Care Cycle 101: Introduction
A Care Cycle describes the process of helping each other out: one person needs help, another person provides it, thanks are exchanged, and that’s it – pretty simple. The Care Cycle is a very good example of how balance works interpersonally.
We describe care as a cycle because of its reciprocal nature: you help someone voluntarily, they thank you; eventually they return the favor (also voluntarily! we’ll be talking much more about why in our next post) and you thank them – it’s a circle that hopefully never ends between you and the people in your orbit. The Care Cycle is a very gentle give-and-take; apply any force and it will break.
There are rules to this process that have to be adhered to so that it remains a healthy and functional exchange. These rules are simple but not always easy to follow.
For the Giver:
Provide what is needed by the recipient – not just what you want to give or what you think the recipient needs. You have to give the right thing, whether it’s a material gift or help of some sort.
Give the right amount, not more, not less.
Give or act at the right time to meet the need. Timing may not be everything, but it’s a critical thing.
For the Recipient:
Give gratitude and sincere thanks as an unwritten social contract that you’ll help when you can in the future.
For Both:
Do not apply any form of violence! This is critical to the success of the Care Cycle.
Let’s discuss each of these conditions in more detail.
Provide what is needed
Understanding what is needed is a fairly straightforward proposition in tangible terms. If someone is hungry, they need food to eat – easy enough, right? But in order to have a functioning Care Cycle, we need to respect the nuances around what the recipient really needs. If the recipient is a vegetarian, you can’t give them a steak and expect them to be grateful – this isn’t how the Care Cycle works.
If you really care about the person and want them not to go hungry, then you give them the food that will accomplish the end goal of them being fed and satisfied; you would never force them to do something against their will. It doesn’t matter if being a vegetarian is their choice; in a functioning Care Cycle you still have to respect their choice if you’re trying to meet their needs. Remember, compassion and caring go hand-in-hand.
Emotional support is a common need that we can only get from others (we cannot be our own emotional support system). Just as it’s important to give a hungry person the food that suits them, we also need to make sure someone who needs emotional support gets the type that they need.
For example, it’s not terribly helpful for someone going through a painful break up if you tell them to buck up, at least their career is going great! First and foremost, your friend needs your true compassion. Whether she wants to slag off her ex or lament how much she misses the love of her life, be there for her and give her the support she needs in that moment.
This is a key characteristic of the Care Cycle: what to give is often extremely specific. But the more specific you can be when meeting someone’s needs, the more helpful you will ultimately be to them. It’s the difference between giving someone with a migraine Advil versus sumatriptan (a prescription medicine for migraines) – both will help, but one is a much more targeted and effective solution than the other.
Give the right amount
Let’s continue with our food example. When my daughter was five years old, I took her on vacation to visit my parents. My dad asked me what her favorite food was, and I told him she loves mangoes. When we arrived at Grandma and Grandpa’s house, there was an entire table top covered with freshly halved mangoes, all for a single kindergartener. It’s obvious to see the waste in this scenario, and while we found my dad’s excess somewhat amusing, he probably would have been hurt if I’d said, “Dad, that’s too many mangoes! Why would you waste all that fruit?” For him it was just an expression of how much he loved his granddaughter, and he got lucky that his message was received: his granddaughter felt cared for. But even things like excess can misfire.
Emotionally, it’s hard to know how much support a care recipient needs, but it’s very important that we’re not judgmental about it. I know of someone whose husband died. For the first year, everyone rallied around her, sat with her, brought her food, the works; she was so grateful to her friends and neighbors for the support. When she wanted to continue to talk about her loss after a year, a “friend” of hers replied, “Still? It’s already been a year!” Ouch!
At the same time, another friend whose father died could handle condolence messages but did not want to sit with visitors. This is fair, she didn’t want more contact with people than that. The right amount of emotional support is the amount of support that the recipient says is enough.
Get the timing right
The timing of the care you provide is also critical to the function of a healthy Care Cycle. For example, I know of a grandmother who had a sweet and loving relationship with her grandson. As a child, the grandson enjoyed collecting stamps, and grandma would faithfully send him any interesting ones she came across. By the time he was 16, however, he’d outgrown his stamp collecting hobby. Even though the boy’s mother let the grandmother know, the grandmother was still attached to the idea of sending her grandson stamps. The thanks she received were understandably perfunctory and lukewarm. Of course they were, the timing of the gift was off by years! (“I could use a car, grandma.”) The situation wasn’t satisfying to anyone because the requirements of the Care Cycle weren’t met.
On a more serious level, when someone is suffering from addiction, loved ones want to convince them to go to rehab as soon as possible, but if that message isn’t delivered at the right time, the message will be lost because the addict just isn’t receptive or ready at that moment. If you want to actually help a person struggling with addiction, you have to choose your timing carefully. (Of course, you must also respect the other rules: You have to give the right thing — which, depending on the person, can look very different: It could be the money for a rehab facility; helping them find housing; helping them strengthen their faith; or even just reminding them that they are loved and it’s worth trying to survive. And you must not apply force. More on that in a moment.)
Recipient gives gratitude
On the other side of the Care Cycle relationship, the recipient gives gratitude to the giver as an acknowledgment of her needs being met; gratitude is the signal that the Care Cycle is complete. Just as care must be given voluntarily, so, too, must gratitude be given voluntarily for the Care Cycle to work.
Gratitude is the emotional currency which you can exchange for care when you need it. We will talk more about this in our next post on the “economics” of the Care Cycle.
Do not apply violence!
This condition, which applies to both giver and recipient, is important because it defines the rules of engagement: violence from either side destroys the Care Cycle. What is violence in the context of the Care Cycle? Violence occurs when either of the parties involved starts making demands and taking the choice of participation away from their counterparty.
Imagine a simple exchange of “please” and “thank you”. When we’re children, we’re taught these manners as a polite way to request things from others. “Please” is actually shorthand for “If it pleases you,” meaning, “I am making this request of you, but it is absolutely voluntary and at your will”; there is no force applied by the person asking for help. Teaching our kids why we say please and thank you also teaches them the right way to participate in Care Cycles.
At the same time, you cannot pry gratitude out of someone. In a healthy Care Cycle, when you have met all of the needs of the recipient, the healthy and natural response from them is gratitude in return. If the recipient doesn’t thank you, it’s likely because you didn’t meet the three conditions of their needs (right thing, right amount, right time). You can’t demand gratitude from someone whose needs you didn’t meet.
If you have met all of the recipient’s needs and they haven’t repaid you with gratitude, this is the equivalent of “stealing” care and is another type of violation of the Care Cycle.
Conclusion
Now you understand the basic framework of the Care Cycle, the give-and-take process where there is a voluntary exchange between two (or more) people. In our next post, learn more about how the CareCycle dynamic plays out in larger groups.