PowerPoint Johanna: Helping, Fixing, and Learning to Sit in the Suck

Apparently, after decades of volunteer work, training in active listening, and supporting people through some of the hardest experiences of their lives... Johanna discovered something uncomfortable:

In her personal life, sometimes when people come to her with a problem, there's a decent chance she's already built a flow chart, identified three root causes, and opened PowerPoint before they've finished the third sentence.

Oof.

In this episode, Johanna explores the difference between helping and fixing, why unsolicited advice often misses the mark, and what she's learning about empathy, support, and simply sitting with someone through difficult experiences.

Along the way, she unpacks:
     • Why many helpers, caregivers, and problem-solvers struggle with action bias
     • The difference between empathy, sympathy, and enmeshment
     • Why "You need to stop beating yourself up" isn't always as helpful as we think
     • The challenge of supporting people who appear stuck
     • How to offer support without taking ownership of someone else's journey
     • Why connection is often more powerful than solutions

This episode is equal parts self-deprecating humour, uncomfortable self-awareness, and a reminder that sometimes the most supportive thing we can do is put down the PowerPoint and simply listen.

🔗 Resources & Links

🌐 Website: https://transformativejourneys.ca/

☕ Support the Podcast: https://buymeacoffee.com/transformativejourneys

💜 Threads of Life: https://threadsoflife.ca

📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/transformativejourneys.johanna/

🎶 Music: “Back Roads” by Will Harrison, via Epidemic Sound.

Disclaimer:
Johanna is not a therapist, psychologist, or medical professional. She is a public health professional, volunteer, speaker, and human being sharing personal experiences, lessons learned, and evidence-informed insights. Please seek qualified professional support when needed.

Transcript

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This, my friends… is the episode where I tell you what a terrible person I am… and reveal a shit-ton more of my flaws for you. 

Just kidding.

Sort of.

What I'm actually going to tell you is a story about how I recently discovered that when people come to me with a problem, there's a decent chance I've already pulled out my whiteboard to build a flow chart, identified three root causes, and opened PowerPoint before they've finished the third sentence.

And some uncomfortable truths about what it’s like when you’re a ‘fixer’…

Because as it turns out, what most people need isn't for someone to solve their problem for them...

It’s just for someone to quietly listen and support them through it.

And we’re going to talk about how and why – in spite of our very best intentions – just listening and supporting can be one of the hardest things we need to learn to be a good friend… parent… spouse… co-worker… or support person in general.

So today we’re gonna dig into Johanna’s dirty little secret as all of those things.

And what it really means to help – while trying not to “fix”.

So let’s dig into that.

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Life's messy. Growth is uncomfortable. And healing rarely follows the plan.

Welcome to Transformative Journeys, where growth meets grit, healing gets honest, and resilience becomes a practice.

Around here we use storytelling… neuroscience… and a lot of self-compassion to make sense of the human experience – and grow through what we go through.

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Welcome back to Transformative Journeys with Johanna! I’m your host Johanna – and whether listening in while you’re on your evening walk… keeping me company while you fold your laundry… in your truck during your commute to work… or somewhere in between… I’m glad you’re here.

I’m going to start this episode by telling you that…

Apparently, after decades of helping people as a Volunteer Family Guide with Threads of Life… hundreds of hours of training on active listening… empathy vs sympathy… and how to just walk beside people going through really hard things – knowing there is now way of fixing what they are going through so all I can do is let them know and feel that I am with them through it…

I’ve discovered that in my personal life… I sometimes really f*cking suck at all of that. 

Which is annoying. Because after all this time I sort of believed that I had most of the whole ‘being a supportive person’ thing nailed.

Apparently not so much.

As you can imagine… that epiphany took some wind out of my “professional volunteer support person” sails because – right or wrong - for me “supportive” is a bit of an identity thing…  And it made me realize not only that it’s something I really need to work on…

But I needed to come to grips with actually internalizing that not every problem I hear is actually an invitation for me to start handing out my unsolicited, personalized solutions.

So… “What happened?”, you might be asking… 

Well, not too long ago at work, someone was telling me about a difficult situation they were dealing with – and at the time I thought I was listening and being supportive.

