Hey, it's Dr. Susan Peirce Thompson. A little while ago we asked our Bright Lifers™ what their very, very favorite vlogs of all time were, and this vlog here called "How to Give Loving Support" came to the very top of the list. So, we're going to go back to our best of the vlog series here, and this vlog will not only help you interact within the Bright Line Eating® community, but I predict it will have an impact on all your relationships for the better. Check it out.
I don't know if you caught this, but over the last couple of weeks we launched a course called "Bright Line Freedom." It's the second time we've offered it. It's an amazing course. People just got so much out of it the first time it's going to happen again. And we launched Reboot Rezoom™ a few months ago and something happened at the beginning of Reboot Rezoom that relates to this vlog. What happened was both of these courses are really fostering of community support and connection. It's not required, but it's encouraged and facilitated that people call each other, make connections, support each other, and, in fact, in Bright Line Freedom, there's a huge focus on this part of us that wants to isolate us, to keep us safe when we're struggling to keep us safe from criticism, from judgment, from feeling less than or not a part of the group, from being rejected a part that wants to keep us safe. It's called the Isolator, and Everett Considine, who's running Bright Line Freedom is the world's expert in the Isolator. This particular Part, it shows up particularly strongly in food addiction and food addiction. Recovery when we eat the force of the Isolator is almost overwhelming to keep us from getting the support that would help us to Rezoom quickly and effectively. Even in me, I am an extreme extrovert. I've got tons of friends, and even in me when I'm struggling, I feel the Part of me that wants to step away, figure it out on my own, write the situation on my own, do better, feel better, get myself back into a better place, and then come talk to my friends about what happened. Talking about it in the moment is really hard because the Isolator keeps us from doing that.
Anyway, Reboot Rezoom was also a course that had a lot of fostering of community support, and something happened in the first few weeks of Reboot Rezoom that I totally didn't expect or anticipate. I heard from a few people, this wasn't endemic or widespread, it wasn't a lot of reports, but I heard a few reports of people saying, "Hey, I just called this person off the phone list, and I was struggling and I felt really judged. Lectured. Moralized. The support I got was not helpful." I thought "Really? In our community?" And then I thought, of course! We pull from society and how to effectively support someone who's struggling or support someone at all is not really well known or communicated or shared in our culture. This is not a skillset that's like part of elementary school, part of high school, part of college, part of therapy, part of really, when do you learn this? So, I thought I would shoot a vlog, and someone actually wrote me a private Facebook message saying, would you please shoot a vlog on this? We have a subset of our community that could really use to up level their skills in the effective, compassionate, supporting people domain.
First of all, I just want to say if you're watching this and feeling like, "Oh shoot, I wonder if I've hurt people," or whatever, I just want to express love and compassion for you. It's okay and we're all learning in all the ways that we're learning. It's one of the things that's beautiful about this community is that we love and support everybody to be right where they're at and to learn what they need to learn. That includes the instances where we're trying to support people in loving them where they're at and we drop the ball, and we actually didn't really know how to do that well.
So, what are the principles of effective support? They're pretty few. They're pretty few. I am going to start with a blanket rule because I want to give you a cheat sheet that you can just kind of jot down literally on a sticky note this big and just keep by your phone or whatever. Keep in your phone. The master rule is to never give advice. Never, never give advice. I could also sort of sub-bullet under that. Never try to help, meaning never try to help them figure out what to do. Now, there's a reason why when someone's, for example, struggling to keep their Bright Lines Bright and you try to help them figure out what to do, it goes sideways because helping them figure out to do means like, well, are you prepping your food in advance and are you making your phone calls and maybe you could eat your dinner earlier? So, there's not as much space between lunch and dinner. Helping them with that is basically joining forces with their Food Controller. The Part of them that's inside of them that's already saying, "We should be prepping our food." And "Why are we letting so much time go between lunch and dinner?" And "How come we're not making more phone calls?" And "We got to keep our Bright Lines Bright." And that Part of them is really afraid of being hurt by the food anymore, afraid of the weight, continuing to go up, afraid of failing at this, like you failed. They failed at every other attempt at everything else before that part is already freaked out and it's in a war with the Food Indulger Part that's like, "This is too extreme and I can't do this for the rest of my life." And "We've got a birthday dinner on Friday." And "Are you telling me that I have to bring my scale or only eat a salad and chicken breast," or dah, dah, dah.
There's a Rebel or an Indulger Part that is in a war with the Food Controller Part. And when you start to troubleshoot what they could do to make it all better, when you start helping or giving advice, you are basically getting into the boxing ring and exacerbating that war between those Parts that already exist. I promise you, if the person's been around Bright Line Eating at all, they know they should be prepping their food. They know they should be making phone calls. They know they should only be keeping four to six hours between meals. They know. So, it's not helpful. It just basically joins forces with the Food Controller and makes them rise up with that Food Indulger spirit and say, "Well, f you. This conversation isn't going well. I already knew all that and this isn't helpful and maybe I just want to go eat." It's not helpful.
