The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
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How do I comfort and console others? I could do with some guidance or principles because I am never sure what to say. Some example situations:
I don't want to say "don't worry, everything will be okay", because it is not necessarily true.
Everyone grieves differently, but everyone grieves. Start by identifying the loss. Friend 1 is grieving the future he’d been planning, friend 2 is grieving the dream of what success is like, and friend 3 is grieving his sense of adequacy. These are not the sharp, unexpected grief of someone who’s lost a child; these are the griefs of uncertainty and fears made manifest, and they all have a root in loss of self-esteem as measured by external indicators.
The Elements of Harmony are six relationship virtues which make friendships more solid, whatever else may be happening in the lives of your friends. They are:
It’s hard to deal with your friends’ life struggles, especially when they lose faith in themselves; direct statements from you may come across as a pat answer or as trying to fix them. Often what it takes is just being there for them, possibly making the effort to call them regularly to give them a chance to vent or to explore the meanings of these events. Show these friends they’re meaningful to you by being meaningful to them. Use the Elements as a guide, and you’ll discover opportunities to be a friend.
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