When Help Is No Help

Maybe it's your car's transmission. Maybe it's your mental state. Maybe it's your homeschool curriculum. Maybe it's your diet. Maybe it's your method of disciplining your kids. Maybe it's spiritual/theological questions. Maybe it's a broken molar. Maybe it's an entire nation's economic woes. Whatever it is, something is wrong, something needs fixed.

I wonder sometimes if the wrong "help" is worse than getting no help at all.

But if that's true, how does a person find the right help, except through trial-and-error, and methodically discarding the "help" that made the problem worse? And what if the "help" resulted in irreversible damage?