The article suggests that there are two different levels of skills and opportunities for professional interaction between a helping specialist and subjects of the educational process. The first level of skills involves ensuring safe interaction through the manifestation of tolerant attitudes and behaviour through the ethical regulation of activities within a professional role. The second level involves the emotional, personal inclusion of a specialist in professional interaction through the manifestation of special personal qualities (mercy, empathy, empathy), which provides a healing effect through deep personal interaction. Weanalyse Russian socio-cultural and ideological characteristics of help, based on mercy and empathy. European and Russian ideas about the content of the training of specialists in helping professions, going back to the peculiarities of the religious beliefs of three Christian denominations, which define the meaning of assistance both in the east and in the west, are compared. It is shown that the Russian experience of assistance focuses on the internal motives of help and sacrificial love, which provides a deep personal level of professional interaction. The conclusion is made about the need for a scientific study of traditional Russian experience in order to create programmes for developing future helpers with personal readiness education for effective professional interaction at the second level.