Then… later, while I was driving home from work, I realized that what I was actually doing was something I’ve probably done hundreds of times throughout my life…

Before they’d even finished explaining the situation… my brain was already…

Identifying the problem…

Diagnosing the root cause…

Developing three personalized possible solutions…

Creating a strategic implementation plan for them…

And was halfway through preparing the PowerPoint presentation outlining all of this so they had a working strategy to put into place after she walked away.

Oof.

Now… here’s where you can give me at least a little credit.

I didn’t email her the PowerPoint and Strategic Plan after she walked away…

But the realization what that conversation represented sent me down a rabbit hole of wondering:

How often was I actually doing this when I thought I was being supportive?

Was I really helping people? Or am I sometimes trying to fix things that just aren’t mine to fix.

So, one of the things that I’ve learned about myself is that I have a pretty strong action bias.

I like progress… I like to figure out how to move things forward… I like solutions that create a path forward.

And I hate staying stuck myself.

And in reality, that’s actually served me well in many situations.

It's helped me navigate grief… It's helped me navigate challenges… It's helped me learn to do things in volunteer roles that I’d never done before – like public speaking and facilitating workshops… 

It's helped me build a podcast.

But every strength has… not necessarily a ‘downside’… but maybe a ‘shadow side’. 

And one of the shadow sides of action bias I’ve discovered is that sometimes I don’t spend enough time digging in to understand someone’s feelings about a problem… before I start to move to solution-mode.

So when the problem isn’t yours to begin with… it’s even more important to sit down, shut up, and take the time to listen – and understand the person as opposed to the problem.

Because not every conversation is a request for advice. Not every problem has a solution.

And even if it does – they don’t need my f*cking PowerPoint. They need to feel connection.

So let’s jump into my time machine again (because I love time machines almost as much as I love finding cracks in the foundations of who I am… excavating the whole damn site like an overzealous archaeologist… and then figuring out how I’m going to learn to develop someone on that foundation who will eventually be Johanna 2.0).

My co-worker – and friend – had come to me one afternoon (actually a couple of months ago by the time this episode drops) to talk about a situation with another co-worker that was impacting her on many levels. Emotionally – she was very hurt by this person’s behaviour… psychologically – her self-esteem was taking a serious hit… and mentally – being talked down to and nit-picked during almost every unsupervised interaction is stressful and sh*tty… Period.

(See? I was actually listening. Sort of.)

But do you know what? I work with this other person involved too. And although I wasn’t dealing with the relentless negativity that my friend was – the truth is that I also have a thicker skin… and much more of a “f*ck you” philosophy about stuff like that.

So I was very familiar with the problem… but my friend wasn’t just coming to me with the problem – she was coming to me with her feelings about the situation. 

And something I’ve also learned is that there is a vast difference between sympathy (“oh you poor thing…”) – which I was settled nicely into because the truth is that I’m at a time in my life where I don’t usually care much whether someone who is being b*tchy likes me or not…

And empathy (“oh I can understand why that must hurt”) – which I had apparently left at home that day, because I wasn’t hearing her feelings – I was hearing her problem.

I really love the way Brené Brown talks about it. And anyone who’s been here a little while, knows my little… you know… crush… with Brené Brown, and the way she thinks. She says something like, sympathy is like finding someone you know in a hole… stepping up to the side of the hole and peering over to say condescendingly, “Ooo… you’re in a hole… you poor thing… it must suck to be you.” Empathy on the other hand, is walking up to the side of the hole and peering over… then sitting down beside the hole and saying, “Oh it really sucks that you fell in that hole… I’m sorry you’re stuck down there and I don’t really know how to get you out of it… but let me sit here beside the hole with you to keep you company so you don’t feel so alone”. 

And don’t confuse that with something called Enmeshment – which is climbing down into the hole with the person… actually feeling what they’re feeling and trying to push them out of the hole. Because then you’re both stuck in the hole and nobody is really actually supporting anyone.

So anyway… as usual, I digress – And here’s where I confess that the realization didn’t happen during the conversation… it came crashing down on me on the drive home.

