Thank You, Zach (The Zach Effect) The First Autobiography of Daniel Soto

Bonus: How to Help

This is a bonus chapter called How to Help. Yes, donating money to those helpful websites is excellent to help and the same thing as sharing someone every chapter of my life. This chapter is going to be different with a bit of me and my idol. If you are wondering how to help someone differently, then this chapter is perfect for you. I'm going to present you with Bobby, a fictional character. (No, I do not know anyone's name, Bobby. If your name is Bobby, this story is not about you nor about someone you know that their name is Bobby. If you have a pet name Bobby, this is also not a story of your pet).

Now, let's say Bobby is a happy person and we are all friends with him. He always likes to help people smile on his face, and he always makes sure everyone is comfortable around him. Let's say that one day we saw Bobby feeling sad a bit, but he quickly turns to a smiley face so that everyone is happy around him. We know something is wrong, so we approach him and ask him why he is sad. He secretly replies that his grandfather just passed away. Now, I know what you are thinking. He is allowed to feel sad about his grandpa's death, but we try to cheer him up by reminding him of his grandfather's great memories. The next day, he saw him feel sad. Again, it is okay to feel sad, and we let him be. His sadness continues every day until we start seeing him not being able to eat appropriately nor sleeping well. You may think how someone can feel sad about their grandfather's death has returned into physical and mental sickness. Well, we do not know if Bobby has been collecting a bunch of sadness throughout his life (like I did), nor we know if he was pretty close to his grandfather. So, we decide to help him, but how.

Should we ask him if he wants help? That is not a bad idea, to be honest, but let's say we helped him anyways. We start looking for a professional psychologist or psychiatrist (both are two different professionals, but to make this story a little bit short, we look for a psychologist). We start searching on the beautiful thing called the internet to a psychologist near us until we found one. How can we bring Bobby to see the psychologist? Forcing him? No, never do that because I will explain that later. Let's say we know where Bobby lives, and we surprise him by texting him that we are outside of his place. Let's say that he approaches our vehicle and asks us what we are doing, and we tell him that we want to take him to a party. Now, we know we are not going to take him to a party, we are actually taking him to a psychologist, but if we say we are taking him a psychologist, he probably will not come to us, so we lie to him a bit about it. Now, Bobby is inside our car. He is feeling excited about this party that we are going to until he sees that we are approaching a psychology center and not a party. He probably will feel strange, betrayed, and worried, but that is okay. Should we drop him off at the psychology center and then pick him up an hour after his appointment ends without coming with him nor giving him an explanation? Why are we there? No, because he felt scared to go in and worried too, and to be honest, when we feel worried or scares to do something new, we would like someone to come with us to feel less scared.

We go inside this psychology center with him until we let him talk to a psychologist privately. While we are walking with Bobby inside the building, we tell him that we are here to help him, and if he does not like that particular psychologist, we will look for someone new. While we wait for his appointment to finishing, we remain in the waiting area until he comes out. Then, we start asking how that went without crossing any boundaries. If he wants to share it, he will share it, but if he does not say anything, then let him be. Then, we ask him when is the next appointment and tell us it is tomorrow. So, we come back to his place to pick him up, take him to his appointment again, and wait for his appointment to be finished in the waiting area. If we are busy with our lives that we cannot take him to see the psychologist, we ask his family or other friends to do it for us. Let's say Bobby does not have that kind of health insurance to pay for his appointment, but we still want to help him. For the sake of the story, let's say that each one of his friends collected money to pay for his appointment and take turns to help him get there on time. Why not let Bobby pay for his appointment or bring himself to the psychology center because he probably does not want to pay money to someone to help him. I mean, he did not want anyone to help him from the beginning of the story. Eventually, he would probably pay for his appointment and drive there by himself, but that will take time. So, we all do this to remind him that he is not alone.