Relational Harm Reduction

Accepting people where they are.

One of the hardest things I’ve had to learn how to do is to accept people for who they are and where they are.

Not who I wish they were. Not who I want them to be. Who they actually are. Where they actually are.

Acceptance does not mean allowing harm or having no boundaries.

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We’ve been taught that caring means overextending ourselves, not having boundaries, and continually giving. Sometime, to our own detriment.

This is about the filters we put on people. The ones we build out of love, or hope, or need. The ones that keep us holding onto the possibility of what could be. The potential. The optimism.

This is also about how those filters keep us from seeing things clearly. From accepting reality.

I think about my mom. The years of time and energy I gave, doing everything in my power to help her. Wanting things to be better for her.

But none of it really changed anything.

Not because I didn’t care. I cared deeply. But I’ve come to realize that my caring, as well intentioned as it was, may not have actually helped her. It may not have helped me.

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It’s possible that all of my trying communicated something I never meant to say:

That where she was wasn’t enough.

That she should be different.

That she should be someone other than who she was.

That she should be somewhere other than where she was.

And without the understanding of why she might not have been able to change, that had the potential to make things harder for her. Not easier. And that was never my intention.

This isn’t about being pessimistic or saying change is never possible. It’s about being realistic. Sometimes change is inaccessible — not because someone doesn’t want it, but because it’s genuinely out of reach right now.

At some point I had to accept where she actually was. Not where I wanted her to be. This was the kinder option for both of us.

This is part of what I call relational harm reduction: maybe we can’t fix it, but we can remove unnecessary harm and not make it any harder than it already is. It's about not making change a condition for acceptance and dignity.

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It took years for me to come to terms with the fact that maybe it wasn’t a matter of not trying hard enough. I remember thinking, “What if what I’m hoping for actually isn’t possible? Not because she doesn’t want to feel better, but because she can’t? What if every time I tried to help her, it reminded her that she still didn’t meet someone else’s expectations or her own?”

That thought forever changed the way I think about this. It gave me something I didn’t know I needed: to take the pressure off myself for trying to make things better for her, and to begin to accept where she was at.

This isn’t only about how we see other people. It’s also about how we see ourselves.

And it goes both ways. Sometimes it’s harder to accept where someone else is, sometimes it’s harder to accept where we are. The same filter that kept me holding onto who I wished my mom could be is the same filter so many of us hold up to our own reflection, measuring ourselves against who we wish we were, instead of accepting who we actually are.

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These are some questions that have come from this experience:

When does hope stop being helpful?

When does wanting better for someone — or believing they can change — start costing us more than it’s giving?

When does our optimism turn into a weight we can no longer carry?

I don’t have a clean answer. But for me it started with accepting reality (as hard as that was) and allowing people to be where they actually are.

Here’s to the ones questioning, learning, unlearning, repairing, and growing, even when it’s messy. I’m right here with you.

- Sam