pacers integrative behavioral health we are finishing our series on attachment
and mental health talking about encouragement and support i am your host dr donnelly snipes
so what's the difference between encouragement and support well it's a fine line and just like
everything else in attachment it overlaps a fair amount but encouragement is essentially
cheerleading think about when you were younger or maybe not maybe right now when you are getting
ready to do something and somebody encourages you encouragement is essentially cheerleading
it's saying i believe in you i know you can do this so encouragement is an attitude more than
something tangible support on the other hand is providing resources necessary to accomplish a goal
or live a rich and meaningful life and those resources can include knowledge advice time and
of course money thinking about my children both of my children are in college now and i encourage
them to do as much as they can be the best that they can be so to speak and i encourage them to
pursue goals in life that make them happy now i support them by providing the resources necessary
obviously helping them with tuition you know right now they still live at home um so providing a roof
over their head so they don't have to work in addition to going to school full-time so support
can include resources encouragement again is more of a cheerleading aspect encouragement
and support communicates to a person that you know what i believe you can do this i believe in you
i believe that you are strong enough and it encourages people's sense of self-efficacy
or self-empowerment it also helps people feel safe when someone is encouraging you
it feels like they're the wind at your back they've got you in case you start to fall
they're there to help you to catch you to comfort you to nurture you whatever words that you like
it's important to think about as we've talked about in all of the other instances how can you
encourage and support yourself you know let's think about what you want people to do for you
when you are having a bad day when you are getting ready to do something that you're a little
stressed about you know how can people encourage you well whatever you want them to do for you
do for yourself if you want them to say i know you've got this then look in the mirror or not and
tell yourself you know what i know you've got this it's important to be able to encourage yourself
and not rely exclusively on others to do it not because others are going to fail you necessarily
but other people get caught up in their life and life happens so they may not be
paying attention to you all of the time and as we get older it's even more important for
us to be able to provide our own encouragement and motivation to remind ourselves that we are
extremely
able to accomplish our goals we can also provide support for ourself so when you think about a goal
that you want to accomplish what is it that you need to accomplish that and how can you
make sure that you have the resources necessary to achieve that goal for example if you want to
go back to college you know that takes a lot of time and it is expensive even if you've got
scholarships or whatever it's expensive so what kinds of support do you need from your family
what kinds of support do you need from yourself in order to be able to accomplish that goal for
example you know maybe even if let's just say you live alone by yourself you work full-time okay
well that takes a lot of time already so what do you need to do in order to help free up some time
for yourself so you can go to class and you can have time to study what types of things do you
need to do to support yourself in achieving that goal and then thinking about how can you encourage
others you know those people in your life that are important in important to you what can you
do to encourage them and part of that comes back to some of those things we've already talked about
being consistent you know showing up being responsive listening to what they want what
they need what their fears are giving attention to that relationship um and validating how they
feel you can validate somebody's anxiety about something and encourage them at the same time i
hear that this is really stressful for you and i know you can get through this and i'm here to
you know support you in any way i can you know so that provides encouragement support and validation
recognizing you know there are a lot of things we go through and and haze in acceptance and
commitment therapy refers to this as living in the and um there are a lot of things we go through
that cause anxiety and and we do them anyway so by providing that support and encouragement we're
not taking away that person's anxiety we're not saying you shouldn't feel anxious about
this you know it's perfectly natural to feel anxious about this however i have faith that
even though you feel anxious you can do this and i'm here to support you in any way possible so
those are things that we really want to examine with encouragement and support and a lot of times
unfortunately and and i know i'm guilty of this and i've worked really hard over the years
with my staff as well as my family my children my friends to be more encouraging and more supportive
actually proactively going out and noticing positive steps a lot of times when we do things
we minimize our accomplishments we don't notice the little baby steps forward that we take
and when somebody else comes in and says wow
look how far you've come then it kind of puts everything into perspective and you step back
and you go well yeah you're right i actually have made a lot of progress so being encouraging and
supportive isn't necessarily just reactive it can be proactive recognizing the things that
people in your life want to do you know going back to my kids acknowledging how well they're doing
in their classes acknowledging that some classes are harder than others and some professors
are better than others you know acknowledging that and encouraging them to figure out how to
make that situation work as well as they can for themselves my daughter really hates e-learning and
a lot of her professors are teaching in a way that they would teach in the classroom
