How do I help my struggling partner

1. How do I help my struggling partner?

2. Often when I speak at events I am approached by an audience member during the break asking for tips on how they can support someone they love who experiences mental ill-health. Their desire to help is strong but the idea bank is running close to empty. They often find their situation gruelling, exhausting, and even heartbreaking. Frequently they feel like their own wellbeing is becoming compromised.

3. After receiving a message from someone in my network on this topic recently, I thought it might be useful to share some ideas about how you could support a partner who’s struggling while maintaining your resilience and wellbeing. Hold onto hope. The first thing to remember is that nothing lasts forever. When things get difficult or particularly dark it can be hard to hold onto hope and the bigger picture perspective that everything changes. There are ebbs and flows in everything. This particularly difficult period will not last forever.

4. Holding onto a sense of hope that things can and will get better is so important, not just for your partner’s mental health and overall sense of light in your household but also for your own mental wellbeing. Research has shown hope to be significantly correlated with enhanced interpersonal relationships and greater physical and psychological well-being, amongst other things. High hope individuals have a higher likelihood of viewing stressful situations as challenging rather than threatening, which reduces the intensity and escalations of stress.

5. Positive storytelling and hope journaling are two strategies you could consider to increase your sense of hope. Be aware of the language you use when telling the story of your life to others or yourself as well as the daily stories you are telling yourself. Could your perspective come from a place of hopefulness for the future? Hope journaling is the practice of writing around the topic of hope in your life. You can use question prompts such as: “Where do I have hope in my life?” “How can I create a greater sense of hope for myself and my partner?” “What activities/conversations make me feel hopeful?” You can create a daily practice of asking yourself “Where did I feel hope today?” This starts to prime your brain to look for hope.

6. Create a habit of celebrating the small wins with your partner. Did they smile today? Maybe they went for a walk or made a healthy food choice. When a cloud of heaviness starts to hang over us or our relationship we tend to stop seeing the little moments of forward progress. Putting conscious intent into noticing the small moments of forward momentum and improvement helps bring our focus back to the positive and the possibilities of change. This strategy need not only apply to your partner’s behaviour. Recognise the moments where you were able to be extra patient or felt moments of love and joy as well.

7. Be aware of how you view your partner and the beliefs you hold about them. There is a theory called the observer-expectancy effect, which suggests that reality can be positively or negatively influenced by the expectations of others. One of the first studies to look at whether expectations positively influenced performance was conducted by Harvard psychologist Robert Rosenthal and elementary school principal Lenore Jacobson in the 1960s. They chose students at random and told the teachers that these children had scored particularly highly on a Harvard aptitude test and were expected to be high performers.

8. Donna’s keynotes and workshops can be customised to your objectives.  She will inspire and engage your team to thrive in life. Most popular topics include: Mental Health:  We Need To Talk Resilience:  Floundering to Flourishing

9. The study tracked these children’s performance over the next few years to see how the teachers’ expectations would affect them. The results showed how students, where teachers had higher expectations, had a higher likelihood of making greater gains in their academic performance. This psychological phenomenon has now been coined the “Pygmalion effect” after a Greek myth regarding a sculptor who falls in love with a statue he carved. Researchers believe that his Pygmalion effect occurs because of the way our beliefs shape our behaviour.

10. COMPANY NAME - Donna Thistlethwaite CONTACT PERSON NAME - Donna Thistlethwaite POSTAL ADDRESS - Everton Park QLD 4053, Australia EMAIL ID - Donna@DonnaSpeaks.com.au PHONE NO. - 0419 120 601 https://donnathistlethwaite.com.au/