This is an excerpt from a comment on a Quora post from last year, and I haven’t stopped thinking about it since I read it:
Honestly, volunteering was really bad for my mental health.
The thing was, the bosses all thought they were doing my a favour by letting me work with them. They appreciated their other volunteers but they didn’t really want a depressed and disabled person working with them. They didn’t see it as me giving up my time to support a charity I cared about – they saw it as them ‘finding me something to do’, that I needed this in order to fill my time, that they were kind to let me.
I didn’t need to fill my time. Filling my time has never been an issue for me. I just wanted to help others, to contribute to a cause I cared about…
I’m very shy and not a natural chatter. I also had limited life experiences so I had nothing to contribute to most of their conversations… I’d been there 4 months before I discovered there was a weekly trip to the pub which everyone else went to but which I had never been told about. I just happened to be within earshot when it was explained to someone else on his first day…
My mental health got worse and worse. I felt humiliated… I quit in the end because I couldn’t take it anymore… Volunteering makes me feel depressed, anxious, worthless and a total freak. I wouldn’t do it again. I will happily donate money or possessions but I don’t want to be made to feel that way ever again… This probably isn’t the sort of reply you’re looking for and I know that a lot of people find volunteering a really valuable and helpful experience but I thought maybe it was important to hear all points of view?
This should give pause to every person who works with volunteers, and every person who promotes volunteering. This is why I have so many cautions regarding people who tout volunteering as a great way for a person to improve their mental health issues – the reality is, volunteering, in the wrong circumstances, can make mental health issues WORSE.
I wrote about this before, back in 2019, quoting people who were posting online looking for volunteering and had wildly unrealistic expectations about how volunteering might help them, as well as about their abilities to step into a volunteering role, especially one abroad. And as you see at the end of this blog, I take protecting the mental health of volunteers very seriously. We need to not only make sure we aren’t being unrealistic about what volunteering can do positively for a volunteer’s mental health, but also make sure we are better ensuring volunteers’ mental and emotional safety while volunteering.
Let’s be realistic about volunteering and mental health. Otherwise, we’re going to turn more people off to volunteering – and that’s not helpful for anyone.
Also see:
- Detailed advice specifically for people seeking volunteering as a way to alleviate loneliness and mild depression.
- Do your volunteers feel psychologically safe?
- How are you supporting the mental health needs of your volunteers?
- Being emotionally ready to volunteer – or to continue volunteering.
- Dealing with customers with diminished mental capacities
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I am sso glad to read this because I just feel weird about my volunteer role in peer mental health. I was told I would make a great support group leader, and I wanted to give back, so I went through the training. I was told I was doing well at it and I gave each meeting 100%.
I volunteered leading groups for a full year and in that time, my co-facilitator bailed after asking me take over the group just for a while until he figured out whether or not he wanted to sign their agreement to come to quarterly facilitator meetings in order to remain a volunteer.
He never returned and the people who run the organization never told me he was not retuning.
Eventually, they sent a long-time volunteer to help me out. He ended up not making it to half the groups he was responsible for leading, Because I was already going to be there as co-facilitator, it was just easy enough for me to say I would do it. It made it hard for me to say No when I was already going to be there.
Then I was getting all kinds of calls from another long-time volunteer to take over his group – because I had done it before. Sometimes he would even hound me. As I thought, he was trying to step away from his role – and eventually did, but should have done it sooner. I took on one too many of his groups as well.
Last May, I had a bad relapse with depression and was having migraines from weather changes. I was also beginning to experience burnout and vicarious trauma, so I told them I needed to take a step back. I am thinking now I may have been overly expressive about it in my email because by the time I did, I had to tell them what was the last straw for me – the bad location was one of them with the cops being all over the place looking for someone.
I took some months off while dealing with a severe health issue that also cropped up. Eventually, I was able to come back as a group member and just participate.
I went to their facilitator meeting because they still have me on the list. I told them I was ready to lead some groups, but not every week. They have yet to put me on the schedule and it’s been quite a while.
As well, my elderly narcissistic mother, who attends their “family and friends” support group, used things said in her support group (within the same organization) against me during an argument. She has it that I am the personality disordered one and the group tells her all these things, and she throws them in my face.
I called the president of the organization to tell her there were some pretty stigmatizing things being said in that group and how my mother was weaponizing the group against me.
No one spoke to her about her behavior and she continues to do it.
I have told them a few times that I am ready to take a volunteer shift and they just ignore me. I wonder if they listen to my mother via her group facilitator and then my going into a depression last Spring has them deciding I’m unstable. And I may be at times due to the stress of caring for a verbally abusive elderly mother. But I never was unstable while leading a group.
Either way, the whole thing has left me with a weird vibe, to say the least. I just feel weird about going to meetings and wondering if I am going to volunteer for them or not. Part of me doesn’t want to push it if it’s going this way.
In a way, it doesn’t really matter, because I see this organization as dysfunctional. I probably pointed out some real issues they don’t want to deal with – and the fact that they basically weren’t looking after my mental health as a volunteer, either.
I am glad to have read that woman’s experience of feeling worse psychologically as a result of volunteering, rather than better – and feeing humiliated.
By now I am finding that joining people for social and intellectual activities makes more sense and I feel I will do better to make long-term supportive friends doing things that have nothing to do with psychiatric issues.
In fact, I think they have a policy not to acknowledge one another if they see each other out at stores and I watched one of the leaders in the organization walk right by me and not even look me in the eye. That was weird and I’m not comfortable with that either.
Sometimes, it’s best to walk away from a relationship that’s no longer working – and that can include a volunteering relationship. It sounds like it’s time to find another outlet for your volunteering.
Thank you so much for sharing.