The Hidden Dark Side Of Helper’s High - And How To Combat It

Todd: I was eight years old, and my mom sat me down on my bed. She held my hand, and she was being very serious. She wanted to talk to me about sex stuff. And at this age, she had already had the birds, and the bees talk with me a few times. But this was different; she was talking to me about adults touching me inappropriately, and she had some suspects. She's asking me these very sincere questions about my boy scout leader, my little league coach, and about my babysitter. She's asking if they've touched me in places and done things to me. And she reassured me that it was okay for me to talk about it. But none of them had. Fast forward to today, my mother is a special person. She loves kids. She was a public school teacher for 25 years and then used that experience to become a special kind of tutor that helps kids who have dyslexia and severe ADHD. She takes kids who can't read, failing Elementary School and puts them on the honor roll. I think she has something called helpers high. This is when you think you are protecting children or anybody from evil and from danger. She's an advocate for the kids with their school, and heaven help us if a kid doesn't get a fair shake or well representative school. She's willing to march down and protest in the principal's office for any of her students who aren't treated fairly because of their disability. But helpers high can be dangerous. The people think they're helping someone, they feel like people are being abused who aren't. They care so much that it clouds their judgment. And people can be wrongly accused and even convicted of horrible sex crimes that they never ever did.

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Joe: Did you ever hear about the satanic panic?

Todd: No, what’s that?

Joe: That was the event in the 80s when everybody thought that groups of people were becoming Satan worshippers and parts of it bled over into games; people playing dungeon dragons got accused of worshiping Satan because they were playing games that involved magic and things like that.

Todd: I do remember that because, being a kid in the 80s, that was like a real public safety concern.

Joe: And then there's also a period of time where psychologists were doing regressed memory therapy, where they were putting people on couches and telling them that, you know, if we dig deep enough, we can find memories of abuse you have repressed or suppressed. We just have to spend enough time trying to crack your chestnut of a brain open. And they would bring things out of people, like events of molestation and abuse and horrifying things and the psychologist would take them to court and champion them. They would show up with these statements by their clients and say hey, my client was abused. They found that the reported abuse was often completely and totally fabricated - not out of malice. The psychologist wasn't getting anything out of this, and neither were their clients. They both firmly believed strongly that something had to be causing these people's trauma. It turns out that they were just helping them a bit too far. They were helping them all the way to the courtroom. And they were accusing like fathers of molesting their children and stuff. There was one case of cannibalism - somebody accused their father of cannibalism as an adult. Come to find out, everything about the events that they claimed did not match up, and the human brain is so good at inventing stories to justify things that we can fully make up a narrative that we feel is true if we have help from like a professional.

Todd: No, that's dead on. This is something I haven't talked about until today with my mother, but what I think she was doing was justifying my bad behavior as a child. She's thinking, he's acting this way because he must have been molested or something. I think it's really that simple.

Joe: It turns out the boring answer is that everybody needs help. You don't have to have been through trauma. Everyone should at some point, see a psychologist because it is more of a mental hygiene. It's less about you having to have gone through trauma or a horrendous experience, you have to be truly messed up to see a shrink. You really should go at some point because they will help you sort of tune your antenna socially and help you sort of figure things out for yourself. But yeah, I'm digging on the idea of helpers high. Some people are sports people. Some people are gaming people; some people are helper people. It becomes one of the four major parts of their life.

Todd: At the food bank, I told this young woman, why do we keep doing this to ourselves every week? And she says, because we don't want to lose our status. It's a real status, and I already think I'm better than Joe over here because of it. Now, it feels very fun to help people. It's fun to be part of a charity. It's fun to be part of a do-good gang, right? And you do get when you leave a volunteer thing, you feel good.

Joe: So, can we talk about the primitive side of why it feels good to help other people? There is a function in our brain that actually makes us feel high. You say the word helpers high. I think people might have glossed over that in their minds. We're going to take everybody who worked at the soup kitchen with you and we're going to grab them into our time machine and rewind back to caveman days. Those same people who are helping people in a soup kitchen are the same people during the ancient man's era coming back with a basket of fruit to give to the people who are too sick to hunt. This goes back that far, and it is wired so hard into us. The helpers high is not a new trendy invention to make hipsters feel like their lives are full. When somebody gets helpers high, the chemicals at play are oxytocin, serotonin, and dopamine. Those are the trifecta for feeling connected and love. When somebody looks like they are on a high because they are helping people, they are literally getting the hormones that would make you high. It's a fundamental need of humans to connect with each other and to help each other.

