Who Are the People You Turn To?
Who are the people you turn to for support? The people you choose to have with you at your special times like holidays and celebrations? The person or persons you want to talk with in good times and bad?
Who is really there for you? Who’s in and who’s out?
Research demonstrates that our well-being is tied to our connections with other people who love and support us. Our well-being improves when there are people in our lives who can help meet our physical, emotional and spiritual needs. If connection with others is so important for our health, it’s important to know who is really there for us!
Sometimes though, the people who love us most live far away. Sometimes the people who been giving us support get sick or die. Sometimes the people who are supposed to nurture and care for us are abusive instead. Then what?
In situations like these, we can help ourselves by creating a psychological family* to provide us with the unconditional physical, emotional and spiritual support we need. We can choose real, live accessible people to make up our psychological family, as well as people who may not be physically available but continue to exist in our hearts and minds. A psychological family can include “real” family members near and far, and/or other people such as friends, neighbors, fellow book-club members, fellow church members or anyone else who can provide human connection and support.
A few months ago I was asked to join the psychological family of my former running coach, Mike. I doubt he would have used the word psychological family, but in essence, that’s what his Oct 2013 phone call to me was about. On the call, Mike informed me he had cancer and would likely die within a few months. He requested that I serve as part of his “help team”. Specifically, he wanted me to screen all of his business phone calls, take care of the ones I could, and bring to his attention ONLY the very important ones that needed his personal input. Of course I agreed, and joined a few others he had asked to serve in other roles. Mike took initiative to create the “family” he needed, because his own two adult children lived thousands of miles away. Although Mike knew they loved him and he kept their presence in his heart, he needed to expand his family to people that were physically present. He thought of a few people he knew and trusted, mustered the courage to call, and invited us into his “family”. As Mike built his psychological family by getting help from people that were physically present, he was able to conserve his limited energy for staying connected to his adult children and grandchildren by phone and electronic communication.
We can learn from Mike about the importance of taking responsibility for our own support. Like him, we may need to be proactive and assertive.
Even deceased loved ones can be included in our psychological family. If they provided comfort to us while they were alive, we can continue to keep them in our hearts and minds now. We can remember what they said, and say it to ourselves as if we are now their proxy. We can keep a symbol of them in our lives–a ring, a photo, an item of clothing, a song. We can think of them when we need support. What might they say to encourage us now? What might we say to them?
The following exercise, developed by Pauline Boss, PhD, can help you discover and shape your psychological family:
Who Is In Your Psychological Family?
Take a blank sheet of paper and draw a large circle on it to represent the boundary of your family. Fill it in with stick figures, initials, or formal genogram symbols to represent the people you think of as family.
*Who is in?
*Who is out?
*Whom do you want to have attend your most special occasions—birthdays, graduations, and weddings? Whom do you want to see on religious holidays or at your holiday table?
*Whom do you want to be with you in times of joy or sorrow?
*Whom do you trust to be there when you need help?
*Who is there for you when you need to express your thoughts or ask for help?
*Who has given you support?
*Who is fully present for you so that you don’t have to feel alone?
*Who is cognitively and emotionally available to you?
We all need someone like family to be there for us—someone who can play the role when real family members cannot—when a parent is ill, when a sibling is far away, when sons and daughters have their own children to care for. Seek others who can fill the roles when your own family members cannot. Your own health depends on it.
Challenge: Complete the above psychological family exercise by writing your answers down, and share your results with at least one other person.
*Note: Psychological Family is a term coined by Pauline Boss, PhD, emeritus professor at University of Minnesota.