Helping Helpers who Help

 One thing I've learned to identify as a red flag of Helping Helpers who Help is vaguely conflating and equivocating between discussion of physical, material problems (like poverty, violence, infectious disease, lack of actual material resources) and intangible issues like "dignity" or "self-esteem" or "respect" or "body image" or "spiritual growth" or "education" or "mindset."

Things this kind of equivocation is used for:

• covertly suggesting that physical, material problems are caused by some psychological or spiritual defect (e.g. "If you think positive and believe in yourself, you won't be poor anymore!" or "If you have enough faith, God will make your cancer go away!")
• justifying coercing people to accept "help" for their (presumed) mental/ emotional/ spiritual problems as a condition of receiving help for their physical, material problems (e.g. charities that require people to pray or accept religious practice in order to receive shelter, public assistance programs that require people to undergo nutrition counseling in order to get food aid, assistance for pregnant women that requires them to submit to lessons about "valuing themselves" enough to avoid sex).
• justifying discrimination (e.g. every argument that it's okay to pay women or young people or disabled people less than middle-aged abled men, because young/ female/ disabled people are only working for the "sense of accomplishment" or the "experience" or "feeling independent").
• tacitly blaming victims of injustice or abuse (e.g. "teaching" abuse victims to "value themselves" enough not to get abused anymore).
• allowing people to take credit for supporting "respect" and "dignity" while actively opposing tangible legal rights or material benefits (e.g. "Of course I believe everyone should be treated with dignity and respect, but..." that doesn't mean they should be paid a living wage, have the right to make their own choices in life, etc.)
• making claims presuming that people's material, physical needs and what other people believe to be their mental/ emotional/ psychiatric/ spiritual "needs" are actually one and the same (e.g. every single discussion of deinstitutionalization and homelessness ever)

Obviously, there's a time and a place for discussing intangible issues, and there's a time and a place for voluntary, uncoerced education, counseling, psychiatric treatment, prayer, spiritual support, emotional validation, etc. But if you're trying to talk about violence and material discrimination and desperation and somebody else keeps trying to change the subject to counseling and self-esteem, be really suspicious.