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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.”
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Wooohooooo. I’m trying to get the cash together to service my 03 car so it can pass the NCT.
Put it in without going to a mechanic, it could pass. Even if it fails, you’ll have a sheet of issues to resolve. Much more cost effective this way.
Thanks for the tip :-)
I never understand why you would buy a new car
Luxury? Knowing you’re the only person who has ever owned it and that nothing will be wrong?
So buy it once and then you’ll understand.
Thanks for clearing that up
I wonder how many people drove to anti water charges demos in a new car, with 95,000 being sold it must be a few hundred, or even a few thousand. A mid sized family car starts at €30,000, and a lot more if you go for a decent specification, that would buy a lifetime of water for a family.
Can we have a free cars demo next?
Donaill, “……and that nothing will be wrong…….”. What a lovely idea. That and the Tooth Fairy. Presumably you are a car dealer. Better wait a year and have the initial warranty stuff sorted, as well as benefitting from the depreciation.
However, someone had better keep on buying new or the nearly-new market will dry up.
Go to England and get a higher spec for cheaper.
Great news. I’ll be looking to buy one of these cars for a fraction of the current price in about three years time!
More proof for the naysayers that FG are turning this country around. What will the shinnerbots say now?
Sure It’s all the Fg cronies packed on the boards of quangos that’s buying them
Surely Ed, you can come up with a better one than that.
Well said James. Its easy to be against everything. Its a typical SF/IRA response to jump on the populist bandwagon. People like ed have no concept of the real world. Next they will be blaming FG for the bad weather.
In fairness things are improving around the country.
If they were bad we would blame the government.
So in turn if it gets better they should get some credit.
And NO I’m not a FG or FF voter!
Nope fraid not. no joking on this site yesterday then
cant understand why everybody doesnt buy a new car sure you could get a car worth 10,000 for only 20,000 when you add on the vat, excise duty and vrt.
This sounds like a feel good loaded article! Maybe there isn’t enough €500 cars to go around now!
Commercial vehicles sales, up good to hear.
Irish water fleet
Recession my arse…
We should Put up road tax instead of water charges
Yea cause it worked really well the last time…..not!
people can afford 30-40K new audi… they can afford to pay bit more road tax
Tax goes on engine size and emissions.
So your argument is a little on the stupid side
Thomas, are you taking the piss? 5% of your already overpriced motor tax currently goes to cover water charges.
There really is no point working in this country anymore.
bring in the luxury car tax instead of water charges
Modern expensive cars so technically advanced and have such low emissions now that the emissions based tax system doesn’t work not fair. So it should be based more on co2 emission based on manufacture. Larger more elaborate car’s are more polluting to manufacture so luxury car tax system is only fair
There’s already very heavy taxes on new cars Thomas.
The most polluting car to manufacture is a Nissan Leaf electric car because mining the hundreds of tons of material from which the hundreds of kilos of toxic heavy metals contained in the batteries is a very dirty polluting process. And then the poisonous batteries have to be disposed of when the electric car is scrapped.
in fairness motor tax is just another unfair tax on the poor. if you cant afford a new car then you have to pay exorbitant tax based on the size of your engine
Give the poor free cars I say Gerry! Anything else?
no f.g reg just have the same emmissions based tax on all cars regardless of age. its just about fairness, wouldn’t expect a f.g apologist to understand that though.
will never buy a new car, hope all those idiots enjoyed paying VRT on their new motors
have your say