She didn’t come to me for solutions – we work in the same place… we know how the “complaints” department works… and we are both fully aware that ‘tattling’ on a co-worker is taboo.

What I realized later was that she just wanted an ear. Someone to listen to her. Someone who understood the big picture of how it was impacting her, wouldn’t judge her for how she was feeling – or how she was - or wasn’t - dealing with it, and someone who understood her unsolvable problem.

And what I also realized was that I’d been listening for problems… thinking about how I would deal with it… and creating her customized PowerPoint in my head.

It also made me wonder just how many times I’ve done this to other people. 

Not because I don’t truly care about them, their problems, and their feelings…

It’s because there really still is a part of me… even after all of the work I’ve done to dig into why I’ve often struggled with feelings of unworthiness and re-write my old stories… 

That feels like, “If I can’t help them FIX it… what good am I to them?”

All of my training as a Volunteer Family Guide – which let me tell you, has been pretty intense sometimes – has taught me something huge.

Sitting with and witnessing, and fixing, are not the same thing.

Fixing says, “Let me solve this problem for you.”

Witnessing says, “I’m here with you. Maybe I can help steady you if you stumble. But I can’t pick you up.”

Some things can’t be just fixed. They just need to be seen and heard by someone.

Support isn’t solving. Support is being present for someone.

And do you know what? Witnessing is harder. Because when someone is hurting, most of us feel the urge to do something to ease their pain… to make it better… to reduce their discomfort…

We start offering solutions because doing something feels better than sitting with the fact that we really can't really do any of those things.

But what witnessing truly is… Is sitting in the suck with them so they don’t feel alone there.

Not getting down into that hole they’re in and getting mucky yourself.

Not fixing anything. Not rescuing them. Not absorbing their suck and owning it yourself. And not pretending the suck isn’t there.

Just sitting with someone while they’re going through something hard and acknowledging what is true for them.

"That sounds hard."

"I can understand why you're struggling."

No advice.

No action plan.

No f*cking PowerPoint presentation.

Just presence.

And that is really hard. And it’s a skill I’m still working on.

Because my first instinct is still to step forward with my spreadsheet, flow chart, and three-part action plan.

I wonder how many people have walked away from me thinking “what the f*ck just happened?”…

So now I’m going to switch lanes for a minute, because I want to get into another bad habit of mine when people in my life come to talk to me about things sometimes.

And it’s a go-to phrase that often comes out of my mouth when someone wants to talk to me about something they’ve maybe done… or said… that they are uncomfortable with or feel bad about.

It’s “You need to stop beating yourself up about that”. 

And I realized recently that while that is definitely coming from a place of compassion on my part…

It’s not really the most helpful thing to tell them.

Because for me… when I say, “I feel terrible about what happened” to someone, although I may be hoping for a little bit of reassurance that what I did wasn’t so terribly terrible…

The truth is that I’m not really done feeling terrible about it or I wouldn’t be coming to them with it in the present tense.

When we are feeling bad about something and still need to talk about it, what that’s saying is that we’re still trying to process it… maybe understand it… and why we did or said what we’re feeling yucky about.

Dismissing that by saying, “Oh no, you don’t need to feel terrible” is dismissing the feelings they’re having about it and either not giving them the space they need to learn from it – or giving them permission not to.

And I think that it’s kind of something that falls under the “fixing” umbrella too. We’re a bit uncomfortable sitting with the discomfort of their discomfort – so for me… I just pull out my magic wand and try to banish it…

When maybe the better thing I can do if I want to help is to just ask, “Why do you think you need to feel bad about this?”… “What exactly is making you feel guilty?”… or “Would it help you to talk to me about what you’re blaming yourself for?”

Just a thought…

Next, I’m going to explore what real support actually looks like. 

Not because I’m an expert. If you haven’t figured that out, you were, I don’t know… writing out your grocery list?... Cooking dinner?... Or trying to remember if you sent your grandmother a birthday card, with me just droning on in the background…

But we’re going to get into that, next.

Mid-roll

Time for a quit pause. Literally! Please don’t press the forward-15-seconds button.

This part actually means a lot to me.

