Send us a text Welcome to the Life and Power podcast. I'm Danlye Jones. And today we are talking about why support is so important. And if you don't have enough of it, how you can get it to deal with the things that are going on in your life. So if you are going through a stressful time, especially a maximum stress time, a family member is dealing with something that is hard for you to deal with, like alcoholism or some other issue.Shame and SecretsAnd it makes you feel shame because you don't want to be associated with that. You're in a toxic job. You just went through a breakup, the death of a loved one. Sometimes we have this tendency, especially if you're like me, to go inward, to try and handle it, to try and fix it on your own. And it is so lonely to be in that place.So Why Haven't You Told Anyone?And so I have a question for you. If something is going on in your life, who have you told not? Who can fix this for you? Because that's not what we're looking for. But who have you told? Is there someone in your life that you can think of right now that you trust, that you haven't told? And why not?Studies Prove That Social Support Strengthens Stress Resilience And having a quality support system isn't just was nice to have thing the studies prove it. The studies prove that it helps enhance our resilience to stress. And don't we all need that? Don't we all need help with that? I know I do. I know I will take anything I can to reduce the stress in my life, or at least make it feel like it is less crushing.Study Cited: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2921311/Real Life ExamplesAnd that's what quality support does. So I want to give you a couple examples from my life to help illustrate it. So last year I had a family member that was going through some stuff and I felt really alone in it, and I felt really like I had to handle it and like I had to sort of be like the bed for what was going on with them. And I was having my own feelings about it and trying to deal with it and trying to work through it. But for a while I just didn't tell anybody outside of my family. Like I didn't tell friends. And I was like, I need to I need to sort this. Something I did differently then was I was like, No, this isn't a thing for me to feel ashamed about.What Happened When I Reached OutI started to detach my shame from it and reached out to a friend and said, Hey, I just need to tell you this. I don't need you to do anything, but I just need someone to hear that this is going on in my life. And I sent them a text and I told them what was going on. And I got a really kind and thoughtful text back from them. And I felt heard and I felt better. And the feeling that was over me lost its power. And I told another friend same thing. The feeling that was over me lost its power and my friends knew what I was dealing with when I was with them. And I think that helped formulate a context for our interactions, right? Like, this is a thing I'm dealing with doing the best I can.We didn't spend time sitting deeply in it, but it was just known and I felt supported and I felt like I had given that vulnerability to them and the relationships got closer. Another example. I was dealing with something professionally that sucked and it was hard. And it was it was meant to be something and formulated in a way that was something that I was dealing with.You Don't Need to Feel AloneAnd I took that on like, Hey, this is my responsibility. I am dealing with this. I need to figure a way out. I confided in a friend of what was going on and I still kept it close and I still held on to it and felt shame around it, felt anger. And then I started to tell more trusted friends

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