Why should you trust the information on this web page?
Volunteering to Address Your Own Mental
Health
(Depression, Loneliness, Anxiety, etc.)
credits and disclaimer
and Why should you trust the information
on this web page?
I am not a doctor. I have very little training in dealing with
people with mental health issues. None of the following is professional
medical advice.
This advice on this page is not meant to be a substitute for advice or
treatment from a mental health professional or medical doctor.
If you are depressed, including feeling suicidal, please contact your
doctor, if you have such, or contact the National Suicide Hotline at
1-800-273-8255, or go to Google or Bing and type in the name of your
county and state and these words: mental health services. Call 911
if you are feeling like you want to or should harm yourself. Look on the
county health department web site, if you are in the USA, and follow their
guidelines for seeking mental health services. There are professionals and
highly-trained volunteers out there that can help you - please seek their
help, and if someone doesn't help you, try someone else. Keep trying.
You're worth it. You matter.
There are many people that have high hopes that volunteering for a
"good cause" can help them address their own mental health issues -
depression, loneliness, even feelings of suicide. And, absolutely, social
interactions and accomplishments that can come from volunteering can help
improve a person's mental health. alleviating feelings of loneliness and
helplessness, and helping to address social anxieties.
HOWEVER, volunteering activities can also can augment negative
feelings. Interacting with humans is, largely, a positive experience, but
when it's not, it can make feelings of depression even worse.
What I'm trying to do with this page is offer realistic
advice to help someone who wants to volunteer and has hopes that it will
help them overcome negative feelings. I'm trying to help you have an
overall good, rather than overall frustrating, experience when trying to
volunteering. I'm not trying to discourage you from trying to volunteer -
I am trying help you have realistic expectations for volunteering and to
avoid an experience that will make you feel worse instead of better.
I see posts like this all over various online discussion groups:
I'm sad and bored and need a change in my life. I feel like I have
no direction. I need to reconnect to humanity and feel like I have a
purpose. I’m lonely and I'm depressed. I think I need to immerse myself
in volunteering and make a difference so I can feel valued. I don't have
any experience, but I have a really good heart, I'm a hard worker, and I
also really need this. I want to feel good. I want to feel joy. I want
to see that my work has truly helped someone. I want my volunteering to
be dealing with something truly important, addressing a serious problem.
I want a very immersive situation so I'm deeply connected with the
people I am working with, and where I can see a difference being
made. It would be less anxiety-provoking if I don’t have to make too
many of my own decisions. Ideally, it needs to be something with an
atmosphere where there are lots of good people who would be supportive
of my mental health and accommodate me, because I have social anxiety
and trouble interacting with people. I also need it to be something
where, if I really do not feel like showing up, I don't have to.
Let me be frank: this kind of exact volunteering experience that this
person is asking for does not exist. This is too much, too exact, of an
experience for any human being to be able to produce for another human
being. Volunteering can help your own health, no question, but
volunteering has rarely been created specifically for that. Of course
organizations want you to have a good experience as a volunteer - but they
also aren't therapists and they haven't set up their volunteering as
therapy - volunteering set up as therapy requires expertise, resources and
constant supervision that most nonprofits, NGOs and charities do NOT
have, and an emphasis on such would, in fact, take away from
their primary mission of helping people experiencing homelessness or
domestic violence, or promoting and celebrating the arts, or cleaning up a
watershed, or accommodating lost, abandoned and surrendered animals,
or supporting small-scale family farmers, and on and on.
Absolutely, volunteering can positively affect a volunteer's mental
health. Volunteering can help a person meet other people, develop a new
social circle, introduce you to new activities - heck, you may meet the
person you want to marry via volunteering. But volunteering can also be a
LOT like dating: it may take spending time with a lot of different people,
in various different places, before you find one that fits you. You also
have to accept that, after months or even years of a good experience with
an organization, the experience may turn sour and it has to end. You need
to know, up front, that a volunteering role may not give you a
sense of purpose and fulfillment. It may or may not increase your
self-confidence. It may or may not make you feel like a superhero. You may
or may not see the difference you have made as a volunteer in someone's
life. Volunteering may be stressful and frustrating. You may walk away
from trying to volunteer feeling a sense of failure rather than
accomplishment.
