Numerous studies have demonstrated the critical
importance of social support for physical and mental health. For
example, one study showed that stressed middle-aged men with higher levels of
available emotional support were significantly less likely to
die over a 7-year period than those who lacked such support. Another
study found that an absence of social support was a major predictor of depression.
In our everyday lives, we often have opportunities to
provide support to friends, family members, or coworkers, but it can be hard to
know how to do it in the most effective way. Research in social psychology has
revealed some principles for giving good support that challenge common
assumptions. Here are three of them.
1. Support may be more effective when it's invisible.
It may seem obvious that people should benefit more
from support that they know they are receiving, but research suggests
that this is not necessarily the case. One set of studies found that when
participants knew they were receiving support, they experienced greater stress reactivity, and another found
that romantic partners actually felt worse after they received support about
a personal problem.
Why would support make people feel worse? Research
suggests that receiving overt support can make people feel dependent,
ineffective, or indebted,
all negative feelings unlikely to make someone feel confident about their
ability to handle stressors.
It turns out, then, that support may be most effective
when it is given invisibly—that is, when the giver uses
indirect and unobtrusive methods and doesn’t over-emphasize the giver/receiver
distinction. Such support seems to be more likely to leave both people
feeling good about themselves and their relationship. Researchers have noted
that people who receive invisible support may still feel a global sense of being supported and cared
about as a result of the positive social interactions they experience, even if
they don’t encode a given interaction as supportive per se.
So what does invisible support look like?
An example could be casually mentioning a situation
when someone you know had a similar problem and found that a certain approach
was helpful, rather than saying something directive like, “You should take this
approach.” This indirect style is less likely to feel condescending to
recipients.
Another example could be telling someone that you
admire how well they have handled a difficult situation. This makes them feel
good about themselves and gives them a chance to express their feelings about
the challenges they have faced without fearing that in doing so you will see
them as weak or incompetent.
The principles of invisible support can be applied
even if someone explicitly asks you for support. The key is to communicate
respect for their strengths in addition to compassion for their hardships, and
to show that you genuinely want to be there and are not feeling burdened. (If
you do feel burdened, it is important to set boundaries and help the person
find other sources of support. Otherwise your support might make them feel
worse.)
2. As the support-giver, sharing your own experiences
is not always helpful.
One strategy people often use when giving support is
to share their own related experiences. This approach has potential benefits:
It can make an exchange less one-sided and reduce the recipient’s sense of
burdensomeness, making the support more invisible. It can also increase the
recipient’s sense of common humanity by reminding them that other
people have similar problems. This approach can be especially helpful for
people feeling isolated or self-critical.
But diving into your personal examples too soon can
sometimes backfire. Here's why:
First, although suffering is universal, specific
experiences of suffering are unique, and people benefit from being able to
express their experiences as unique. In addition, support is more likely to be
effective when support-givers are higher in empathic
accuracy, which refers to the ability to correctly infer another
person's mental state. Putting yourself in someone else’s shoes requires
learning about that person’s unique perspective by asking questions, listening
attentively, and withholding judgment. After all, just because you can imagine
how you personally might feel if you were in a certain situation doesn’t mean
that you know how someone else feels in that situation.
Sharing personal experiences can also backfire when
those experiences implicitly minimize the other person’s experience. This can
happen whether the experience you share is more minor or more
severe. If you say that you can relate because of a similar but more minor
experience, you may inadvertently communicate that you see the other person’s
experience as no big deal. If, on the other hand, you contrast the other
person’s experience with something more severe that you went through, in an
effort to show them that things could be worse, the other person may feel like
you’re trying to one-up them.
Research suggests that although downward social comparison (comparing oneself
to less fortunate others) can sometimes help people feel better about
themselves, telling someone “it could be worse” is unlikely to be helpful if
things really could get worse for them. For example, people who are
suffering from a serious illness won’t necessarily benefit from being told
about the experiences of people whose similar illnesses took a turn for the
worse. This form of downward comparison may only increase anxiety and
feelings of vulnerability.
Before sharing a personal story, it may be helpful to
reflect on why you want to share it, and then make your intentions clear. For
example, you could preface your story by acknowledging that you know your
experiences are different. But in general, it may be best to avoid statements
like “I know exactly what you’re going through,” especially since it may not
actually be true.
3. "Show, don’t tell" is not just good
advice for writing.
It can be tempting to fall back on canned statements
like “I’m here for you," or, "Don’t worry, everything will be fine,”
when you don’t know what else to say. There is nothing inherently wrong with
these statements. The problem is that we don’t always follow up on them, and
that can make them come across as disingenuous or avoidant. One way to
improve the quality of the support you give is to apply the “show, don’t tell”
principle you learned in grade school:
•
Instead of saying, “I’m here for you if you need me,”
just show up. Bring dinner to someone recovering from surgery, or invite your
friend who just went through a bad break-up out to do something fun. When
someone reaches out and asks for help, try to respond promptly, and check in
regularly when you know that someone is struggling with an ongoing issue. These
little gestures can go a long way towards helping people feel like they can
depend on you.
•
Instead of saying, “Everything will be fine,” do
whatever you can to increase the chances that everything will be
fine. This could mean helping a friend who has been diagnosed with a serious
illness research doctors and treatment options, or keeping an eye out for job
postings for an unemployed colleague.
•
Instead of saying, “Just relax"—which often has
the opposite effect—do
things that are likely to help the person feel calmer, like encouraging them to
take a break after all the hard work they’ve been doing. Or, consider how you
could change your own behavior so that they feel calmer in your presence.
•
Instead of saying, “I love you no matter what,”
express your love even when the other person has done nothing obvious to
“deserve” it. (This post
by Rodolfo Mendoza-Denton illustrates this point well.)
The bottom line is that social support is not always
supportive; it depends on how we give it. Good support is less about saying the
exact right thing and more about putting in the effort to try to understand
what another person is going through, and then helping, when appropriate, in
ways that don’t minimize or magnify a difficult situation. Small acts of
kindness that come from a place of genuine caring and concern can go a long
way.
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