Todd: You know what? This kind of jots my memory. I'm thinking about AA and alcohol anonymous. Isn't that part of the program is that you have to help other people get clean and you try to turn your life over to that cause?

Joe: Right, it reminds you of your values. If you help somebody learn something or stay diligent to something you want as well, it helps you too. And on top of that, you also get helpers high. Have you heard of something called mirror neurons?

Todd:  Mirror neurons? No.

Joe: A mirror neuron is a type of brain cell that reacts when somebody else does something. So if we were just self-focused in our brains, like if our brains were built to just care about ourselves, a regular neuron would just go at it alone. A mirror neuron is something that reacts when you see somebody else going through it. If somebody else yawns and you yawn, that is a mirror neuron doing that. You didn't need to yawn. You didn't even feel tired. It's a mirror neuron sparking and saying, oh, yeah sure, let's yawn too. It’s an interesting fluke of humanity. It puts you in other people's positions. The mirror neuron sparks when it sees something that is like us. We relate to somebody's activity. We relate to somebody hungry. We relate to somebody who is in the throes of addiction. We relate to somebody doing good. We relate to them doing bad because our mirror neurons are sparking and showing us what that would feel like to be in their position. And then when we help them, we see the result. We see them being happier, we see them getting what they need. We see them succeeding. We see somebody passing a ball and those mirror neurons spark and we get dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin. Front to back, our brains are set up to help each other and live each other's experiences. And if you have managed to close yourself off, it takes less than a minute to reconnect them. And all they have to do is start helping somebody who is less fortunate in a direct way. Those neurons suddenly connect again, and you forget years of callusing.

Todd: Isn’t that crazy? That's how powerful it is. Have you heard this woman named Joyce

Gilchrist?

Joe: Who's that?

Todd: She was a scientist out of Houston, Texas but she moved and worked out of the Oklahoma City Police Department. She was the scientist that did all the DNA testing. And she had her finger on about 3,000 cases. She did this for 21 years, and she had the nickname of black magic because she was able to get evidence and get people convicted. She was an absolutely loaded gun to explain DNA evidence to juries and persuade them to have people sentenced to death.

Joe: So she's like the real-life CSI.  

Todd: Exactly. And then going and seeing it all the way through. She was a hero because she put so many people away. It turned out that she was very corrupt. It turned out that a lot of these people, over 12, were executed; it came out later that the evidence was tampered with; it wasn't correct. So she killed 12 innocent people. And I think this is a case of severe extreme helpers high.

Joe: That is crazy.

Todd: In the interviews I saw with her, she was in no way apologetic for her mistakes. I think she should have been brought up on serial killer charges. She said that she was being fired not because she killed 12 innocent people but because of a sexual harassment thing in retaliation for that. She got dismissed and ended up dying young, and I think it was in her 50s from cancer, but she was unapologetic to the end.

Joe: I have heard cases of mercy doctors who will kill patients, and I have heard cases of people who'll tamper with evidence. This woman sounds to me like a nut job. It sounds crazy. I'm starting to wonder like maybe these people are doing it because they feel like the person they're tampering with deserves it. Maybe in those 12 cases, she actually believed they had done the crime and was like, well, I'm just going to push the evidence further to make sure the jury knows…even though she is making it up. Now, as we talk about helpers high, we can't actually discuss helping other people without mentioning Mother Teresa.

Todd: What’s the fun fact you told me about Mother Teresa?

Joe: She would tell people things that sounded like they were sympathetic about suffering. There was a video where she told a cancer patient that pain means Jesus is near you. And that suffering is being part of being Godly, part of life. Now, that sounds rational to me. That sounds like something that you would tell somebody who's going through a great amount of pain. But there are so many quotes, like, there's a Cracked writer who pointed out that if you actually read what she said and what she wrote, she thought that it was poor people’s lot to suffer and that it was Godly for them to go through what they're going through. I think that is the worst mentality humanly possible. Mother Teresa, bless her for doing the work she did, but the mentality of poor people deserve their suffering because that's what God has dulled to them; that is the most corrupt way of taking helpers high and twisting it badly. I can't think of a worse mindset for that.

Todd: My volunteerism has been in three places. It's been in church, the food bank, and the Humane Society. But I noticed that about half of the volunteers usually have an arrogance about them and when I say that, sometimes they have attitude towards whoever they're helping. In the Humane Society, it was never towards the animals or animal lovers, but they get kind of snooty towards the people adopting, almost like they think they're better. And then people in the food banking are just rude to people.