There is no guarantee you are going to have the experience depicted on
the volunteer recruitment materials. Know and accept this as you begin
searching for volunteering roles and as you start a role. Know that
there are no guarantees regarding how volunteering might make
you feel. And also go into your volunteering search knowing that, if
you are having a frustrating experience, you can resign your role and try
somewhere else - that you are always in control of what your
volunteering activities are.
I am a consultant and researcher and the focus of my work is on the
organizations that engage volunteers, rather than volunteers themselves.
But I try to stay in tune to what people are saying about volunteering.
And I volunteer myself. And, absolutely, I have volunteered at some very
low points in my life as a way to cope, but I have done so knowing I
must be able to make the commitment required to the organization and
that what is most important to the organization I'm going to help is
what I CAN do, not my limitations. I have volunteered in these
instances knowing that I must be emotionally, mentally and physically
ready for the assignment and if there is any self-doubt about my
capabilities in those regards, I owe it to the organization and those
they serve NOT to volunteer. I have backed out of a
volunteering experience I have signed up for, realizing the expectations
of volunteers was too great for me.
If you can dial back your expectations regarding what volunteering will
give you, if you can be realistic, and if you can be honest about your
limitations. you CAN find a good match for your volunteering interests and
it can lead to a positive experience for you.
Programs will expect that you have these qualities:
- Cooperation: The ability to work well with others, including people
very different from yourself
- Sensitivity: An awareness and appreciation of other people's
feelings, needs and perspectives
- Commitment to learning: You are there to learn from others,
including other volunteers
- Adaptability: The ability to adjust to new situations, including
those that are quite foreign to you
When volunteering, you need to be prepared to be bored, to be stressed, to
be doing activities that aren't really all that interesting, etc.
You need to know what it is you really want out of volunteering. Here
are some questions to ask yourself:
- Would you rather be outdoors most of the time while volunteering, or
would you prefer to be indoors?
- Would you rather be physically active most of the time while
volunteering (walking a lot, picking up things, using hand tools, etc.)
or be stationary, sitting down, in one place?
- Would you like to talk and interact with people while volunteering,
including answering the phone or email, or would you prefer to be by
yourself, doing tasks that doesn't require much interaction with others?
- Would you like, as a volunteer, to work in a group as part of a team,
or would you prefer to work mostly alone?
- Would you like to help a group at once or work to help one-on-one with
someone as a volunteer?
- If you would be willing to be a part of a group, would you like to
lead a group or be lead in a group?
- Would you like to try just one volunteering activity, once, just one
day, and decide at the end, or later, if you want to sign up again to
help, or are you ready to make a more long-term commitment of, saying,
showing up once a week for a month?
What do different volunteering tasks look like, in terms of answers to
all these questions? Here are examples:
- There are volunteering tasks with your state department of fish and
wildlife or your state parks department that might allow you to be
outdoors, by yourself, for several hours, hiking to a certain point to
check on a bird habitat, or to put a tag on something - your only
interaction with others would be during your training and with whomever
the project leader is before and after the task. Those same agencies can
have volunteering activities where you work as part of a team, going out
to check on wildlife or fish, or fixing up a trail.
- A nonprofit may organize cleanups of beaches, parks or other public
natural sites near you. You sign up to participate on their web site.
You may be asked to dress a certain way and bring work gloves. You will
be volunteering with many other people, but you don't have to interact
much with any other volunteers if you don't wish to: you get your
instructions at the start of the morning or afternoon and then go out
and pick up trash, you return your full trash bag at the end of the
morning or afternoon and you go home - and never have to volunteer again
if you don't want to, or you can try again whenever you feel motivated
to. There are tree-planting groups that organize similar, one-time gigs
for volunteers.
- A nonprofit theater or dance company would probably have opportunities
where you would be indoors the entire time, scanning or tearing tickets,
or handing out playbills to people, or showing people to their seats,
and when the play begins, you can stay and watch the show. You can
volunteer just once, for one show, and only if you like it, you can sign
up to usher at another show.
