Support group members can offer advice and suggestions and help you anticipate what may happen, while other people sort of tip-toe around those issues. Ideally you need someone to cry with you, someone to run errands for you, someone to go to the movies with you and help you forget all your problems for a while. In the best situation, those should probably be different people, so no one is overtaxed. Sher is associate professor at the Institute of Psychology at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. It is important to build supportive relationships by seeking out and cultivating close friendships, Ellison agrees.
Reciprocity is essential.
Seek out people in whom you can invest and who would invest in you. Elisabeth Wickett of Berkeley, Calif., has a particularly intense experience of how important social support can be. Friends are the reason I can live independently and not in a skilled nursing facility. Wickett was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis eight years ago and experienced unrelenting vertigo, a sensation of the room spinning, for almost a year. Three different people called me every day, and at least one came by every day.