Joe: Right. They can get the high without actually being nice to the person. You don’t have to be a decent person to get high from drugs or from alcohol. You don't have to be a decent person to get high from helping others. You just have to do it and see the results. The mirror neuron sparks when you see somebody getting help; it doesn't spark because you're being nice. That actually could basically be the summary for our entire podcast…you see the worst that people are going through. If you work in an animal shelter, you see horrible abuse. If you work in a soup kitchen, you see people at their most needy. If you work in crime investigation, you start thinking everyone's a criminal because you see so much crime. I think that if you are helping to get helpers high, you have to be aware of the other side of that sword, which is you may start associating people with that low status. Whatever you are helping, you might start seeing everybody as that thing. So I was wondering if you wanted to talk about what we'll call the McDonald's of helpers high. It's donating to donation centers and dropping things into donation bins and organizations that should be helping people and just talking about where they sort of bleed out into helping their CEOs and their people too much. Like, how much actually goes back to the organization?

Todd: I was wondering about that. I always wondered if it's just more revenue for the uppers. How much cripples down? I know it's not 90 cents either, but is it even a penny to actually help somebody or something?

Joe: Well, we're going to set up a baseline here on how much the charity generally should be taking in. Like, how much they should be paying for their administration and overhead and how much should be going back to the people. There was an episode of Stuff You Should Know where the hosts on talked about what organizations do and don't need your money as far as the cashier dollar donations. At a grocery store or something, they will ask if you want to round up for a donation for something. There is a common understanding in the world of research that some medical problems are overfunded, and some are underfunded. The most glamorous and flashy types of cancer get way more money.

Todd: Breast cancer is the first that pops into my head.

Joe: Yeah, breast cancer is on there. In order, breast cancer gets about 500 million. Leukemia gets about 200 million. Pediatric cancers get about 200 million. They are common and also easy to market. It’s something where it has a good organization behind it and something where if you say it out loud, people feel a gut reaction and their mirror neurons fire. But if you look at like cervical cancer, for example, it only gets 5.4 million. That is a tiny fraction of what those other ones I just mentioned. And it's just as deadly.

Todd: Will you forget to Joe that diseases and stuff is a business, right? It is money coming in and then it deploys people trying to find cures and then people with treatments and it's a big business too.

Joe: It is, and that's what we're getting to. Some of these are run by organizations and some of those organizations, despite having tax exemptions, run like corporations. Cancers with no specific profit organization are kidney bladder, gastric, and esophageal. Those are all just as deadly. But yeah, it's one of those things where every time you're standing in line, and you hear the word cancer or children with cancer, you automatically reach for your wallet. I always hit the yes button on the dial. You get that little flash of feel-good for that. But you should also consider maybe saving all that for taxes at the end of the year and then look up a cancer that really needs help.

Todd: I'm reminded of Carnegie Rockefeller. They had kind of a duel; they were the richest men in the world when they were coming up, and they competed against each other who could make the most money before they died. But towards the end of their life, they had a value change, both of them. They got competitive on who could give away the most money. So, it wasn't that they were Saints. But they wanted to give away the most, and they got as much pleasure out of giving away millions and billions of dollars as they did making it.

Joe: Yeah, they learned that helpers high. I mean, imagine getting that dopamine kick of giving $1 back to children's leukemia but you do that every day in vast sums of money. So, let's talk about organizations that people donate to every day probably more frequently than dollar donations. When I have old clothes and old stuff around my house, I don't yard sell them usually because that takes time and effort. I usually take them to Goodwill or the Salvation Army. And then of course, some organizations just do cash donations like UNICEF and things like that. So let's talk about how much their CEOs make and what they get. We're going to start with the modest and work our way to the extreme, just because I want to make your eyes roll as hard as possible during this. If you're going to the Salvation Army, their CEO claimed one year that they only drew about 13k and compensation annually. That's not true. The Better Business Bureau reported that it was more like a hundred forty thousand, and like most of these donation systems, they file a 990 form which means they don't pay tax. It's basically like a church. So, if we're just talking compensation, 140k annually for a CEO does not sound extreme to me. Does that sound fair to you?

Todd: That seems fair. That actually seems low to me for CEO money. But it is a charity, so I'm guessing that there's a fringe benefit? That just seems super mellow to me because it's still a lot of responsibility. I'm not saying they should make 36k a year like someone who just got out of college.