- There are nonprofit farmer's markets where you can sit or stand at a
table the evening before the market and help put together the boxes of
fresh produce they hand out weekly to subscribers. You can be as
talkative or as quiet as you wish with the other volunteers. That same
farmer's market may have an opportunity for you to be at the market and
help hand out these boxes to subscribers, which requires a lot of social
interaction, but doesn't require you handle any money or make any big
decisions.
- There are charity walks and runs meant to raise money for various
causes. The nonprofits that organize welcome volunteers to prepare
participant packets, help set up before race day, help tear down after
race day, hand out water, help with registration, etc.
- There are nonprofits that need a volunteer to sit at a computer by
themselves for a few hours over a few days and type in data from paper
surveys, address changes, paper applications, etc. , or will scan photos
or documents from their archives and then tag those scans with
appropriate keywords so that they are easily searchable/findable, or
will transcribe scanned documents.
- There are nonprofits that welcome online volunteers to use their own
computers, at home, to tag photos, transcribe scanned documents, or find
and compile information online. This is called virtual
volunteering.
These volunteering activities are relatively simple and low-stress. They
don't require much emotional investment on your part. They do require you
to do the best you can, to follow the rules, to attend some training, to
be on time, to work the shift you've signed up for, to be committed to
doing quality work and to talk with at least the staff of the organization
you are going to help - ALL volunteering assignments require this. These
are all good volunteering opportunities to experience before you commit to
something more emotionally-intensive, like tutoring a student, mentoring
someone, leading a project, being a scout leader, organizing an event,
helping at a domestic violence shelter, working with children, even
helping with animals.
Here's another example of what two different volunteering roles can look
like that both support a similar cause - it's a personal example of my
own:
I wanted to volunteer in some way to help
people experiencing homelessness, but I am very intimidated at the idea of
dealing with people experiencing serious, obvious mental health issues,
something that is very common among many people who are homeless. I am
also nervous about being around homeless men. I read about volunteering at
drop-in shelters for homeless people, where anyone can show up and get a
bed for the night - these tend to be set up for cold weather and are
called temporary shelters. But the requirements were explicit about being
able to assess crisis situations and knowing when it might be necessary to
call law enforcement, enforcing rules regarding no drug use or no
disruptive behavior, etc. I know that these incidents are rare, but even
rarely, it's more than I want to deal with. Then I read about an overnight
shelter for homeless families - usually one parent with children - at a
church within walking distance of my house. This shelter happens via a
nonprofit that screens the families, puts them into an organized, daily
program to help them with the process to get into permanent housing, helps
connect them to medical care, etc. For the overnight shelter near my
house, the church hosts just three families. All I would have to do as an
overnight volunteer is show up an hour before bedtime/lights out, meet the
families, turn off the lights and lock the doors at lights out, sleep on a
cot in the hallway outside the church sanctuary - each family is in its
own room within the fellowship hall and they know the rules regarding
lights out and quiet hours - and get up in the morning at a particular
time, knock on the doors to remind the families they needed to be up, and
then make sure the families leave by a certain time and lock the door as I
left. Another volunteer would be there too, sleeping in a different part
of the fellowship hall. This volunteering involved just one hour of
interaction with the clients, I could lay in my cot and play on my
computer far into the night if I felt like it (as long as the lights stay
out and I am silent), and the requirements of the shelter have been
well-communicated to the families. 90% of my volunteering for this
organization would be sleeping. I could volunteer just once for an
overnight shift and never volunteer again. I've done it twice now, and
plan on doing it again. I never dreamed I would find a volunteering
opportunity that mostly involved me walking a block from my house and
sleeping overnight somewhere.
You also need to think about when you will make yourself available for
volunteering. Are you going to make time for volunteering on certain week
day mornings? Just one evening a week? Just one Saturday every month? You
need to have this time reserved on your calendar so that you can look for
a volunteering activity that suits your schedule.
You also need to think about how you are going to get to and from a
volunteering task. Do you have a car? Do you need something near mass
transit? Do you need something you can walk to? Volunteer involving
organizations expect you to handle all transportation to and from the work
site yourself - the most they can provide might be advice on where to
park. Reliable transportation is something you need to be prepared to
arrange and conduct yourself - and it needs to get you to a shift on time!
