Love for Those Who Struggle
When I was in my teens and early twenties, I placed the entire weight of the world on my own shoulders. I campaigned day and night against war, injustice, and climate change, telling myself that if I did not fix everything, I was letting humanity down. I drove myself straight into burnout. It took hitting rock bottom to realize that taking on everyone else’s suffering is not compassion—it is an illusion of control. Real compassion starts by meeting the person right in front of you as an equal.
True compassion does not mean carrying the world’s problems or attacking an enemy group. It means meeting the person in front of you as an equal, listening to their reality, and acting with quiet integrity.
Erik Thor, Why I Care
What Helping Actually Means
The illusion of saving everyone
I used to think that if I saw somebody struggling, the answer was to step in and fix it for them. But the more you take someone else’s problem off their hands, the less capable they feel. They start believing they cannot manage on their own. Often, stepping in to fix things is more about soothing our own ego than truly helping them.
Superiority is not compassion
When I became vegan at fourteen, friends felt accused, as if my choice was an unspoken attack on them. Later, in politics, I caught myself using moral outrage to feel better than the other side. But true compassion never looks down on anyone. It requires sitting down with people you disagree with and actually listening.
What Happened When We Moved to Sweden
When my wife and I moved from Barcelona to Sweden, she had to navigate enormous changes in her business.
For months, selling and marketing under new conditions was genuinely hard. When she opened up about her stress, I felt helpless. I could not run her business for her, so I felt useless and started problem-solving—giving unsolicited advice, telling her what she should do, and criticizing her strategy. It was the worst thing I could have done.
Who was I to tell her how to run her business? Most of the time, the only thing she needed from me was to listen: to sit with her through the hard moments, feel the difficulty with her, and trust that she had the strength to figure it out herself.
The moment I stopped trying to solve her problem and simply heard her, she became a whole human being to me again. Her struggle reminded me why I fell in love with her in the first place: her resilience, her dedication, and how much she is willing to struggle for the things she loves.
“When my son struggles with writing, that is not a reason to grab the pen and write it for him. It is a reason to sit down next to him, listen, and encourage him while he works it out himself with love and care.”
Micro-test quiz with 10 questions
Love For Those Who Struggle Match
Check off statements above to calculate your match score.
Practical Compassion Worksheet
Reflect on your caretaking patterns, learn to hold space for others without burning out, and discover how to offer grounded support to those who are struggling.
Compassion Development Guide
Reflection & Practice
Caring Without Overstepping
Where in your life are you currently carrying emotional burdens or responsibilities that do not belong to you? What is one practical, grounded act of kindness or listening you can offer to someone in front of you today without trying to fix them?
Continue Your Journey
Take the Eight Forms of Love Test
See how your compassion for those who struggle balances with your care for your own energy and future.
Explore the Book: Why I Care
Read how I recovered from burnout, dropped moral superiority, and learned what it really means to help someone.
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