51. How to (Actually) Help a Sick Friend
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How to Help a Sick Friend:
Jason Snell (http://jasonjsnell.com/) and I have been friends for 12 years. Initially, we trauma-bonded and built our friendship on codependency, then, years later, we got lucky enough to build a healthy, nourishing, peaceful and fun friendship. Jason—lucky for him— happens to have multiple close friends who have struggled with extreme chronic illness. Why did I bring him on? Because he has subtly been an extraordinary friend through all of our experiences. In this episode, find out how to help a sick friend and what made Jason’s friendship through illness so different from others. Find out what keeps a friendship intimate, strong, light, and generally fulfilling for both parties in the midst of chronic illness or simply a very dark time. But, even further, listen in if your interested in making the switch from pseudo-intimacy to a deeper intimacy, the shift from enmeshment to love.
Discussed in this episode:
- Healing Trauma
- Growing up in an alcoholic home
- Trauma-bonding
- How to help a sick friend
- How to be a friend through illness. On either side
- Enmeshment vs. bring a good friend
- Getting permission to help
- Walking a fine line of being loving and detached
- Over identification with traumatic childhoods
- Conflating intimacy with intensity
- How to effectively communicate needs
- Keeping things normal within the friendship
- Accepting others
- Effectively getting your needs met
- Sex abuse
- Empathy
- Letting go of the “helper” role
- The question, “How are you feeling right now?” and why it’s important
Resources:
Weekly Challenge:
This is the kind of weekly challenge that will take a lifetime of practice. (For me, anyway). These next couple of weeks, we work on accepting others. Look at what it is in you that can’t accept someone exactly as they are today. To take it a step further, consider if this person is falling short of meeting your needs. Now, instead of trying to change this person, ask yourself where you can get these needs met elsewhere ( Bonus points if needs are met within yourself!). This will come in handy when you’re wondering how to help your sick friend. Help yourself first. And, it will MOST certainly come in handy if you are sick.
Stay accountable, my friends. Write to me here or message me on instagram @sheajackie
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Happy Listening, my friends!
Fun + Love,
Jackie