The Right Way to Provide Support

Last year I was going through a really tough time. Something incredibly unfair had happened with potentially serious consequences.

I talked to a whole bunch of people who are really close to me - my parents, my sister, my wife. It was very interesting to see the myriad of reactions I got.

Everyone was incredibly supportive. But in their own different way.

Some people really wanted to know the details - how did this happen?

Other people were there to just vibe with me - this is so horrible!

And yet other people were thinking about the way forward - okay, what can you do about this?

I recently finished the book Chatter by Ethan Kross. He talks about our mind’s internal self talk and how it turns into chatter.

He talks about how studies were done in the wake of large scale disasters, and interestingly, they found that talking about one’s experiences didn’t always correlate with feeling better. Which is pretty surprising. He says:

When our minds are bathed in chatter, we display a strong bias towards satisfying our emotional needs over our cognitive ones

If you only focus on the emotional support, you end up continually bringing up the feelings again, and you get stuck in a loop where the feelings get magnified as if in an echo chamber.

Of course the flip side is focusing entirely on the cognitive support - and we find people who don’t actually see us or meet us where we are.

It’s a tricky balance to strike.

Kross says you need to address their emotional needs and their cognitive needs, meet them where they are, and help them try and gain perspective, see the big picture and decide on a course of action.

And if you’re receiving support? The important thing is to figure out what you need and ask for that.

Is there someone you can reach out to and support, right now, that would make a difference?

Join us this week as we discuss this and more.

Don’t like listening in-browser? Hit up Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher. NOTE: If you’re checking this out before Friday, the episode likely won’t be up there yet!

And please leave us a 5-star (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) review where ever you listen to podcasts (unless you’re listening in-browser as we don’t have a rating system on the site 🤷‍♂️).