The Support I Have Received

Throughout my life, I have meet people who do not truly support me. They pretend to support me to stroke their ego, hold it over me, and/or to try to get something more out of it, like money. I was recently watching an interview with Karen Civil and she said, “They want you to be good but not great.” This line really resonated with me because I have also come across people like this. They would “encourage” and “support” me until I got to a certain point of greatness. As soon as I hit a certain level, they would be quick to bash me trying to minimize my success and capabilities.

I’m only in my 20’s and I have already meet numerous people who had ill intentions. Their behaviors made me fearful that I could never really rely on other people for support. Anytime people would offer to do me a favor, my immediate response was “What do you want out of this? Never mind I will do it myself” I do not like to ask for help for even the simplest things because some people act like they are doing me great charity or making a great sacrifice. They have made me very cautious of who I seek help from, ask for favors, and truly rely on.

Fortunately, I do have a lot of people who really want the best for me. The ones who truly support me have been challenging my fear. They give me full support and encouragement. And it always feels refreshing and affirming that there are people who actually want the best for me and want me to be best person I can be. Their true support out shines the ill intentions of other people. Their encouraging energy just feels organic and motivates me. Even though I am infamous for going ghost on people, I make sure I show up for my friends to the best of my ability. The support that they give me I make sure if I give it back to them in any way, shape, and form that I can. Our support for each other does not stop after either of us reach a certain point of success, our support continues and magnifies.

Over the past couple of weeks, I have been receiving an immense amount of support from friends, family, and bloggers back-to-back. I am really grateful for the support I receive for my blog, schoolwork, research projects, career aspirations, snapchat posts, and for being my authentic self. Hearing statements like, “I love your blog posts,” “You would be a great therapist,” “You should think about doing x activity, you would be really good at it,” “I look forward to seeing your social media posts,” “I am so proud of you, you are inspirational,” “Do not overwork yourself, relax,” “Keep doing what you are doing,” and other statements really mean the world to me.

Even though I do not seek an excessive amount of external validation, it feels good to know I am in my right place and that other people can support my endeavors over and over again. I never get tired of reading/hearing these messages whether they are one sentence or a whole paragraph, they all are special to me because they are genuine. I have cried multiple times in the last couple of weeks from all the support and love I have been getting. I do not do things for attention so when I do get attention I do not know how to react, I will either say a quick thank you or burst out into tears. I have been trying to figure out an in-between reaction but so far it has been a fail. Anyway, thank you again for the support and love.

Time to Focus on You:

Evaluate your intentions of supporting friends/co-workers/etc. Are you genuinely supporting them, or do you expect something out of it for yourself?

Evaluate the behaviors and possible intentions of those around you. Do they really support you or just claiming to support you?

Photo by Courtney Hedger on Unsplash