is in the making, take pains to gently make the trajectory clear to its owner. I host "window shopping" conversations which allow the protégé to walk through the idea without buying it fully, to see if they can afford the future and its consequences. This is like a flight simulator—crash 600 times virtually so that when the real decisions have to be lived, fewer mistakes need be experienced.

4. Manage boundaries. Having a front seat to another's life is not the same as being in their circumstances. You are you, and they are themselves and neither are experiencing the same life. Practice humility by offering support, encouragement, and experience without being their fixer, decider, partner, critic, or accuser. By crafting a mentoring covenant or agreement, these boundaries are more easily named and managed if crossed incidentally. I ask protégés routinely, “Are we still doing what you had hoped in this relationship...is this helpful to you?”

5. Manage loads. As a mentor, some days are bad days for you to be talking to ANY other human beings. Cancel appointments on such days. If a mentor is not a therapist, a protégé definitely is not one either. We must be vigilant to protect the power dynamics of intimate, supportive relationships. When a protégé is overwhelmed, be available to offer your calm. Offer external decision-making conversations. Offer observations of threatened margins, need for team help, and limited skill capacity that might be revisited when their needs are met at a later date.

6. Medicate and refer. Sometimes the best gift is an honest statement: “I am out of my depth in this matter, I advise you to find professional support.” Consider that it’s like offering a Tylenol as a temporary response until they can get to the doctor. When mentors understand themselves as a member of “a healing circle” that includes arrange of professional and community services, people can navigate their opportunities and obstacles with confidence.

7. Put your emergency oxygen mask on first. It's hard to stare pain in the face, but pain is part of life, and by all accounts from the educational and therapeutic world it is the number one motivator for growth in the human experience. But don't be confused: when offering support to a soul in pain, make sure you yourself are grounded first. You can't give what you do not have. Neither can you offer rescue when you're drowning. That's why on every flight, the FAA announcement advises passengers to take care of themselves first, placing your own oxygen mask on before taking care of others needing assistance. Despite the very human impulse to reflexively save others, especially those who are vulnerable, a clear mind and whole self (not ill-advised heroism), is the more lasting assistance.

These practices will require you to observe pain, but in doing so, you are on your way to improving pain for another's maturity, depth, and growth.

In college, I remember my counseling professor lament that the psychological and therapeutic support industry is unfortunately a multiple billion dollar business and possibly needlessly large in its range. This is wonderful news for those who benefit from the help of these professionals. The need exists. The healing circle exists. However, my professor was not making an observation as to whether the services should exist, but whether the industry would be right-sized by the expanding of capacities of the general population to befriend, sponsor, coach, and mentor one another through the growing points, quit points, and high points of life.

Mentor, you're needed.

Photo Credit: David Monniaux

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