Subscribe Via RSSLearning How to Show Support
My husband ran his first half-marathon yesterday, which kind of made me the family cheerleader. I don’t remember him asking me to do anything special for his race…he’s very low-key. So it’s a good thing I knew enough about running to make pasta the night before and scout out a few spots on the race course where I could stand and cheer him on.
What I didn’t want to do was screw up the way I did last year, when my friend ran the same race and I did absolutely nothing besides show up at the finish line. When I saw how far other runners’ supporters were going to encourage them, I realized just how much I could have done to show my friend that I cared. It would have been as simple as asking her or any other runner what people usually do.
It’s like that with so many little things. I’ll realize years later that I’ve missed an opportunity to be a good friend, while everyone else seemed to just get it.
Were they mind readers? What is it that people expect us to just know that they want? What does “showing support” for someone mean?
Once in a while I’ll experience something firsthand and finally understand what I haven’t been doing for other people. Or I’ll ask someone how something makes them feel to get more insight into what they’d like me to do about it. I know someone who used to ask that all the time – “How do you feel about that?” It baffled me until I realized that she didn’t want to make assumptions about how other people felt.
If I still don’t understand what they need from me, I might just ask what I can do to help. I find that even if I sound silly, it usually works out a whole lot better than the alternative, which is to not do anything at all.
9 Responses
The problem with “showing support” is that it’s always so dang subjective. Different people have different expectations in different situations, and sometimes they change by the minute. Seriously.
I know it’s easier said than done, but please don’t beat yourself up. So you could’ve done more for your friend. But does your effort amount to a “screw up”? Not unless you consciously and carelessly gave it a miss. As the saying goes (paraphrased): “We do the best we can with the info we have at the time. And when we know better, we do better.”
I would also interject aimlessly (not directed specifically at you or this post) that just because everyone else seems to know what to do doesn’t mean that it’s the right thing to do. Our society NEEDS people who think outside the box and question the status quo and decide NOT to do “what is expected”. People like us, I guess.
But again, going back to your point about just asking people what they want… yeah, that’s probably the best thing. 
It’s a very moving post. You put very simply something fundamental, I think. We can ask people what they need and how they feel about things. It teaches us what they like and it shows we care. Moreover, many people expect things we do x or y actions for them as if it was obvious or normal. But it’s never that obvious, is it? It’s great to ask, and there isn’t a more direct and empathetic way to care for someone.
I completely understand. I just don’t understand what the right way to care for someone or show them support is. I’m glad you were there for R. Your tweets the other day were heartwarming and I felt the love you had for him.
I could really relate to this post. I am not good either at recognizing when someone needs something, or when it might have just been a nice gesture to do something.
I often times will have some kind of kindness bestowed on me and later realized a million times I could have been similarly kind to someone else.
It’s not that I don’t want to show support to people, it just doesn’t pop in my head ways to do it, or that *now* would be a good time.
Very good post.
I can really relate to this post. I am often accused of not caring about my friends and not “supporting” them. Of course it never occurs to them that I could say the same of them; I realised that everyone has different ways of showing and receiving that elusive thing called ‘support’. What matters to my friends is to show them support in the way they need me to; like you, I have been learning to ask what they want me to do. Still, it is incredibly frustrating when everyone else seems to “just know” and expects us to as well
I don’t have many female friends, probably because of this issue.
I think I’d need to write something on my hand in order to remember to be supportive in the way that women want me to be.
I should probably get into the habit of sending out greeting cards from time to time. Somebody has an exam? Send a card! Somebody goes to hospital? Send a card!
Cards seem quite meaningless to me, but people buy them so they must like them.
A friend of mine from several Lists, (Jane Meyerding, sort of a legend), frequently comments on how things “just didn’t occur to her”. Things she would have been only too happy to do, if she had only thought of them. I know I can relate, and suspect that many of us can. It’s one of the “downside” things that sorta come with the territory. Nothing to beat yourself up over.
It sux to learn the hard way, doesn’t it? Your friends are so lucky, though, that you are thoughtful and aware and notice when you appear to have made a social error and aim to do differently next time. many people, autistic and not, don’t do that.
I had a situation this week with another mom where I thought I was going to have to blurt out, “If there is something going on here that you are trying to say without saying it, you’re going to have to say it, because I am not getting it!” (Fortunately it worked out ok.)
I agree with everyone who is saying that you shouldn’t beat yourself up (you’re only human) and that it’s GREAT that you’ve decided to simply ask what a person needs.
Neuro-typical people may get it “right” more of the time simply because there are more neuro-typical people around. After all, it’s much easier to discern the needs of someone who thinks like you, and the chances of meeting someone who thinks like you are quite a bit higher for an NT than for an Aspie. I find that with my autistic friends, I hit the center of the target a lot more often when offering support than I do with your average NT. Being autistic, I just have a better sense of what an autistic person needs.