What Really Helps: Using Mindfulness and Compassionate Presence to Help, Support, and Encourage Others

Drawing on her experience as a psychotherapist and psychology professor, Karen Kissel Wegela offers clear, practical advice on the art of helping others. Despite our good intentions to help, we often hold back because we don’t know what to say or do—and we sometimes find that our best attempts to help end up making things worse. What are the best ways to provide emotional support, guidance, or encouragement to the people in our lives? Here is a book that provides answers, and that will be of special interest to helping professionals—as well as to anyone who wants to make a positive difference in the lives of people they care about. Wegela’s core message is that in order to be truly helpful to others, we need to develop greater awareness, kindness, and compassion for ourselves. Only then we can extend these qualities to the people we’d like to help. What Really Helps highlights the use of mindfulness, or learning to become fully present in the moment. When we learn how to be fearlessly and compassionately present, we find that we are better listeners, and we are wiser about what actions to take and what guidance to give others.