Volunteering can help you build your social skills, feel less lonely,
and get a sense of accomplishment, absolutely. And it's absolutely
appropriate, on a volunteer application, to say what you want out of your
volunteering experience, such as,
- I think this activity sounds fun.
- I think this task would be a great way to interact with other
people and socialize a bit.
- I love the outdoors and would like to combine hiking with doing
something your agency needs.
- I think this activity would be interesting and I'm looking for
interesting things to do in my spare time.
- I'm new to the area and looking to get to know more places and
people.
- I feel like I need to get out more, and this activity looks worth
getting out for.
You can also say things like
- I prefer volunteering that isn't very physically challenging.
- I'm limited in how much I can lift, how far I can walk, etc.
- I'd like a low-stress volunteering activity, at least at first,
and this task sounds appropriate.
- I've never done anything like this before and I think I'll need a
lot of guidance and support.
- I like being solitary when I volunteer - I'm not keen on
interacting a lot with the public.
- I prefer being part of a team / I prefer working alone.
- I prefer not to have a high-responsibility, essential
volunteering role because, sometimes, I may not be able to attend a
meeting or event.
All of note your limits without being overly demanding to the
organization and without disclosing your health issues, which are private.
If you need an accommodation because of a disability, be clear about what
that accommodation might need to be (that you bring your own chair to work
in? That you have a break every 45 minutes - again, you do not have to say
WHY). But MOST volunteer-involving organizations don't want to read
on a volunteer application under "motivations" that an applicant expects
their experience to help lead them to their future spouse or help them
overcome depression or a mental illness. They don't want to read, "I
haven't felt joy in years and I think this experience will help me
experience joy again" or "I feel like a failure and I want volunteering to
help me not feel that way." These are very high, intimidating expectations
for an organization to try to meet for volunteers, and most will
balk.
I'll have more information on where to find opportunities later on this
page. But first:
Caution regarding volunteering with animals.
While it might sound like fun to work around animals every day, people
who volunteer at animal shelters and animal rescues face particularly
stressful circumstances that can place them at risk for depression,
anxiety and even suicide, according to research presented at the annual
convention of the American Psychological Association. Faced with animal
suffering and death on a routine basis, as well as a constant struggle for
resources to help animals, can lead to burnout, compassion fatigue and
mental health issues.
Here's
more at this article about how volunteering or paid work with animals
can hurt your mental health.
How to protect yourself emotionally regarding
while volunteering
Volunteering can be invigorating, but it can also be draining,
especially when you are doing advocacy-related work for a cause you
believe in deeply.
This
resource from the Malala Fund especially for female activists, from
the Malala Fund, is outstanding.
What if you don't get chosen for a volunteering
position?
Don't be frustrated if you fill out an application to volunteer and
never hear back from the organization. Or you email a program about
volunteering and never hear back. I'm sorry to say that many organizations
do a poor job of responding to people that want to volunteer. It's the
number on complaint by people that try to volunteer, even via sites like
VolunteerMatch,
where there are thousands of volunteering opportunities posted by
organizations.
Keep signing up for volunteering, keep attending orientations, and keep
trying! Remember earlier when I said finding a volunteering opportunity
was a lot like finding a date? It's true: you will probably have to try
several times before you end up in a volunteering "relationship."
What if you fail as a volunteer?
Failure can be such a bad feeling. It's the feeling I absolutely hate
the most.
There is every possibility that, for whatever reason, when you sign up
to volunteer, you may not finish the task, you may make a mistake, you may
not do the quality work you wanted to do, you may feel like the other
volunteers know what they are doing and you don't, and you may feel like
you let someone down in the course of your volunteering. You may feel like
other volunteers have done far better than you. And any of that can give
you a sense of failure.
There are no guarantees that you won't fail in some way in trying to
volunteer and that you won't disappoint someone in the course of your
volunteering. I have failed in many volunteering tasks - and professional
tasks. And personal endeavors. But I know and accept it's a possibility.
You need to know failure is a possibility when you try anything.
But don't let the mere idea of failure keep you from trying anything,
volunteering or otherwise.
