Life has its ups and downs and sometimes that's when you need some help on support. You would expect to get that support from your parents, family or partner? But what if that doesn't happen? How is this possible, what are the consequences and how can you best deal with this? In this blog, we take a closer look.
Support can take many forms such as financial support, giving advice, helping with a task, reassurance and providing a compassionate listening ear[1].
No parental support
In your youth, you often still get support from your parents; in your twenties, you often get more financial support. But that support often stops again when you reach 30. Other forms of support parents may also stop after the age of 30. This often does not go down gradually, but happens "suddenly."[2]
This can come as something of a shock, but it is also often the case that parents are also just a bit older and need more support themselves because of this old age. It is then really just time to fend for yourself.
In this case, if you get a little angry at your parents and that they don't support you, there is a helpful exercise you can do. Namely, you can think of all the things you are grateful for.
What did your parents consciously and unconsciously teach you that you can be grateful for? After all, not receiving support also teaches you independence and that you can count on yourself. Somewhere, there are some really cool things you learned from your parents, perhaps without them consciously doing so. This can turn your feeling of not receiving support from your parents - and if that makes you a little angrier at your parents - into love.
What's annoying is that if you didn't receive emotional support from your parents even in your childhood this can affect you for the rest of your life. As a result, you may be more susceptible to developing depressive symptoms, have lower self-esteem and have difficulty building relationships[3].
In this case, you probably acquired awkward beliefs in childhood that don't help you move forward. In that case, a hypnotherapist can help you change those beliefs. Sometimes the gratitude exercise also works in this case, but it may also be necessary to engage precisely in the conversation with your inner child.
No support from family
Not getting support from your parents is one thing, but if you find that your siblings and/or parents are also not supporting you, this can be extra painful. To your mind, you may have lost your entire family while they are still alive. An extremely painful feeling.
What then?
Even then, you may suffer from feelings of depression. Especially if not experiencing support from your family is a stable condition. Therefore, it does not matter whether you are male or female[4].
In this case, what is important is, above all, your own self-confidence and the idea that you can get something done independently, or with the help of people who are not your family.
Another solution may be to practice with a family constellation. This is a technique where you can check where you put your family in your mental map. Perhaps people in your family are very close to you, so they have a lot of influence on how you feel.
If you can then put them a little further away from you in your mind, their influence can also diminish, and that can cause you to become a little less depressed already.
Sometimes moving family members around in your family constellation can have an immediate effect. For example, I did this exercise myself once. I then moved my youngest child a little further away from me and my oldest child closer. After the exercise my oldest child called me. He had never done this spontaneously before and we had a nice and good conversation. So you see, sometimes the effect can happen very quickly.
In Hypnosis Institute Netherlands' third training course, you will get to work with this technique.
No support from partner
A relationship is something you do together and that means supporting each other, both emotionally and practically. If men do not receive support from their partner, it can cause depression symptoms. Another striking finding in a study on support is that as women get older, they receive less support from their partner (source 1).
If you experience little support from your partner, it is helpful to consider how independent someone can be in the relationship. In fact, research shows that people who can function independently in a relationship are more supportive of their partner than those who do not experience this freedom.
What's interesting is that I once helped someone who had a relationship problem because he was putting his girlfriend on a kind of pedestal, precisely. He wanted to do everything for her, but this caused her to feel that she was no longer independent, which led to arguments. So this is not helpful at all.
Then we also used a visualization to make the relationship more equal in his mind, so he offered the support she really needed instead of suffocating support.
Such visualization can also help you communicate more easily with your partner about what support you need. After all, it is important to express what support you could use.
For example, you may have awkward beliefs about how relationships work, such as that your partner should just sense that you need certain help. Only no one can read minds; even highly sensitive people sometimes don't know what is going on in another person or what help is specifically needed. They mostly sense that something is not right, but what that is about that still needs to be communicated.
In addition, most people are not highly sensitive, so communication remains important.
You can then install helping beliefs by repeating certain hypnotic suggestions , such as:
"My partner needs me to tell him what I need."
"When I support my partner, my partner supports me."
"When I let my partner know what is important to me and what I need help with, I get support."
These are just examples. Depending on the problems you are experiencing in your relationship with support, you may receive other suggestions to help you with this.
No support at work
At work, a certain amount of collegiality is nice, too. Sometimes emotional or practical support in certain activities or projects is helpful. What if work really does let you figure everything out on your own?
Support from your peers is pretty important. Research on teachers and peer support shows that it helps reduce stress at work and improves teacher performance[5]. Peer support can include working together to meet certain goals and making plans about how to tackle something. The more you cooperate with colleagues, the less stress you will suffer.
So figuring everything out on your own can be quite stressful. So what should you do? So it is important then to indicate to your colleagues or a supervisor that you would like to work together more or that you need help.
This can be very exciting if you have beliefs about working hard or that asking for help is a weakness. If you find yourself blocking at the idea of having to go and report something to your colleagues or supervisor, it is helpful to find out what beliefs are causing this.
With regression, for example, you can go back to the first time you got the negative feeling at the idea of asking for help. These are often moments from your childhood, because that's when you consider how life works and how you can best function then.
Then a therapist can then help to "fix" this moment. You then reinterpret the moment so that instead of a blocking belief, you get a belief that helps you move forward in life. There are all kinds of ways to reprime this moment. For example, you can empathize with other people who were also there at the time, you can play the moment completely differently like a movie, or you can start the conversation with your inner child. Depending on your reactions, the therapist will determine the most helpful way for you to change the belief.
Subsequently, you will find yourself asking for help more easily at work and perhaps even offering help more easily. Leading by example, for example, can also do a lot for you.
Want to learn more about hypnosis and how it can help people? Then come to the free online master class.
Or sign up for one of our seminars or trainings, as you will get to work with the above technique so that you can help yourself or just others who are not experiencing support.
Want your problem solved? Then go to bestetherapeut.co.uk
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