The Age of Information brings with it extraordinary demands upon our abilities to “process” information. Not only are the information inputs of human experience constantly changing, they are also expanding exponentially. This means that many people become helpees because they are overwhelmed by the flood of information in their lives. For many, this feeling of being overwhelmed is the very reason that they seek help in the first place. Within helping, helpees “process” the information that they are unable to “process” outside of helping.

HELPEE PROCESSING

Helpee “processing” is a personal or intrapersonal process. The helpee relates to personally relevant experiences and transforms these human experiences into human actions for human purposes. Intrapersonal processing involves a basic set of skills: exploring human experience, understanding human goals, and acting upon programs to achieve the goals. Later on we may learn to teach the helpees systematic intrapersonal processing skills. For now, as helpers, we will learn interpersonal processing skills or helping skills to facilitate the helpees movement through these phases of intrapersonal processing—exploring, understanding and acting.

PHASES OF INTRAPERSONAL PROCESSING