It's okay to quit a volunteering assignment. It's okay to say:
- I don't think I'm appropriate for this volunteering role.
- I think you should find someone else for this task - it's really
not for me.
- I thought I had more time for volunteering than I really do have.
- I thought I could do these tasks but, in fact, I can't.
- This task is much more stressful than I anticipated and I really
don't want to continue to do it.
- I need much more support and guidance in this role than you could
probably provide me.
- My health is affecting my abilities to volunteer, so I'm going to
need to take a break/quit volunteering.
You can apologize if you feel you should. Any of those statements can
be proceeded by or followed by, "I'm sorry," if you feel that's in
order.
Know that most organizations understand that, sometimes, volunteering
just doesn't work out for someone. Most organizations understand that you
may not realize something isn't appropriate until you have tried it out.
Most organizations are going to be sympathetic to any of the
aforementioned statements, and many may work with you to find a different
assignment or role more appropriate to you. Most organizations are going
to have no hard feelings about your leaving under any of these
circumstances.
If you find an organization that's insensitive to your statement about
why volunteering isn't working out for you, that doesn't seem to be very
understanding, then consider it a good thing for you to be leaving.
And remember that their insensitivity isn't your responsibility. If what
an organization says to you regarding your attempt at volunteering is
especially troubling to you, talk with your doctor or therapist about how
to handle your feelings and stress and anxiety, even anger, from this
perception.
Here is explicit advice for volunteers on
how
to complain. There are times when I’ve been a volunteer and I
haven’t felt valued, I’ve felt ignored by the person that’s supposed to be
supporting me, I was left to do all the work while the lead volunteer was
a no-show, I was shut down when I tried to point out a problem or make a
suggestion, etc. Sometimes, you need to complain.
This
resource provides details on how to do that and how to decide if
it's worth staying at an organization as a volunteer or not.
Remember: you have a right to quit as a volunteer, at any time. You
have a right to be safe, to not be harassed, not to be harmed, not to be
put into a situation where you feel harmed, not to be exploited, etc. But
you do not have a right to be engaged as a volunteer. You have no
right to have a volunteering experience that you love. An organization can
dismiss a volunteer for any reason – or no reason at all. An organization
is under no legal obligation to provide terrific volunteering experiences
– or to involve volunteers at all. Some organizations value the input of
volunteers very much, and others see volunteers as merely people willing
to work for free and save the organization money. The organization may see
dismissing you as a volunteer far easier than dealing with your complaint.
Again, if what an organization says to you regarding your attempt at
volunteering is especially troubling to you, talk with your doctor or
therapist about how to handle your feelings and stress from this
perception.
What if I want to go overseas and volunteer?
I'm going to give a big NOPE on this. You must be able to handle
stressful situations if you go overseas just to travel, let alone to also
volunteer. Planes get delayed. Transportation to and from an airport may
fall through. Scammers try to target travelers, including aid workers,
specifically. Clean bathrooms may be difficult to find. Bathrooms with
flushing, Western-style, or clean, toilets may be hard to find. In most
countries, animals - whether dogs and cats or wildlife - are not treated
as humanely as they are in, say, the USA, and you are going to see this
mistreatment first hand. When you travel to a country with more poverty
than what you have seen in your own country, you are going to see
standards of living that may seem especially cruel to you. In many
cultures, the idea of time may be treated quite differently - they may not
start meetings or events at the time they have said it would. Local people
may not like to make eye contact with you, or may not have seen many
people of your particular height, weight, skin color or hair color and
they may stare at you.
Put on top of all that the very real commitments you make when you
volunteer overseas and the much higher expectations of international
volunteers: you MUST show up, you MUST do the work you have signed up for
and you are expected to jump right into the work. And the priority are the
clients - the people, even the animals, that are to be helped - not the
foreign volunteers and their feelings. The children you are working with
may have an emotional meltdown, the parents of those children may become
emotional and demanding, people in the community where you are working may
become distressed because of a misunderstanding and target you with their
frustrations... and you are expected to know what to do in those
situations to diffuse emotions.
When you are ready to start looking for
volunteering that fits your needs:
Any of these pages below, also on this web site, can help you:
Home page for those that want to help