but just online and it's a little bit different you know when you're trying to
or when you're trying to teach somebody through an online platform so she she gets frustrated
and she has dyslexia so it makes it even more difficult for her so encouraging her to figure out
to problem solve for herself because i believe she knows the answer she just
needs to be nudged in the right direction uh and we talked about scaffolding uh in in
another video earlier this week but encouraging her to figure out what can i do to make this as
comfortable as possible for me in this situation i'm not gonna love it you know
i know she's not gonna love it but how can she sort of make the best out of a bad situation
and i'm there to encourage her i'm there to validate how it sucks sometimes
and you know help her recognize that okay this semester is going to end so all of those things
can go along with encouragement and support so just to kind of tie it all up in a big bow
um attachment the characteristics of healthy attachment relationships are having people in your
life who are consistent you know what to expect if you call them and you've got a problem they're
going to listen if you call them and you're having a happy day they are going to celebrate with you
you know what to expect from them consistency is really important because it is frustrating if you
call somebody up and you're expecting a supportive reaction and you get blown off it's like well
where'd that come from so consistency is important responsiveness goes along with consistency you've
got to show up and pay attention and react appropriately again you know being
responsive to that person or to yourself if you're doing it for yourself being responsive to their
thoughts wants and needs in the moment attention is being proactive you know responsiveness is
often reactive uh responding to what the person's thoughts wants and needs are attention is
proactive telling the person through your actions through your words telling yourself through your
actions through your words hey you deserve love you deserve attention you deserve my time
so being proactive validation is really important to acknowledge how somebody
feels even if you disagree acknowledging how they feel and acknowledging that that is their
reality in the moment and then giving them time to figure out you know how they want to process it
and then moving on to encouragement and support and and being there to try to be as helpful
encouraging and supportive as possible so i know i broke all of these down you know they're kind
of little nuggets this week but thinking about and i know i've said it like a bazillion times
thinking about how can you enhance your attachment relationships first with yourself
and then with other people and i would suggest starting out with
you know one or two other people in your life just trying to figure out you know am i
being as consistent responsive you know all those things as possible in this relationship
and i am glad that to see morgan that you have
emailed me some questions for monday remember monday is when i do my question and answer session
and you can email those questions so i can look at them ahead of time and
you know kind of prepare a more in-depth response instead of spitballing it you can email those
questions to wellness underscore one at yahoo.com that's wellness underscore one at yahoo.com
are there any remaining questions about attachment we've been talking about that a lot this week
remember to uh next week we'll be doing or i'll be doing a series on living with borderline
personality disorder whether is in yourself or in a significant other or if you grew up in a
household where someone had bpd we will be looking at the characteristics how it influences you and
things that you might be able to do to create safety and empowerment in that sort of situation
morgan asks can these tips work for a loved one with depression you know if that loved one is
wanting to address that depression remember we want to validate how they're feeling
if they are ready to start taking steps forward to identify what's going on then some of these
tips may work but part of that is also incumbent on understanding what is causing that person's
depressive symptoms everybody's depression presents a little bit differently not everybody
has the same symptoms and we have to remember that each one of those symptoms like fatigue or apathy
can be caused by a whole host of things can be caused by thinking patterns it can be caused by
a history of unresolved trauma it can be caused by biochemical imbalances hormone imbalances
it can be caused by poor nutrition it can be even be caused by sleep apnea and poor sleep
quality so it's really important for people if they are experiencing mental health symptoms to
start exploring some of the things that may be causing it and of course my first recommendation
for everybody is to go to their primary care get some blood work done and make sure that
there isn't an underlying you know hormone or biochemical imbalance that needs to be addressed
because no amount of talk therapy is going to increase your level of vitamin d
if you're vitamin d deficient for example so in order to have the best possible outcomes it is
important to address the physical as well as the cognitive the way your thoughts are impacting you
your environment and the triggers for the things that are triggering your depression
as well as things that could trigger your happiness and your relationships so there are a
lot of things that go into addressing depression you can look on the youtube channel there is
a playlist that's based on the book that i wrote 100 plus practical tools to defeat your depression
and those are longer videos but they do break it down into each one of those areas so
if the person is interested in learning about potential things that might help them start
feeling a little bit better they can look there but if they are clinically depressed
it is certainly important for them to reach out to a professional and get an evaluation
i can add to the video series uh list um exploring different attachment styles that'll
probably be i think i'm out about seven weeks right now but remember uh next week we're
going to look at borderline personality disorder that's not an attachment style