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Ally Program > Caring and Helping Within Limits

There are four common traps to look out for as an Ally. These are:

1. Enabling
Something you do to try to alleviate a person’s immediate problems which helps him/her avoid the real problem, and therefore, positive change. Example: writing a paper for a friend who is stressed out by his or her feelings of being discriminated against. 

2. Taking on Something Too Big
There are problems which are simply too big for an Ally to handle. A contact may come to you who really may need someone better equipped to handle helping him or her. Example: a person confides in you that she sometimes thinks about suicide; or, a person confides that he or she is intentionally getting sick as a means of controlling his or her body weight. 

3. Internalizing a Contact’s Issues
You translate a person’s problems into problems of your own. You are unable to keep in mind the boundaries between a person’s issues and your own. Example: a peer talks to you about a difficult situation at home and you become depressed about your own problems at home.

4. Incurring Legal Liability
In other words, “Trying to do surgery without a license.” You set yourself and/or your school up for a lawsuit because you tried to help someone whose problems have dramatic consequences. Example: you are trying to help a man who has told you that he has contemplated suicide and he later harms himself; his parents sue because you were “counseling” him when you should have referred him to a professional.