So, starting off with that, now I want to sympathize with the folks in our community who keep their Bright Lines Bright and are in the position of talking on the phone with people who aren't keeping their Bright Lines Bright and how hard that is. Because if you're in that position where you keep your Bright Lines Bright, the commitment it takes and the surrender that you made, and you know that it's not easy and you're doing it and that it's possible to do it, and it's so tempting to see this person you're talking to on the phone is different from you and why aren't you stepping up to the plate here? It's doable and I want you to want to do it. I want you to get your act together. Essentially, what I want to share that might be a helpful sort of reframe on that is that that person who's in the food right now or not really surrendered to this way of life or way of eating or whatever, isn't that different from you. What they are is that they're in a different place than you on the arc of the trajectory of the journey. They may be back where you were a few years ago or a decade ago or whatever, when you weren't willing either. Didn't you get to the point of surrender and Bright Line Eating because you beat your head against the brick wall for a long time? So, they're just where they're at on that trajectory and who knows what they need to go through to finally deepen. But I will tell you now, here's the cheat sheet of what to do, and the good news is it's so simple, so easy, and so effective, you essentially have to do nothing. It's magical. Try it the next time you're talking on the phone or face-to-face with someone who's struggling in any way or in Marco Polo or in Voxer or any of the number of apps that we use to support each other in Facebook, here's what you do. It's so simple.
You mirror back what they just said, and you resonate with the feelings. If you're in a live conversation with them, you can just mirror back what they said. I know for a lot of people, this feels kind of canned and inauthentic if they just shared, "I just ate a handful of nuts after dinner and I'm fighting with my husband and my mother-in-law's in the hospital and I'm fighting with my husband about that." So, they just shared a bunch of stuff and you're thinking, "Eating those nuts didn't help. That wasn't the right thing to do. Is your food written down?" You have all these thoughts about what they could be doing. It seems so kind of lame that just saying, "Whoa. So, let me just mirror back what I hear you saying. Your mother-in-law's in the hospital and you and your husband are not getting along over how to approach that, and there's a lot of friction there. And to make matters worse, you just grabbed a handful of nuts after dinner." That's kind of where it's at, and then they'll just continue to talk and there will be something in them that will sigh a sigh of relief. They're heard, they're seen, they're safe, they're not judged, they're not excluded, they're not moralized with, and the war between the Food Indulger and the Food Controller starts to relax and you just by your very safe presence, start to help them sink into their highest authentic self where they already will know how to navigate what's next. You just mirror back what they just said, and the more heat and conflict and pain is in what they're going through, the more important it is to say nothing, but just say back what they just said.
You can also add in a mirror of the feelings, "That sounds so hard. Oh my gosh, I can hear the pain and the tension in your voice. So much conflict going on in your house tonight. Wow." All you got to say. And when you learn this ninja move, it's sort of like judo. You realize you don't have to solve their problem, you couldn't solve their problem. You're not in the situation with the full understanding of the range of what they're going through. And the minute you try to offer a solution, it's like, "Well, you didn't know that." You're saying, "Well, why don't you prep your food in the afternoons?" It's like, well, you don't know the details, right? There's no way to get in there and troubleshoot with them. Never offer advice. Never offer advice. Once in a while, I'll know someone well enough that I'll know that they actually want my advice or they'll say it. "What do you think?" In which case, before I ever offer advice, I always ask permission. "You're asking me to weigh in on this?" "You really want to know what I think?" "Is it all right if I share my thoughts?" Mandatory before offering advice or your thoughts in any way other than that you mirror back what they said, and you sympathize with the emotions. If they're doing great, you can also mirror back some of the emotion of like, "I hear the energy in your voice. This is a big deal for you." Whatever it is, the promotion, they just got the four days, four years of Bright Lines, they have whatever. It's right. "I hear it in your voice. This is huge for you." Listen to the fluctuations in their voice, and you can comment on that sometimes. Say, "Whoa, when you started talking about that, your voice got really deep and somber. This is emotional for you, huh?"
It's all you got to do. Be a safe space. The feeling is people when they're going through stuff, feel isolated. They feel like they're in an igloo at the South Pole with nothing but a candle that's going to burn out in about six hours. And what you are doing, your job is to show up at their igloo door, door, crawl inside and just say, "You're not alone. I'm sitting here with you. Let's be alone at the South Pole together. This is scary and isolated, isn't it?" It's all you got to do. Your presence is enough. People have their answers inside of them, and with enough safety and enough compassion, they will know what the next right move is. So, that's my cheat sheet for all the beloved people starting Bright Line Freedom as you go to support each other on this journey, and you start to hear the myriad things that people are holding and navigating and going through on their bright line eating journey, that is my cheat sheet for how to provide loving support, and that's the weekly vlog. I'll see you next week.