If any of any of this episode made you wince – either because you recognize yourself or because someone else's face immediately popped into your head…

Go ahead and forward it – preferably with love.

It actually helps my show a lot when you forward stuff.

Alright...

Let's get back into it.

So… before I jump into the lesson I’m working on learning from this whole personal revelation…

I need to confess something… 

And some of you are going to recognize yourselves… and some of you are going to laugh because you’re exactly like me.

Love me or hate me for it – but I really struggle with people who appear to be perpetually stuck.

You know what I mean.

Same complaint… same issue… same conversations…

Week after week… month after month… but they Never. Do. Anything. About. It.

Every suggestion – let’s be honest - whether they asked for it or not… Rejected.

Every possibility or idea for thought put out… Dismissed.

Action Bias me is sitting there thinking, “So… what then… exactly are we doing here?”

One of the challenges for me – outside of pure frustration – has been recognizing that there is a difference between support and ownership. 

I can listen (sometimes for the umpteenth time)…

I can try to support someone…

What I can’t do is… Is make them move. Make them change. Or even make them ready.

But… sometimes something that feels like resistance to change? It’s actually fear.

Or uncertainty.

Or a symptom of grief.

Or shame.

Even if they begged me for it, and I gave them that 5-point-action plan and PowerPoint… The problem isn’t really that they don’t know what to do…

It’s that they just aren’t ready yet.

And I can’t own that – even if I wanted to.

Alright, so the lessons I’m trying to learn from this are actually pretty simple.

1.  Listen more – talk less.

Turn off the PowerPoint app and ask questions instead of give answers.

Which means…

2.  Ask what support looks like from you.

Literally as simple as, “What would be most helpful from me right now?” or even asking, “Do you want me to listen, brainstorm, or just sit in the suck with you for a minute?”

And I love that question because it give them personal agency and reminds them that they have some responsibility for determining what they need right now.

And last…

3.  Stop assuming that advice is wanted.

Because my job as a friend… parent… spouse… isn’t to own the problem.

It’s not to fix their problem – which quite frankly may not be fixable at the moment.

And it’s definitely not to turn it into a multi-media presentation of solutions.

So this week we made a little fun of something that surfaced for me as a real problem for me as a “helper and fixer”. 

How I struggle with not problem-solving everyone who comes to me with their problems’… problems.

And I sort of talked out loud through some of the lessons I’m still learning… and things I think alot of us struggle with when we’re trying to support someone.

Things like:

Am I listening to understand?

Or am I listening for the moment when I can jump in and start giving suggestions.

How to sit in empathy vs sympathy…

And how to stay present through a journey that isn’t ours to own or take over.

And how supporting and fixing are very, very different things.

As we wrap up, I want to leave you with this. 

Support is not fixing.

Support is not rescuing.

Support is not absorbing.

And support is not becoming responsible for someone else's emotions.

Support is staying present while respecting that their journey still belongs to them.

And if you're anything like me... and your instinct is to start taking minutes while someone is talking so you don’t miss anything critical in your PowerPoint...

Remembering that the most important thing we can do when we’re trying to be supportive – isn’t to help them solve their problem.

It’s to give them a space of connection – while they search for their own answers.

Thank you for being here with me today.

Come say hi on Instagram @transformativejourneys.johanna or visit my website and say hi there!

If you like a bit more bang-for-your-buck there’s an enhanced version of this podcast on YouTube. On-screen prompts, beautiful visuals, and a more immersive experience. Head over to my YouTube channel Transformative Journeys.

Got an idea that you’d like to hear me talk about? Leave me a message and you might see it in a future episode.

Until next time, this is Johanna, reminding you… that it doesn’t matter if you fall. What matters is how well you bounce.

This… is Transformative Journeys.

See you next time!

End note: Just a disclaimer! This podcast is for entertainment and informational purposes only and should not replace the advice of a medical or mental health expert. I am not a licensed counsellor or therapist - just a human with a mic and a story of growth and resilience. No degree… no fancy letters after my name... I’m a full-time student at the School of Hard Knocks, University of Life where I figure I will graduate when I take my last breath. In other words, I’m just Johanna - a fellow human being on my journey through this thing called life, and your concierge on this transformative journey.