Not only does this give us the best chance of receiving the kind of support we need, but it also preserves the quality of our relationships. No one person can be there for us all the time. That's too heavy a burden to place on any relationship. Too much energy coursing through a circuit will finally blow. Instead, the idea here is to spread the wealth, to have a circle of partners, friends, family members, mentors, people who've known you the longest and aren't afraid of your “shadow” material, colleagues for work-related issues, perhaps a therapist or spiritual advisor.
choosing who to turn to—and who not to
San Francisco Chronicle columnist Joan Ryan wrote a wonderful column about who to call when we're in need, in which she talked about a woman named Janie who reached out to a needed friend during an excruciating and dark time:
the night she fully understood her son would not recover from his severe illness. She was crying into the phone…when [her] friend asked if she could call her back. Janie, taken aback, said fine, and waited and waited for the phone to ring. Suddenly, headlights appeared in her driveway, and her friend emerged from the car in her nightgown. “I'll remember that for as long as I live,” Janie says now.
Friends have an inside track and often know just what we need: a young woman with whom I worked, going through an agonizing breakup with the man she had intended to marry, knew she had to talk and cry with her best friend. But she was bowled over with appreciation when this best friend, living on the opposite coast, flew out for the weekend, and regaled her with stories of hilarious revenge. “Let's collect mosquitoes and let them loose in his house!” “Let's order twenty-five pizzas to be delivered COD to his house.” They spent the weekend together going for long walks, crying and laughing together. When her friend left, the young woman knew she was loved and carried that with her as she felt the awful pangs of grieving.
On the other side of the coin are the grievous disappointments, the times we expect someone to come through for us and they don't. I remember working with a young woman whose husband had struck her across the face and, desperately needing comfort, she had called her mother, who lived 4,000 miles away. She was devastated when her mother said, “Oh, Tina, what did you do to get him so mad?”
Tina had been savagely beaten by both parents as a child and had lain shivering as she watched her father beat her mother dozens of times. She herself had gone through years of abusive relationships before marrying her husband, a passionate man who was devoted to Tina and their children. The marriage had lasted many years, but it was always tumultuous, fighting and making up, arguing and settling things. That particular night, however, her husband had lost control and hit her across the cheek. Tina was beside herself and without much thought reached out for her mother.
In a more calm and rational time, Tina would have known not to call her mother, but in an unguarded moment, and quite desperate for support, she forgot what she knew. Now feeling doubly humiliated, she showed tremendous courage by picking up the phone again and calling the friend who could and did help.
As you think about who you would want in your support circle, it's important to consider people's various strengths and limitations. Often we can intuit who will really be there for us and under what circumstances, but sometimes we find out the hard way. I think of Lydia. She is someone who sees the world through her emotions, and each time she turns to her friend Kathy for support she feels worse than before. Kathy sees the world through her intellect and believes Lydia is too sensitive to her emotions, a belief that is often revealed in the way she responds to Lydia's many crises. Understand, there is nothing wrong with either style, but if Lydia needs a “warm fit,” Kathy is probably not her best choice!
We need to find people who can really understand where we're coming from. If we've experienced something extremely painful, say we've lost a child or a parent or we've been battered, it can be lonely and disorienting to talk with someone whose only real experience with pain is rude drivers or loudmouthed bosses. Helpful and healthy communication requires a “good fit.”
connections and vulnerability
There is something about allowing ourselves to open up and be vulnerable to people when we're in need that often results in a deepening of the relationship. And these deeper, more intimate relationships, in turn, satisfy something within us that enables us to deal with the unbearable and discover larger and larger perspectives on our own lives.
I'm reminded of a piece I read, again in the San Francisco Chronicle, by Susan Parker, who writes a column about life since her husband, Ralph, was paralyzed in a bike accident. This particular column was about a trip she and Ralph had taken to see some old biking buddies who had moved to another state. It had been four years since they'd seen each other, but these were the people they had called right after the accident, the kind of people you want to have around when the chips are down.
Aimee and Patrick welcomed Susan and Ralph with open arms and hammers in hand. Patrick insisted on nailing the handicap ramp into their carpet. When Susan protested, Patrick responded, “We're going to replace this carpeting someday anyway.” The four proceeded to talk about what they would all do on this much-treasured visit. Among the many possibilities, Aimee mentioned giving Ralph a bath. “It will be fun,” she insisted. Aimee was a nurse and knew the difficulties Ralph faced in the hygiene department. Susan and Ralph did not have a large enough bathroom or the right equipment, and Ralph had not had a proper bath in a very long time.
Aimee knew the possible repercussions: skin breakdown and sores that can lead to serious health problems, so she arranged to use a wheelchair-accessible bathroom at a local hospital. After putting Ralph into a specialized, waterproof wheelchair, Aimee and Susan soaped him, scrubbed him, rinsed him, dried him, dressed him, and brushed his teeth. “Ralph treated the excursion as if he had won the lottery,” Parker wrote. “‘This is great,’ he shouted as we rolled him out of the hospital. ‘Wow, do I feel good.’”
Without much ado these wonderful friends had given of themselves practically, as well as nonchalantly, offering tons of love and attention, giving Ralph a special treat that would have been very difficult to do elsewhere or otherwise. Giving (and receiving) under circumstances so tender and prone to embarrassment or misunderstandings requires everyone to stand tall in the face of vulnerability and allow the interchange of intimacy and connection. It requires us to become sensitive and aware of our tender spots—it requires us to accept our humble humanity and allow our trusted circle to know us well.
It is in our closest friendships that we can fully realize who we are. Anna Quindlen, novelist, relays it thusly: “I only really understand myself, what I'm really thinking and feeling, when I've talked it over with my circle of female friends. When days go by without that connection, I feel like a radio playing in an empty room.”
As our friendships deepen, we often reveal parts of ourselves that have been tucked away or hidden, even from ourselves…and when somebody reaches out to us, we often discover that we are truly seen. In Chinese Zen, the concept of intimacy is synonymous with enlightenment or realization. Through vulnerability and intimacy, we come to know ourselves and the world. I know this from my own experience:
One day I was at a party with some women friends. I was in a playful mood and began teasing two of them about knowing something they did not know. From my peripheral vision I could see Sandy reaching across to me. Her hand was up, face level. Without any thought and in the flash of a second I reacted. Sensing danger, I pulled back, ducked, and cringed; and because I had no time to hide my vulnerability, I was suddenly exposed. Over the years I had become masterful in covering up my childhood terrors, and I am not surprised when close friends tell me they cannot see the effects of my early life. But when I saw Sandy's hand come toward me, my instinct was to recoil and protect myself.
As it turns out, of course, Sandy was only reaching out to pat my face affectionately; she was totally dismayed by my reaction. And what a shock it was for me to see my terror reflected