How to be a good support person

You know those awful, heart-sinking times when someone you care about announces terrible or traumatic news?  Be it that they have decided to painfully divorce, their child is very sick, their mom just got in a car accident, or they just received a diagnosis of cancer, all of a sudden you feel helpless.

Allow me to give you a perspective from the other side.  When I was diagnosed with cancer, it was extremely heart-warming that people’s concerns showered over me, but at the same time, it was overwhelming because it solidified that there was something terribly wrong with me.  One dear friend cried with fear for me, and I ended up consoling her!

Lovely offers were constantly showered upon me:  “Is there anything I can do to help?”, “What can I do?”, “Call me if you need anything.”

I think most of us have an innate default response to say “I’m OK” and not ask for help. Even if I felt I needed help, I probably wouldn’t have picked up the phone to ask for it.  At the time I announced the news, I didn’t even know what I needed anyway, so how could I express it?

So, as a support person, you are left feeling helpless. You care about the person, but at the same time, you don’t want to interfere or disturb the person. Do you keep asking what you can do or do you step back and give the person space?

Here’s what I can suggest you do as a support person. These are some of the more important ones in my view:

1. Ask the question:  “What can I specifically do to help you?”.  This may make her actually think about what she may need.  Realize that the needs change constantly, so ask the question many times during her journey, not just once or twice.
2. If she just needs time to think, then let her know that you will honour her request for some space, but tell her she should not take the absence of contact as not caring.  Suggest that you will reach out on occasion and that you are always there for the times when she does need a friend. Tell her you care.
3. Support her in the decisions she may have to make.  Remember that you are not the one going through it, so if you don’t agree with a decision, don’t let your ego get in the way. Instead, see if you can ask questions to help her ensure she is confident and at peace with the decisions she is making.  Help her release any doubt or guilt after the decision has been made.
4. Realize going through a hard time has many ups and downs.  Sometimes the best medicine is laughter – make her laugh.  I know my standard answer when people asked what they could do for me was ‘just make me laugh’, and I really meant it.  Laughing helped lighten the moment.

I hope this has been helpful.  I know that now when I am supporting someone else, I have a much better sense of how to do it.

A great laugh for dog lovers

Talking dog, courtesy of YouTube

This short video is pretty much guaranteed to bring joy to your life.  Is this ever funny!  I’m so glad my dear friend shared it with me.  We need to remember to be light-hearted & fun, because it’s too easy to weigh ourselves down with worry and self-doubt in every day life.  Find things that make you laugh.

Please enjoy this YouTube video:  Ultimate Dog Tease

How my friends and I discovered Mindfulness

What is mindfulness?  Simply put, it means to be intentionally 100% present, right here, right now.  It means paying attention in a particular way, without any judgment at all.  I love reminding my students “if you don’t judge, you cannot get frustrated.” What a simple concept, but very powerful – if you don’t pass judgment, you can’t feel upset, angry or irritated about something. Let that thought sink in for a moment…

Mindfulness has been studied for years and has proven benefits, such as lowered perception of pain, stress, anxiety and depression.  It improves your overall experience of life, and can create a sense of peace and calm.  You can do this anytime during the day – stop, and pay attention without judgment to what you are doing in that moment. If you are driving and waiting at a stop light, feel the coolness and smoothness of the steering wheel, watch someone walk by you without placing any judgment on them, notice the shape and texture of your own hands, etc.

So how do people discover Mindfulness and its benefits?  It’s been interesting for me to ask people. Here are some discoveries I’ve made:

• A young friend of mine who is in university has discovered mindfulness at her early age through skydiving. The first time she jumped out of a plane solo, she looked at the sunset and thought to herself how beautiful it is and “this may be the last sunset I’ll ever see”.  She skydives every chance she gets, not for the adrenaline rush, but to experience the peace and appreciation of life. She says skydiving has shown her what mindfulness is and has given her the peace in her life that she was searching for. I congratulate her for finding this at such a young age!
• 

  Tai Chi, a moving meditation

  For me, mindfulness was discovered in two phases. First,  doing tai chi brought me a sense of present-awareness and peace, then, living through the diagnosis and treatment of cancer really solidified true mindfulness for me.  Nothing really stops time like a shocking or traumatic experience.

