Supporting yourself

• Copying with life’s challenges
• Support is …
• Supporting ourselves
• Rediscovering our ability to support ourselves
• Where support comes from
• How to develop our own self-support
• Developing our support from others

Coping with life’s challenges

Life often presents difficulties and challenges. To be able to meet the challenges of being affected by someone else’s drug or alcohol use we need to feel supported enough to meet these challenges. This download provides an explanation of why support matters and ideas to add to the ways you support yourself already.

Support is….

Anything that we do that helps us cope with the challenges in our lives. For example, talking to ourselves in a reassuring way when we feel worried; having enough sleep; holding realistic beliefs about ourselves and the world around us.

Using this idea in our daily lives
When life feels challenging, too difficult or overwhelming, there are three ways to help ourselves:

• Giving ourselves more support
• Lowering the level of challenge
• Both raising support and lowering the challenge

When we are doing something challenging and feel well supported, the challenge may still feel like a risk and provoke anxiety in us, but by feeling supported it also feels more manageable. We feel able to feel the fear and do it anyway.

Supporting ourselves

Newborn babies are fully aware of what they need, air, food, sleep, warmth and nurturing.
A newborn baby knows how to get what it needs, either from itself or from others by breathing, crying, eating, urinating etc.
A newborn baby does not judge itself for getting what it needs.

This is a human being supporting itself perfectly by:

1. Being aware of what it needs,
2. Knowing how to get its needs met, and.
3. Allowing itself to have what it needs without self-judgment.

Somewhere between being a baby and now, we loose this ability to some extent and don.t always develop ways to meet new needs. We may then no longer be fully aware of what we need, we don’t always know how to get our needs met and we can inhibit meeting our needs by judging ourselves.

Rediscovering our ability to support ourselves

Becoming aware of what you need
Practice giving yourself a moment and ’check-in’ with how you are: What are you thinking about? How are you feeling? What is happening in your body? Then ask yourself, what will help me right now? What do I need?

Knowing how to get your needs met
Ask yourself how you would usually meet that need? Is that way good enough? It may be that you are unsure how to meet that need. Try imagining ways you could or ask someone else you trust how they think you might meet that need.

Allowing yourself to have what you need without judgment
If you tend not to let yourself have what you need or you judge yourself for it, try to understand what it is that inhibits you. What is the belief you have that says you. Can’t, mustn’t. Or. shouldn’t. Have you’re needs met? Ask yourself if this is healthy for you and whether you still want to follow that belief?

Where support comes from?

Supporting ourselves is either giving to ourselves what we need, or asking others to give us what we need. So it is useful to know when to choose self-support and when to choose to ask others for support.

How to develop our own self-support?

1- Coping strategies
These are things we do that help us get through life. They range from minor things like preparing to leave the house in the morning, to major life skills like effective ways of grieving when someone close dies. Develop them by noticing what you do to cope, considering if that is good enough and if not, try creating new strategies which help you cope better.

2- Looking for our part in what happens to us
If we can identify our part in a situation then we can do something about that part. This is empowering ourselves by taking responsibility. However, be careful not to use this to criticize yourself or to take responsibility for other people’s part in situation.

3- Noticing our attitude to ourselves
Are you critical of yourself? Be curious rather than critical when things go wrong and learn how to be different next time. Develop acceptance and compassion for your human failings and shortcomings. Let go of always: being perfect, pleasing others, trying harder, hurrying up, taking responsibility for others, etc.

4- Good physical health
Try to be aware of what you eat and drink, the exercise you do and the rest and relaxation you allow yourselves to have. However it is equally important to let yourself occasionally eat and drink the wrong things, be lazy and stay up late!

5- How we talk to ourselves
It is worth noticing unhelpful things we say to ourselves, such as critical, negative or overly anxious messages. Ask yourself how many friends you would have if you spoke to them in the way you do to yourself? You can choose how you talk to yourself. Experiment with constructive, reassuring and nurturing messages, especially when life is difficult or we have anxious or painful feelings.

6- Breathing and posture
Try to be aware of how you support your body. Developing the ability to breaths lower and deeper can be especially useful with anxiety. Developing a supportive posture, such as opening up our bodies when we get hunched and tense with stress can be beneficial to how we feel emotionally and physically.

7- Holding realistic beliefs about the world
This can be developed by asking yourself if your expectations of yourself and others are realistic at the moment.

8- The ’evoked companion’
When we find life difficult or have painful feelings, imagining what someone like a good friend, parent or counselor might say to us can be comforting and nurturing.

9- An imagined place to escape to
A useful exercise is imagining a place where you feel safe, relaxed and happy, and escaping. There in your mind. Perhaps shutting your eyes will help.

10- Expressing feelings
Releasing the energy of feelings in our body by expressing how we feel can be very important. You might cry, shout, punch a cushion, etc

11- having a spiritual dimension to our lives
This can often give life meaning and purpose when it might feel like there is none having spirituality does not mean it has to be religious!

12- Making a list of twenty things that help you
Allow yourself at least five a day!

Developing our support from others

1- Nurturing intimate relationships with others
Try to develop and maintain positive relationships with family (where appropriate) and friends. The love and validation received from others can be a pivotal support for most people.

2- People who can offer us emotional support
Being with people we feel comfortable enough with and talking about our difficulties can be an important way to get support from others. It is important that the people you talk to won’t try to fix you or advise us what to do.

3- People who can offer us practical support
Be willing to accept practical support from people who are willing to cook you the occasional meal, give you a lift, helping with childcare, etc.

4- People who can offer us a diversion
It can be important to maintain or develop friendships, which help us to have fun such as someone to go to the cinema, pub, cafe or restaurant with.

5- Community support
Identify support available from your local community, such as a neighbourhood group, religious group, club, etc.

6- Organizational support
Such as agencies, groups or associations that offer help with particular difficulties. There are many family support services around the country. You can search for the nearest one to you by looking at Adfam www.adfam.org.uk or famailies Anonymous Helpline: 0845 1200 660
http://www.famanon.org.uk/ or Alanon http://www.al-anonuk.org.uk/

7- Personal therapy or counseling.
It could be worth seeing if there is a local therapist or counselor that could support you.

8- Education and training
See if there is any local training services available which might help you with issues such as assertiveness and boundary setting.

9- Maintain a balance
Try to keep a balance between different aspects of your life, such as work and leisure.

Developing support appropriate for you

Above are ideas that others have found useful. They may not be right for you. Be guided by what you want to use, what motivates you, rather than trying a particular idea because you believe you should, ought, or must do it.

The source of above information is with the permission of ADFAM. For the direct link to the source of this page click on: http://www.adfam.org.uk/docets/Adfam%20Supporting%20Ourselves.pdf