How to Help Your Friend Through a Difficult Time, Part 3

Practical Things You Can Do To Help Your Friend

Just as it is important for you to know the best role for you be in to help your friend through a difficult time, it’s also important to know the practical actions you can take to help you friend. What follows are some basic, tried and true, practical, helpful actions to take.

Be available to your friend. Offer to help. Say how you can help and ask your friend if that would be helpful. Say,“I hear that you are dealing with a difficult challenge. I see its affect on you. I care about you. I know you will get through this. And I want to help. You can talk and I’ll listen. I’ll be with you through this and support you. Would that be helpful?

If your friend declines your help, she’s allowed to do so. Her declination is not a rejection of you personally. Leave the door open. You can always offer again later, if needed. 

If your friend accepts your offer, when you are with your friend, relax. Be non-anxiously present. Smile gently. Believe in your friend. Exude confidence in your friend’s ability to make her way through her difficult challenge.

Give your friend your full attention. Listen closely to your friend’s story. Draw out the story. Say things like,“Tell me more” and “What happened next?” Tell your friend what you heard and ask if you understood correctly: “So, I heard you say ___. Did I get that right?”

Accept and do not try to change your friend’s feelings. Validate his feelings. Say things like, “So, I see and hear you crying. Here is some tissue“ or “Yes, I hear how angry/sad/afraid/guilty you feel. You are allowed to feel exactly as you feel.”

Normalize his feelings. Say, “It’s normal for you to feel the way you do. If I were you, I would feel the same way.”

Your friend will be able to think more clearly and make constructive decisions after her emotions pass…and they will pass.

Just listen as your friend shares her thoughts. There is no need to form opinions about your friend’s thoughts. Thoughts are just thoughts, neither right nor wrong. But some thoughts are more constructive than others. You can ask, “How does thinking that help you move forward?”

Applaud the constructive actions your friend takes that help him move forward with his life: Great move! You did it! Way to go! You rock!

After she makes her way through the challenge, find a way to celebrate with her. She gets all the credit. She has accomplished something difficult to do. It’s worth celebrating in a way that is congruent with her accomplishment.

And finally, congratulate yourself. You have been a true friend. You helped your friend through one of life’s difficult challenges.

Mark W. Neville, MDiv

828-551-8825

www.markwneville.com

On-line Counseling at WeCounsel

Book: Re-Visioning Spirit: A Brief Introduction to Thumotics

www.facebook.com/MarkWNevilleMDiv

Taking Your Health for Granted?

Many of us take our health for granted. As long as we have it, we ignore it.

We only attend to it when it's broken. 

Broken? Wait. Machines break. 

We're not machines.

Right?

We're spirited. We're alive. Taking our health for granted is taking our life for granted.

That's not something to take for granted.

That's not something to attend to only when it's threatened.

That's something to cherish above all else, protect, sustain, and strengthen.

Our life, our spirit, is too valuable to take for granted. 

Affirm life...Start with your own.

I Believe in Survival Training

The fundamental desire of the spirit in every healthy living being is to live. Fundamental to living is surviving. 

Consider the trees and all other plants. They're about surviving so that they can become what they're meant to become. The same is true of animals, including us humans. We spend most of our life doing what we need to do to survive. We work to eat, drink, and protect ourselves from what might harm us so that we can become what we're meant to become.

It is easy for some of us humans to lull ourselves into a false sense of security and believe falsely that we're somehow immune to earth quakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, fires, epidemics, power outages, drinking water contamination or shortage, chemical spills, breaks in food supplies being delivered to our local grocery, public mass shootings, robberies, and other kinds of events that could expose, injure, infect, or kill us.

We do well to acquire basic survival skills. We do well to know how to protect and provide for ourselves and to teach our children to do the same. 

Why?

Because our lives matter. 

We're spirited, alive. The fundamental desire of the spirit within us is to remain alive. We owe it to the spirit that makes us alive to do all we can to keep living. 

When we do not believe in surviving and living so that we can become what we're meant to become, something is wrong. When we live in soci-economic system that nurtures a false sense of security and weakens our survival skills, something is wrong. Something spirit-related is wrong. Our spirit is not healthy.

I believe in spirit. I believe in living. I believe in having the basic skills of survival that enable us to remain spirited and become who we are meant to become. I rejoice when I meet others who feel the same way.   

Autoimmune Disease of the Spirit

Some say that what we believe is what ultimately matters. Some go so far as to say that our faith or lack thereof has eternal consequences.

When I look at myself and everyone else who makes up the world, what I see is this: What we do matters. Our actions matter.

Our actions have consequences. Our actions makes a difference. They affect everyone else that makes up the world. Our actions change the world. Our actions actually create the world. Yes, we, all the living, create this world as we go.

Our spirit is what animates us. It actions us. Because we're spirited, we're alive. We move. We act. We create. We make a difference.

The difference we make either affirms or denies our own and other's spirit. Our actions create a world that either promotes or denies life.

Denying the power of our actions, denying the importance and consequences of our actions, denies the spirit in us that actions us. It denies life. 

Saying that what we believe is what ultimately matters, is a symptom of a spirit-related illness. It's an example of a human illness in which a human's spirit is turned against itself and denies rather than affirms its own life. It's a symptom of the autoimmune disease of the spirit.