• An acquaintance of mine felt he hit rock-bottom in his life, where everything seemed to be going wrong and against him. One day he looked himself in the mirror and decided this wasn’t any way he wanted to live, decided to change his outlook, and discovered mindfulness through my discussions with him. Practicing mindfulness every day has helped him turn his life around.
• A co-worker of mine simply came across mindfulness and adopted it. Nothing was really wrong in his life, but he enjoys life so much more now and finds himself very resilient to things that bother other people. He also meditates, but mindfulness is the  practice that has made his life even better.

Jon Kabat-Zinn (photo courtesy of mindfulnesscds.com)

If you would like to learn more about mindfulness, my favourite author is Jon Kabat-Zinn, who has lots of great books and CDs.

Good Reads – “Evolve Your Brain”, by Dr. Joe Dispenza

In the past 1.5 years since my cancer diagnosis, I have been reading voraciously, interested in a wide range of subjects pertaining to healing, nutrition and especially the body/mind connection.  I’ve made notes about all the books I have read, and want to share the best ones with you.

Photo of Dr Joe Dispenza from his website

Dr Joe Dispenza, author of Evolve your brain, was one of the experts in the film ‘What The Bleep Do We Know?” (a highly successful documentary on quantum physics, spirituality, neurology and evolutionary thought).  Some of the points in his book include:

• 90% of people’s emotions are negative. It’s an additive state and we can change that state.
• When we are in a state of creation (the selfless state), the frontal lobe of the brain quiets down the other circuits in the brain (the negative, stress parts of the brain).   Meditation helps liberate the emotion out of the body – emotion exists more in the body than in the mind.
• Meditation can recondition the mind & body.
• The Mind is the Brain at work. We have 100 billion neurons in our brain.  The Mind is the product of the Brain.  So what can change the Brain??  ->  It’s Consciousness.  So when we are Conscious (Aware) this is the state where we can truly make changes.

Dr. Dispenza teaches in-depth courses that shows meditations and exercises to repattern your brain, which repatterns your body. I will be attending his course, and can give you a review of that soon.

His book is definitely worth reading, and it is available in the local libraries.  The middle section is very technical about the brain, too technical for me, so I skipped over that part, but the book is still absolutely worth picking up.

Here is Dr. Dispenza speaking about this topic on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drTKVflFXFQ

A lovely friend of mine named Leslie attended his courses and had truly remarkable results. She has MS (multiple sclerosis) and tells her story here.

Amongst Guns and Ammo

You might think this post’s title found its way onto the wrong blog!

I have to write about the what western society offers up to us, and the dilemma of how we make our choices about it.  Have a look at this photo.  I took this photo in Bellevue, Washington a few months ago.  Spend a quality moment looking at it.  What do you see?  The red ‘Guns & Ammo’ sign? How does it make you feel?

A western society snapshot

At the time I took this shot, I was sitting in the car at a stoplight, and thought “wow, is this what western society is all about?”.  Maybe you see:

• A man holding a sign to advertise his Guns & Ammo shop to the cars driving by.
• An unhealthy looking man.
• 3 women enjoying time together in the sunshine.
• The iconic Microsoft logo on the building in the background.

Personally, when I took this photo, I felt sickened. It was alarming to me, especially being a Canadian, to see blatant advertising for guns and ammunition.

This is a tough subject.  We can turn a blind eye to the mindless ego-based living that we see around us everyday – or, maybe I’m imposing my views on you.  Maybe you don’t see this as a problem at all, but I sure do.

Although it makes me feel sick, and momentarily brings me down to think this goes on in the world, I remain conscious in my choices in how I think and live.  I recognize this exists, and make my choices to live differently than this.

Compelling food for thought, isn’t it.