Your Support System Plays a Role in Your Healing: Tips to Building Your Support System

Your Support System Plays a Role in Your Healing: Tips to Building Your Support System

The importance of a support system while going through challenges is cruical, find out why…

Connection With Others Is Vital

Trauma, especially trauma that involved physical injuries or disease, can affect the way cancer patients interact with people, and consequently their relationships with people around them. It can impact how comfortable cancer patients are in approaching people, even people who could be potentially very helpful. As Dr. Shyamali Singhal says, trusting others and allowing ourselves to be vulnerable can feel too exposing. We might be wary of people getting too close, physically and emotionally, and letting people get to know us. Trauma can disrupt our connection with people and yet feeling a connection with others is so very important to recovery and our health and wellness. This can be a real challenge for many people affected by trauma.

What Is Social Support System

Humans have always relied on one another during times of crisis. Our ability to support each other and grow as a community is what helped us to survive and thrive in a world where weakness and vulnerability meant certain death. The world has certainly become a lot safer than it used to be. However, we still need a robust support system if we wish to overcome difficulties and enjoy a stress-free life. In fact, many healthcare professionals believe that social support plays a crucial role in physical and mental health. It can speed up recovery, cultivate hope and improve patients’ overall sense of well-being.

Social support system refers to a network of people – friends, family, and peers – that we can turn to for emotional and practical support. At school, fellow students, supportive staff, and faculty may provide assistance, and as we move into our professional careers, our colleagues may also be sources of support. friendships are an important element of your support system. But the roots must go deeper, touching both the personal and professional lives of cancer patients and providing a wide range of outlets if one element isn’t working. For example, maybe they need support because their friends are at odds — having multiple resources helps ease the stress.

Practical Benefits Of Supportive Relationships

There are many practical benefits to having supportive relationships, such as knowing people who can provide information, advice, guidance, and also tangible support, such as assistance in times of uncertainty. This feature of social support can be comforting and enhance feelings of security.

Supportive relationships can also bolster emotionally when cancer patients feeling down or overwhelmed. Friends and loved ones will listen to cancer patients' fears, hopes, and dreams, and make them feel seen and understood. They can help them think through alternatives and solve problems, and they can distract patients from worries when that is what’s really needed. In doing all this they provide encouragement and lower the stress and feelings of loneliness. A social support system represents an essential factor in maintaining physical, mental and affective balance which are often threatened by adversity. It’s kind of difficult to enjoy a pleasant, stress-free life in the absence of social support; let alone achieve personal and professional growth.

Role Of Social Support In Recovery

A study revealed that social support is a predictor of better mental health. Researchers have also discovered that the negative aspects of social relationships may lead to poor mental health. While it’s important to focus on the kind of support you want, everybody deserves a broad range of support in every available flavor. After all, cancer patients' current needs may be different than their needs six months from now.

Part of the recovery will likely require strengthening and using a personal support system.  This might feel risky and it is, however being with people who care about us and are connected to us is essential for our well being.  We thrive when supported by a circle of nurturing people and we never outgrow our need for positive human contact. Everyone needs and wants to be seen, heard and understood. Traumatic events can however sometimes leave a person feeling that they want to be invisible, to go unnoticed, too disappear into the woodwork, this might feel safer but it is not good for our wellbeing.

Sometimes, the best support system is right beneath our nose. Your family and friends know you well, making them the perfect cheerleaders. Feeling gloomy? What’s better than calling a friend?

But not all of us have done a superb job of staying in touch through the years. Perhaps you met your dearest friends in college — but only see them once in a blue moon. Maybe your family lives a few states away, and you’ve been reluctant about calling and visiting. 

How To Build Your Support System

The first step in building your support system is to start reaching out. These friendships already exist, and simply need a little strengthening! If your friends and family are located in other cities, perhaps phone calls, video chats, or (if you can afford it) visits are in order. With friends in the same city, consider coffee or brewery dates or a trip to the zoo.

Yes, revitalizing these friendships requires vulnerability. But all support networks require opening up — and that may make you uncomfortable. If you’re scared to reach out, consider talking to a therapist about your concerns. A support system can include mentors, people who can guide, teach and challenge us in respectful, compassionate ways. They might be teachers, spiritual leaders or spiritual advisors, elders and cultural leaders. A support system might and can also include professionals such as family physicians, nurses and other health care providers,  mental health workers, psychiatrists, psychologists, EAP (Employee Assistance Program) counselors, and many others.

There is no how-to manual that lays out a series of steps that cancer patients should follow to build a support system. As already mentioned it does involve some risk-taking, some trial, and error, back and forth and give and take. Knowing we are all in the same boat, that we all struggle, are afraid, are imperfect, have pain and experience doubt, can sometimes make it a bit easier to take those risks.