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: 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:
What do different volunteering tasks look like, in terms of answers to all these questions? Here are examples:

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,
You can also say things like
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 on volunteer matching sites and apps, even those 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:
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.

In short, your good heart & desire isn't enough to help abroad. And if you feel emotionally fragile in any way, even if you have a great deal of professional experience that might be of value in another country, do not go overseas as a volunteer. Here's more about the realities of volunteering overseas.
 

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:

How to Find Volunteering Opportunities, a resource for adults who want to volunteer

Volunteering with Seniors

Family Volunteer - Volunteering by Families with Children

Advice for Finding Volunteer Activities During the Holidays

Online Volunteering (Virtual Volunteering)

Home-Based (in your own home) Volunteering Where Your Service is NOT via a Computer or the Internet (at least not to actually DO the volunteering service, but you may need to report your work online).

Volunteering with organizations that help animals and wildlife.

Using Your Business Skills for Good - Volunteering Your Business Management Skills, to help people starting or running small businesses / micro enterprises, to help people building businesses in high-poverty areas, and to help people entering or re-entering the work force.

Volunteering In Pursuit of a Medical, Veterinary or Social Work degree / career

Donating Things Instead of Cash or Time (In-Kind Contributions)

Volunteering To Help After Major Disasters.

How to Make a Difference Internationally/Globally/in Another Country Without Going Abroad

Tax credits for volunteering (for residents of the USA)

Ideas for Creating Your Own Volunteering Activity

Return to Index of resources for those that want to help others

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© 2018-2019 by Jayne Cravens, all rights reserved. No part of this material can be reproduced in print or in electronic form without express written permission by Jayne Cravens.

 
 

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