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“MIND YOURSELF.” It’s a common sign-off when you’re saying goodbye to a friend. It’s also a good starting point if you’re trying to figure out how to connect with someone you know who you think is feeling less than 100%.
Robert Carley, who helped create the online wellnessworkshop.ie from Suicide or Survive, speaks from personal experience about the value of reaching out to someone who is feeling despondent.
In this video for the #LittleThings campaign by the HSE National Office for Suicide Prevention and partner organisations, he explains how a timely outreach of support and love from his brother helped him:
That’s all it was – a simple truth that was dropped into my heart by someone who really cared for me.
How to reach out
Robert – who is also a trainer and motivational speaker now – says that he teaches people to have a positive attitude. However, he wonders if it is part of the Irish culture to “have an aversion to telling people that they are good and that we love them”.
He recommends that people learn not to be afraid to accept and to give small expressions of love. “My parents were very good at telling us that they loved us.” Now he expresses a simple phrase in his workshops which he thinks can be a mantra for people, both to repeat to themselves and to others:
You’re lovely, you’re loveable and you’re loved.
Robert’s wife Jean died suddenly four years ago from an aneurysm and although he has since found love again, he knows that it was both his faith in God, and the simple extension of sympathy and support from friends that helped him through that dark year.
What got me through was people telling me that they loved me. People are sometimes afraid to contact you because they don’t know what to say. But you know what? The best thing you can do is go to the person, give them a hug and say, ‘I don’t know what to say to you.’ That is enough. The acknowledgement is enough.
Úna-Minh Kavanagh, who has also participated in the #LittleThings campaign, agrees.
Sometimes a little text is that little bit of love that you need.
She says that being a supportive friend can be challenging but that the most helpful thing you can do for a friend in need is to be a good listener.
“I think it might be tougher for guys, they might not speak to each other in that more intimate way,” she says, “but we can all learn to be a bit softer in our approach to someone who is feeling down. It’s probably not helpful to say, “chin up” or to not really listen and be inattentive and looking around while someone is spilling their heart to you.”
The ‘right’ things to say
As a professional in the therapy field, one would presume clinical psychologist Tony Bates would have a lexicon of the ‘right’ things to say to someone who is feeling low.
In fact, he says, there is no real right or wrong words. He thinks that loved ones can have the best instinct on how to connect with someone to let them know they are there for them.
“You know what means something to them,” he says. “It might be making them a cup of tea, offering to go to the cinema, hanging out the washing – any expression of kindness that you know will let them see that you care for them and are there for them.
“The big problem when someone is feeling down is that they feel worthless or that they are of less worth. What we need to communicate to them is that they are of value, that someone sees the good in them when they don’t.”
If you do decide to ask them directly about how they are feeling, Bates recommends that you begin with using the pronoun ‘I’, speaking in the first person so that you are taking the heat off them.
“As in, ‘Maybe I am misreading this but I’m a bit concerned about you right now’. If you speak in the first person about your concerns, that gives people a lot of space. It’s very hard for people to talk about their feelings sometimes. It can be awfully hard to find the language. They feel they are letting down their colleagues, or their children, or their partner and they are not comfortable. Give them time and space to come at it.”
What if someone isn’t responding? Should I leave them alone?
We’ve all been there – noticing a friend is distant and reaching out to them, only to be ignored or rebuffed.
“Don’t take it personally and hang in there,” recommends Tony Bates.
Don’t abandon them. Don’t keep pestering them with ‘what’s wrong with you’ but be a gentle presence in their life and do kind things.
As a founding director of Headstrong, the mental health organisation for young people, he has much clinical experience of how young adults and teens react to loved ones’ concern for them.
“Don’t give up, especially with young people,” he says, “they can provoke us to abandon them but it isn’t necessarily what they want. Some small part of them will hope you won’t give up, but they can’t bear for you to see how messed up they are. Bear with them.”
USEFUL RESOURCES:
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But will it be like the great snow of 1947 which my mother told me about as a child. Seemingly, it started snowing on the last Friday in February and continued into March,paralysing the country and closing roads and rail. Lakes froze over and they held dances and skating on the lakes, Snow drifts buried towns and villages and poor farm animals succumbed to the weather,schools closed and the snow stayed on the ground until May, I just remembered about ‘the great snow’ when I read the article above this morning,RIP mam.
Where did this come from??
@Tommy C: Well it didn’t come up from the Azores.
@Tommy C: The Sky ;)
@Tommy C: Don’t stand around asking questions just run and get the bread.
@Tommy C: sky.
@Tommy C: was forecast since early during the week! Not a surprise!
Now that’s more like it.
Proper feckin March weather.
@Skipper Mac: I’ll take sunshine and dryness over cold and wet any day. Bring back last week’s weather!
Come on Liverpool
@Rodger 5: is the weather shite there to?
@Rodger 5: any Irish men on that team
@Rodger 5: Up the Dubs
@Fergus O’Connor: up the dubs.
Sponsored by Brennans
But what about Global warming???
Cold weather with heavy snow in 1947??. Imagine!!. If we actually look back at weather fore asts over the years we most likely had all kinds of weather around this time. Governments will always try to fi d ways to take our hard earned cash through taxation. Ha
@Catherine Winston: How did you manage to shoehorn a gripe about taxes into the weather?
@Catherine Winston: Is your keyboard working .You’re firing a few blanks there Catherine.
@Catherine Winston: You should probably google climate change
@Catherine Winston: You should probably google climate change
@Catherine Winston: Did you not know that it was 21°c in the UK last week? In February. That’s summertime temperatures in February! And now it’s going to snow a week later and that seems normal to you!? In January in Australia, you could eat baked apples directly from the trees. And “when you look back at weather forecasts over the years”, you see a trend of global warming. “Most likely” isn’t a term scientists like to use.
Heavy snow falling in Kerry
@Darcy: ah shite heading 4 Kerry tommorow mon
@liam ward60: good luck with that
@liam ward60: Buy a few sliced pans and a pound of butter an stay under the covers.
Just started snowing in Clare!
@Sam Harms: oh feck sake Clare playing Limerick today
@John Waters: it’s raining too so not sticking
Glorious summer weather for two days, then back to the pits.
Global warming already working it’s charm I see!
@IrishFreeThinking: I can see the daffodils in my garden looking hopeless today.
@PC Principal:
Fair daffodils we weep to see
You haste away so soon
Your comment gives new meaning to this poetry.
@Honeybee: As a honeybee, your word is gospel in this regard.
It was already snowing before they issued the warning!
Global Warming, Climate Change ???????? Gibberish
Perfect all weather March weather.
March of many weathers,as the old saying goes.
Heavy snow in Tralee. Absolutely no warning of this in the last 24 hours. Yeah, climate change is nonsense!
FAKE weather reports from the journal again.very warm Sunday here in castlebar windows opened and @ 12 16 PM while its overcast here we have absolutely no rain or snow or sleet Yet
@liam ward60: Ah yeah. It’s not raining in your village therefore it’s all a lie.
@liam ward60: 2pm till 8am tomorrow. Starting in the south and working northwards.
@liam ward60: it’s bucketing down sleet and rain in the Burren
@An bhearna: Haha my village?
@David Walters: was also forecast yesterday sat turned out to be blue skys here till around six pm
But definitely not RED.
That’s mad. It’s warmer in Rome.
it’s so warm for the time of year.
have your say