Supportive Responses Flashcards
👨👩👦👦 Why are you so close to your distant cousins?
*I’m not entirely sure, but I think it’s because after Tom died, Sam became sort of a father figure to Mark, and so Mark was always around growing up, and just joined in all the family functions.
👭 I have no friends.
*Online friends - shared interest, shared experiences, release valve to talk about stressors
*Only close friends - Evalina, Noelle
*Weak ties - book club
*Portland - if in person friendship is important, do you think you’ll be able to make new friends moving to Portland
⚧ Noelle
*You may have to accept first before you can understand.
*Put down your resistance to the change and understanding will come. What we resist persists.
♋️ Cancer
- PTSD - Instead of having to recover from an addiction, you have to recover from this emotionally trying experience.
*Boundaries - Reading medical research can trigger a panic attack. Looking at a medical research article is better than looking at forums with personal stories.
*Replace what-ifs with even-ifs
*Mixed emotions - You can have negative feelings like worrying about cancer and also positive feelings of gratitude about your life. They are not mutually exclusive.
👩👧👧 Mom
*Feedback - As a couple, we can give each other feedback, but trying to give your mother feedback and hoping it will eventually lead to change doesn’t work.
So instead, you have to set boundaries. It takes 2 for there to be a conflict. Your mom over reacts and everything becomes a meltdown, that’s her manufacturing drama for herself to make everyone walk on egg shells around her.
*The A in ocean is for disagreeable.
*Example - influence how you vote
* From Brene Brown, trauma (being shamed and controlled during childhood) takes away our ability to be imperfect, authentic, vulnerable.
*Suffering = pain x resistance. You experience a lot of trauma in your childhood, and living with that pain means you need to accept it. When you try and push it away and say I’m more mature now and don’t feel the emotional hurt from that experience, the experience is just going to push back.
*Instead, that is part of your story, and the story continues with you being here and flourish by having a stable job, and fulfilling special interest, a loving marriage shows how resilient you are.
*Pick your battles - Is it worth arguing over cherry jelly? Is it the principle?
⏳ Feeling overwhelmed / never have enough time
*Validate - I’m sorry you feel that way. I’m here for you.
*It sounds like you have a lot you want to get accomplished and you’re trying to squeeze it all into one sitting or afternoon / evening. What are the top 3 things you want to accomplish?
*Is there anything I can do to take something off your plate, or do you just need some space to be with your feelings and plan out your to-do list?
*It sounds like you’re taking on too much. Is there something you can change so you go from being overwhelmed to just whelmed?
* Feeling overwhelmed very typical emotion for people who are both neurodiverse and neurotypical. They think they will derive meaning from completing every thing on the to-do list hoping it tames the chaotic mental churn
*For neurodiversity overwhelm can be compounded because of sensory overload. These are sometimes called energy drainers and they include things like lack of sleep, too much social media, too much sensory input.
👪 Parenting - Identity
*Identity - there is an inherent desire not to give up your identity to only being a mom
*Example - 2-year old to a mommy and me swim classes. We agreed that it wasn’t about swim classes at all, and our kid should probably take swim classes at some point in their childhood, although maybe not at 2. It was more about not buying into the idea that your sole focus is being a mom.
*Fear of being a good parent - you can’t squeeze 18 years of good parenting into a few minutes.
👪 Parenting - “You’re going to be a better dad than I’m going to be a mom”
*If you don’t have certain behaviors modeled for you by your parents, those may not be your default response in situations. For example, resolving a conflict through tempered discussion instead of angry argument.
*But like anything, you can learn through research and practice. You can learn Photoshop taking a class and by practicing, just like parenting you can learn by reading and but there will always be some that you won’t learn until you can practice.
*When you first started gardening and would make these crazy concoctions to spray on plants, then over time you learned to let go of controlling the outcome of the garden and just create the conditions for things to grow.
Generic negativity
Address your own emotions first. Is she just being salty?
*MAGIC
*Comfort or solutions?
*validate, show support, empathy, compassion through the stress, give advice if you ask for it, and watch out for unhealthy coping mechanisms, and then invite you out and remind you it’s possible to feel better over time
*Avoid judgement, leading questions or criticism
*Avoid trying to fix things, especially with your own methods (self improvement techniques)
*You’ve admitted that sometimes you have no complaint filter (high at Barton), is this one of those times, or is the situation causing you immense stress?
🔪 Someone wrote something negative about the Bundy blog (comment)
*From Brene Brown, Trying to win over the haters trades in your authenticity for their approval.
*Brown says we gain access to our worthiness when we can let go of what others think, stop performing, perfecting, pleasing, proving.
Why didn’t you take the relationship seriously at first?
*We started dating when I was only 24.
*I didn’t know myself back then, I didn’t know what I wanted out of a relationship, and I wasn’t looking for a long-term relationship.
*I also found it hard to relate to you at times, because I found the way you talked to me somewhat abrasive, and I thought that meant you weren’t happy with me, eg shaming me for liking Lady Gaga.
*But over time I realized that criticism and no complaint filter was part of who you were.
*I wish things had started out differently for us, but we spend our lives trying to distance ourselves from the parts of our past that don’t fit, we stand outside our story.
👺 Horror
*MAGIC
*It’s true, I don’t go out of my way to feel scared
*You have spent a lot of effort curating your taste in movies, TV shows, books, interior design, and music, and I’m worried about you placing too much of your self worth into issues of taste, because it can be disappointing not to have your taste validated, especially if I’m not able to clearly articulate why I don’t like the same things you like. I think this stems from a desire to be authentic.
*I experience Empathic distress where when I see someone else in pain, it makes me very uneasy
