What is Social Support?
All of us need social support. Your pain may make you feel more needy. You may believe that you need more than your share of support… or more than your family, friends, or co-workers have to offer. At the same time, you may feel that the support that you receive isn’t always what you need, or that it makes you feel worse.
This activity will help you to understand the different forms of social support and to consider the ways in which support can be helpful and, at times, not helpful. There are two basic categories of support: emotion-focused support and problem-focused support. Let’s talk about each type of support.
Emotion-Focused Support
Effective emotion-focused support should have a positive emotional impact. It might make you feel loved, appreciated, understood, validated, safe, included, or needed. As a result of emotion-focused support, you may feel stronger, more solid, renewed, confident, able to move forward, ready to take on your life. Examples are listening, showing concern and interest, providing a hug or a kiss, following up on a previous conversation, showing an understanding of your emotional state or needs.
Problem-Focused Support
Problem-focused support is geared toward helping you solve some problem by providing resources. Examples are doing a household chore, fixing your computer, lending you money, giving you a ride, providing childcare, or taking you to the doctor. Information is another form of problem-focused support. Examples are teaching you how to do something, telling you how he or she solved a similar problem, referring you to a friend or expert who can help, suggesting a book or website, brainstorming with you to generate possible solutions. As a result of problem-focused support, you should be closer to managing or solving a problem. You should be more able to manage in the future.
“Support” That Isn’t Supportive
Despite the best of intentions, friends, family, and co-workers may sometimes do things that are not actually helpful. Sometimes even well-intentioned support can have a negative impact. For example:
- Sympathy may make you feel sorry for yourself
- Pity may make you feel ashamed
- Too much help may make you feel weak and powerless
- Giving in to your demands may make you feel bossy
- Taking over most or all of your responsibilities, even those you can still do, may make you feel irresponsible.
- Overlooking or tolerating crabby or nasty behavior on your part may encourage you to be crabby or nasty
Let's look at a case study.