Supportive Relationships - What Are They?

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Most of us have an image or sense of a supportive relationship. Even if we are not aware of it, we still have it. It develops from the experience of childhood, when parents or close adults were able to mirror or understand our condition, hear our needs and respond to them. That is, they gave us contact, acceptance, care, emotional warmth, shared our feelings and experiences, just patted us on the head or bruised knee, shook us on our knees. And this experience of contact and satisfaction of the need was imprinted as very important and supportive, giving strength and resources - after all, it was just that.

For someone, support may be advice or specific instructions on how to act, for someone help in doing something difficult, for someone a firm handshake or a pat on the shoulder are all different types of support. There can be many more ways to show support.

But we all have an image of support, something that we want to receive in difficult moments of our life. This is often an unconscious image. We did not always define this image in words, did not give it a description, but we have it. Wondering what support means to you? Try to reflect on this topic.

Some have had short-term experience in supportive relationships. The child may have the feeling that the parents expect independence from him, that he will cope on his own. From a certain age, the child's parents could be angry or annoyed when they were asked for help or participation. Those. As a child, this adult somehow learned that he had to cope on his own. In this case, he may have difficulty reaching out to someone for participation and help. He feels a very great need for supportive relationships, but at the same time there is an internal ban on building and searching for them. And this is another reason why it is good to be aware of how you envision a supportive relationship. Do you have an internal ban on their search and alignment?

It can be very curious when people meet with different types of support. For example, husband and wife. The wife presents herself as a warm, emotionally compassionate contact. And the husband is like a specific advice or a specific action. And so, when something happens to the wife, and she unconsciously hopes for sympathy and warm contact, the husband begins to give advice. The wife is not getting what she hoped for. This causes her certain reactions - she is angry, surprised, sad, etc., thinks that her husband does not understand her, etc. The same thing happens in the opposite situation, when the husband needs support. That is, he wants to get good advice, but he gets sympathy. And this, in turn, can cause him to have different reactions and interpretations of his wife's behavior.

Awareness and understanding of what this or that person understands by support, gives him the opportunity to speak more clearly about what he needs. He is more likely to be able to get what he wants and avoid conflict in the relationship.

If we do not realize what kind of support we need, then it is as if we are rewarding our relationship partner with magical power and power. It often seems as if all the power and all the magic of the moment belongs to the other, that it is he, the other, and only he can give me this support and acceptance, which are so important. It is even better if he guesses himself to give this support and understands in what form. As if this support cannot be asked, found, or organized by oneself; as if then it becomes unvaliable and unsupportive.

In the meantime, as we get older, having the skill of caring for ourselves, organizing support for ourselves, seeking help, and being able to ask for help is a valuable and important skill. After all, in fact, the other person should not guess about our condition and automatically take care of us. This can be done by a mother in contact with her baby. She has the means for this - she is in emotional merger with her baby, and therefore often feels his state as her own. She learns to recognize his signals and respond to them, she is with him for so long that she knows from the slightest movements what is happening to him. And this behavior of the mother is very adequate to the defenseless state of the baby. But this is not at all the case in two adults.

In addition to realizing the form of support or supportive relationship that is important to you, you can learn to seek and ask for support, accept that someone might refuse, turn to another. This refers to very important and key skills in taking care of yourself, and therefore, an opportunity to improve the quality of your life, expand it, make it more fulfilling and diversified.

I wish you to find and maintain a warm relationship))

By the way, support is one of the topics of the group that I will conduct with my colleague in January. We will explore this topic with the participants, do exercises and understand how it works. More details can be found at

Your Natalia Fried

Art by Alexandra MacVean