Support and feeling supported was something that didn’t come to me naturally. This was mostly due to me feeling like a burden to my caregivers, whenever I expressed a need or a want. The term, selfish was tossed around all too liberally when we spoke about one another and how we expressed our needs. It seemed that no matter what we were asking, it was always too much.
I’d like to go into what the act of support feels and looks like for me. If you grew up in an environment similar to mine, you’ll likely feel that anytime you express a need you are putting somebody else out for just having a need. This is unhealthy. But if we’re never taught what healthy support looks like, then we simply don’t know what we don’t know. Though it is possible to feel supported in healthy ways. All it takes is some hard work and the right people : )
What Does Support Mean?
While I was growing up, there was a large emphasis placed on the rugged individual. Someone who could hold their own. Usually a man, and no matter what the situation was, we don’t need support from others. All of us were expected to do everything on our own and do it perfectly. This is unreasonable. Though I didn’t know this at the time, but I was also idolizing action heroes such as Rambo and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s character from, “The Predator”. All the while not realizing how unrealistic these ideals are.
I used phrases such as, “man up” in my youth. Implying that if you were a real man, you’d be able to handle it, whatever “It” was. This vein of thinking was carried throughout my family as well as in popular culture at the time.
An example of this type of thinking is, my parents were divorced when I was eight years old. And I think I got the same speech from every male family member at the time. It was them saying to me, “you’re the man of the house now Adam.” I had no idea what this meant. And I’m guessing that they didn’t either. Judging from how they were acting as “men”. I was a boy, trying to understand what was happening to my family at the time. The prospect of being in charge was terrifying to me. And on top of that fear, my family was now my responsibility!? I had no idea what to do with this information at such a young age. So I disconnected from my family. Retreated into video games and stayed out late at night. Avoiding coming home to the mess that was being left unattended to.
When Your Environment is Corrosive to Support
In the environment that my caregivers created, we told the other how they were feeling. We never asked any questions about the other’s emotional states. Nor did any sort of mirroring emotions. We never asked one another, “how did that make you feel?” When we did talk about emotions, it was usually in a way in which one person was telling the other what the other was feeling.
For example, comments such as, “you were just so selfish, pissy or narcissistic” were injected into our interactions without asking how the other person was feeling at the time. We just told them how they felt, but if we dug a little deeper, behind the reactions, we most likely would have seen the hurt and neglect we were inflicting on one another.
And if we did speak about emotions, they were usually the more difficult ones such as anger. We did not have a vocabulary for what we were experiencing emotionally, because it wasn’t safe to explore our emotional worlds around each other. So we never developed a language to speak about them with. This was due to us being viciously demeaning and mean to anybody who was foolish enough to let their guard down and share an emotion.
Because it’s important to foster a safe place around our emotional selves if our goal is to create a supportive, loving environment. This was something that we just didn’t know how to do. Something we had never been taught how to do. Luckily, there are some resources for learning how to foster a supportive and nurturing environment. One where we can feel safe exploring our emotional experiences without trying to control them in ourselves, or maybe in my case and more importantly, in others. Which I’ll be getting into towards the end of this post. But this type of environment is a difficult and crazy making place to be, if it’s all you’ve known about navigating emotions and receiving support.
Losing the Support I Once Knew
It was around the time of my parents divorce that I began to preform poorly in school and get into trouble more frequently. Since what I had known of support was no longer available to me, I just fell off the grid so to speak. Everybody was so wrapped up in their own experiences of what was happening, that we were no longer available as a source of support or caring for each other. There was a lot of bad blood left during the process and everybody knew every detail.
We continued drifting apart, not even really knowing how to support one another. And that’s even if we had decide to wake from our own emotional experiences for long enough to see that our family had fallen apart. We were quick to point out how someone had done harm to another, but not to help each other through the difficult emotions that came up from those hurts. And that’s assuming that we would know how to be there for each other if we could see the harm we were doing to one another.
So we all avoided contact with each other. Seeing each other only when we had to. This was our way of keeping ourselves safe from the wounds of the past from being brushed up against. By an old memory or from a current interaction. And it was in this environment that we forgot how to not be support, for ourselves and another.
Licking the Wounds
We were so busy protecting ourselves and our wounds from one another, that we forgot how to be a support for somebody else in a healthy way. This was clearly for fear that we would find ourselves betrayed in the same ways we had in the past. Traumatic ways that left us wounded and untrusting. But we were also isolated. Focusing only on the hurt as a reminder of what it means to get close to another. A defense mechanism that was much too built up to let anybody past.
And it was in this way of focusing on past hurts that we avoided growing beyond our smaller, wounded selves. Even now, 34 years later, we still have issues connecting due to how we’ve treated one another in our shared histories. Forgive and forget is a practice that is definitely not alive and well in my family.
