‘We all are here for one another’ – Role of social support in building resilience during COVID 19 P

‘The time when The world had turned upside down, With blackness swept over every town The time when The laughter had suddenly disappeared Leaving all of our dreams in a sudden fear’

The beginning of this new decade has been a turning point in our lives. The pandemic has brought an ocean full of challenges and difficulties. Many of us are suffering because of this tough time. Sailing through rough waters was not easy at all. The feeling of helplessness, hopelessness, loneliness, and uncertainty was gradually looming larger each day. We all were struggling to keep ourselves away from the negativities around us and tried our best to not let the external locus affect us. But at the same time, living through the same life every day has become somewhat monotonous and stressful.

However, did you ever wonder that what is the one instrument that has helped us cope with this distress? How we all felt connected and could relate to the sufferings of one another?

It is all because of the social network that provided us immense social support and this support is an important instrument in combating our distress and helping us to cope with it. It is a way of making us believe that we are loved and cared for. Any form of help is available to us in difficult times. Social support ranges from providing emotional support to being instrumental in terms of providing tangible aid and assistance. It has proved to be an effective stress buffer in times of COVID when we all were going through the same scenario. It is one of the most effective ways of assuring us that we are not alone and we have a handful of people around us who love us and care for us.

Supporting each other in times of need is instrumental in binding us all together especially in this COVID 19 Pandemic, which has proved to be disastrous. Thousands of people have lost their loved ones. Hundreds of children have lost their parents and have nothing to look up to. In such a situation when we all feel stuck in life and bound due to the constraints of the pandemic, it’s important to extend our hands further and join in with the people who need us. When things look fine but they may not be great for others. Therefore, checking upon people is necessary because we hardly can predict what a person is going through. We never know the extent to which the pandemic has been bitter to some.

One of the simpler ways of taking care of our mental health is to support and provide help to others. By social support we do not only mean to say, extending hands to others and helping others to overcome challenges while forgetting about ourselves. Social support is a two-way process. It requires us to unmute ourselves and ask for help when one is suffering rather than struggling all alone. Talking to our loved ones and relating to their experiences helps us to ensure that we have people standing strong beside us.

Now the question posted is how we will support each other without being physically and substantially present?

Social support does not require us to be physically present. There are so many subtle ways in which one can contribute to improving their mental well-being and those around them.

We can have a live chat session where people are interacting and sharing their life experiences or venting out their frustration and exhaustion. This can be done through various digital platforms readily available to us. To feel connected to each other in these tough times, we can engage in various sorts of fun activities. Activities such as organizing online games, taking part in various sessions together, binge-watching together, etc.

All this will help in adding some novelty to our monotonous routine and to give some essence of freshness and composure to our mind, lessening it from the burden and help our mind feel relaxed and free for some time from any kind of stress. At the least checking upon each other frequently through messaging and calls is a way to assure the struggler that, the better days are yet to come and they are not alone.

The purpose of this article was not just to cater to the needs of the people having huge social networks around them. We should also take into consideration all those people being left out, having no one to rely upon. For those people who don’t have their families and friends around, it is important to mark out here that social support is not necessarily gained only through our loved ones. All the communities around us working for the welfare of the people are worth connecting. Joining hands with welfare institutions and interacting with them by sharing our lifestyles with the people who could relate to us and listening to the lives of others can help us to cope better in these times of uncertainty.

The notion of social assistance is based on the fact that our mind looks for constant reassurance from our surroundings that we are not only the ones being challenged by the situations around us and this reassurance helps us to come out slowly and steadily from every obstacle being faced.

On an ending note, it is worth remarking that every time we feel distressed and stuck, we should connect with the people around us who would never make us feel alone and encourage us to come out stronger from our distress. It helps us in adapting better to the novelties of life.

‘Our laughter can never disappear If we all are together coping up with our fear.’

Author:

Gayatri Singh Rajput (2nd Year)

Reviewed by:

Palak Singla (Editing Team Coordinator)

Labhanshi Mittal (Blog Coordinator)