Joe: That's my metric. For a CEO for that large of an organization, that actually seems kind of low. I mean, I hope he's taking it because he doesn't need the money. Now let's go to the March of Dimes. The March of Dimes CEO makes about 530K per year. They also file a 990, and according to their taxes, a quarter of everything donated goes directly back to management CEOs. That is actually kind of low. If 75% of your donations go back to the people, you're helping more than most. So March of Dimes is a good organization, they're doing it for the right cause, and their CEO makes a healthy salary.

Todd: I’m happy with that.

Joe: Now we get to UNICEF CEO. He's making a little bit more, 660k a year, after added compensations. The United Way CEO makes 1.6M. So, we are getting into the territory of being slightly overpaid. I'm going to say that if you are working as a charity CEO, you probably don't need that much.

Todd: For context, The Bank of America CEO today makes about 1.2M as the base salary. Their base salaries are in the same neighborhood as the United Way person; it's actually a little bit less.

Joe: Right, that is a perfect example. The United Way CEO makes more annually in salary than the CEO of a bank. So now we get into the most corrupt as far as satellite organizations go – the CEO of Goodwill. Goodwill is huge. The Goodwill CEO doesn't make as much as United Way. They make 750k a year. However, the way they spend their money and the way they help people is highly questionable in a lot of different regions. They spend 80% of their revenue on creating jobs, so they claim that they reach that goal. But they have such a nebulous sort of mission statement. Their mission statement is they help jobs and training for those who need it, but they also count their own employees as part of this. So they will oftentimes campaign that they're creating jobs for the underprivileged. But those jobs oftentimes mean people who are making minimum wage and are disabled in their stores.

Todd: The line is kind of blurry. It's not like their TV commercials show, not even close.

 Joe: And if you think that I am being vague about their mission statement because I'm trying to incriminate them, Goodwill themselves have campaigned against raising minimum wage because they want to keep their minimum wage workers lower so they can afford them. So like Goodwill acts like by their actions. It seems like they are trying to keep their overhead low so they can still count the charitable donations that they use to pay their own employees as charitable. That's not a charity. You're just running a business.

Todd: Not moral, but it's brilliant. And then not to mention, they get all their inventory given to them as well.

Joe: But it gets worse. They will use loopholes to keep paying their own people less. So, those quote-unquote underprivileged and disabled people that they give jobs, we've all seen the Goodwill commercials where it shows like somebody who is developmentally challenged or physically disabled. It shows they're working, they finally have a job, and they're so proud that they're employed. Think of that, but them only getting 22 cents an hour because that's what happened. They found a loophole in a law in Pennsylvania. It's called Section 14. C of the Fair Labor and Standards Act. This allowed them in Pennsylvania to pay Goodwill workers who were justified to not fully able to operate or do their job, you can pay them what's called a sub-minimum wage. I'm not making that up.

Todd: This sounds like a terrible thing.

Joe: It sounds evil. Goodwill in Pennsylvania was caught paying some of their disabled workers 22 cents an hour, 38 cents an hour, and 41 cents an hour, and that wasn't like 40 years ago. That was in 2011. Across the board, that whole system is dystopian.

Todd: It's criminal.

Joe: By the way, I don't want to end on such an extraordinarily downer note. I just want to point out that not all helping is equal. Like, don't go just drop off your old shoes at Goodwill. Because you're probably going to be helping an organization that really doesn't need your help. Instead, give directly to the people who need it. Go get that helpers high yourself and go donate to a soup kitchen and then work it for a while. Or if you just research the organization and donate to them regularly, that is a lot more impactful.

Todd: I want to tell you about one of the most beautiful miracles I've seen in my days. I was working as a volunteer at the Humane Society in South Seattle and being a salesperson, I had a process where I would see people with a certain kind of dog and I'd walk up to you. And so I saw this guy one time from s biker’s gang. I forget, which biker gang it was. He had his jacket on and was with his woman. They looked really tough and rough looking. But they had this small, little Chihuahua thing with them. We had a similar dog named Alice, so I brought the dog over to them. And the man barked at me and said that they were not getting any more dogs. I responded back with, I know; I just wanted to introduce you to Alice. They petted Alice, and then they left. However, hours later, they came back, and that big tough biker guy looked at me and asked if Alice was still there. I handed him Alice, and he said I can't leave this dog alone and he started to tear up. And I thought…that’s why I do this. It was still, to this day, the most beautiful thing I've ever seen…this big, tough guy crying over this little adopted dog.

Joe: Would you trade that experience for rounding up to the nearest dollar at the cashier's register?