But it’s also these mindsets that keep us locked in our old patterns of not being able to move past the emotions that feel too heavy, too scary to confront. For me, it’s a sense of feeling abandoned by those who were supposed to care for me. Leaving me alone at such a young age and then telling me I was in charge was terrifying to an eight year-old! So what am I doing to move past the old wounds and live the healthiest version of my life? It starts with taking ownership of my life, just as I find it.
Finding Support by Owning My Present
For me, I had to sort through a lot of poor choices I’ve made in the past. Regardless of how I was left, without guidance or shown healthier ways of navigating my world. They were and are, still my poor choices.
And I’m not beating myself up over the choices that didn’t have my best interests at heart. I’m owning them in a way that acknowledges I made a poor choice. But it was the best I could do under the circumstances. This gives me the comfort of knowing that now, I am in a different place. One where I know how to ask for help. Find resources and rely on people. I can make the healthier decisions that will move me forward in my life. And this is what I mean by support.
Types of Support
Finance
Support looks like, to me, finding people like Dave Ramsey when I was 100k+ in debt from the poor choices I made in the past. Following his advice on how to get out of debt, while I watch myself achieve my goals, slowly but surely, paying down what I owe.
And teaching myself how to make and stick to a budget. This was no easy task. Even when I was throwing as much money as I could towards my debt, I was still racking up $700 grocery bills. Mostly in the form of taking trip to Whole Foods. That’s close to $500 a month I could have been putting towards my future! It was here that I learned the discipline to stick to the boundaries and limits I desperately needed to set for myself, in order to live a sustainable lifestyle.
Friends & Family
In terms of my relationships, support looks like asking the people who have hurt me in the past, to get together once a week and make dinner. To talk about who we are as people. Revisiting the past in a safe and comfortable setting while forging new relationships with each other. Also, knowing how and when to take a rest when needed, from those close in.
Also, keeping in mind that I need to ask direct, clear questions. Especially around how the other person feels. This also extends to me speaking up about how I feel during our interactions. And knowing when it’s time to give the relationship and the conversation a break if things get too intense.
Internal & Emotional
While I was revisiting some of the ghosts from my past in writing this post, I was feeling overwhelmed with all the memories that were coming up. So instead of pushing past the feelings, ignoring and neglecting them in the ways they were ignored and neglected in me, I stopped. I asked what I needed for and from myself and the answer came. To take a walk by the ocean. So I stopped, listened to and attuned to my own emotional needs to take a break, and walked down to the ocean.
Reaching Out
These may seem like basic steps, but for those of us who have been emotionally neglected and abused, this is like learning a whole new language. And it’s difficult. In my situation, my caregivers had no idea how to attune to their emotional worlds. Or listen to their own emotional needs. They avoided themselves and their emotional worlds at all costs. Using denial and alcohol to subdue their internal worlds.
So it was necessary for me to reach out to somebody who had experience with healthy ways of helping me with and accepting my internal emotional world. I’ve been working with a therapist for a few years now and the help I’ve received from her has been invaluable. Mostly just a safe place to explore how I’m feeling while also giving names to my emotional experiences. Also having her validate that they (my emotions) are real and valid. Again, basic but so important if you’ve never had this type of mirroring and support.
Friends
And finally, friends are so important for our sense of belonging and need to feel heard, loved and supported. As I’ve said in previous posts, most of my friendships were based on the good times. Avoiding the difficult work of supporting each other during the difficult ones. So when those times came, it didn’t take long for those bonds to break under the weight of hurt feelings.
I don’t speak to many of the people that used to populate my past. But the friends that did stick around for me are very dear to my heart. I literally don’t know where I’d be without them. One in particular being there for me at just the right time and place. It’s also important to feel a part of something more than just our own internal worlds. Best not to let the squirrels run to wild in the trees of our minds : )
And It Gets Easier
These are my experiences with what support looks like. If you feel as though you are in a place where you lack the support you need, go and find it. I wish someone had told me this a long time ago. I spent too many years wondering without direction. Not knowing what to do with myself in my own life. And it’s worth remembering too that, no one can go this life alone. It’s hard enough even with the support! So if you’ve experienced a general lack of feeling and being supported, know that it’s not to late to do something about it.
Find a therapist, make regular visits with friends or maybe try reaching out to some of the friends you have on Facebook you haven’t talked to in a while. Find a group to be a part of with shared interests. Building relationships can be tough work, but it is so worth the while. Start sharing yourself and good things are bound to come of it. Peace & thanks for reading : )
Image Credits: “Hug” by Hans-Jörg Aleff is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
Updated: 1/20/23