What does "support" actual mean?

Susan Peirce Thompson often tells people who relapse that they more "support." But ... what does that actually mean?

I was thinking about this listening to a recent coaching call. Susan usually uses "support" to mean other people: buddies. Mastermind groups. Making three phones a day. Finding someone who has really strong bright lines and asking them to be a buddy.

For an extrovert, I can see why these would be terrific.

As an introvert, they didn't work at all for me.

I had little success with buddies. One of my buddies dropped out because her family went through a terrible loss. Another was so condescending that I found myself feeling worse after talking with her. Another was wonderful but I found myself pretending to be doing better at BLE than I really was because I just wanted to get the daily check-in over. I dread phone calls, so a required three daily phone calls would push me right out of BLE.

I also never even found the FB BrightLifers group as helpful as I'd hoped:

-- People posting about their BLE victories just depressed me because I wasn't having any victories.
-- People posting about their BLE challenges just made me feel sad with them.
-- When I posted, I tended to get a lot of "rah rah" posts that felt good but didn't actually give me much help.

But I did eventually find the support I needed. It wasn't from contact with other people. Here's what support looks like for me:

-- Writing a regular blog post.
-- Listening to BLE and sober podcasts.
-- Reading sober blogs (god, I wish there were more BLE blogs).
-- Practicing extreme self-care (saying no, frequent baths, getting to sleep early, giving myself small non-food treats for staying sober)
-- Taking workshops and reading books all the time -- on meditation, yoga, self-care.

In other words, support can take a lot of different forms. That's why I made a list of my 40 favorite sober eating tools. You can find it HERE. In my view, any one of these tools is a powerful form of support.

The key to success is finding out what support means for you.

Try lots of things. If you've relapsed, try doing 5 things. If that doesn't work, try 10. Try different things. Find the support that works for YOU.

Disclaimer: This site is not officially affiliated with Bright Line Eating or Susan Peirce Thompson. The opinions expressed here are entirely my own.