What happens when everyone needs ‘support’ and no one is left to give it?

[HereBeFuckery]

Fair warning: I may well be BU.

The last five threads I have opened have contained variations on the phrase ‘I need support to/with/for’ or ‘there isn’t enough support for parents/families etc’

I genuinely feel that there is an epidemic of ‘needing support’. If everyone needs support, who is going to be left to actually give that support? It can’t be endless! If every child needs personalised support in school, and every adult needs support in the workplace, we are, surely, just marking time until everything implodes. Can no one just cope any more?

I agree with this, a very close friend of mine works in a small team & 90% of that team need additional support & she is on the verge of quitting. There is not a week that goes by that someone is off, needs a disability break or cannot pick up certain pieces of work. She is a good, moral & hardworking person but has come to the conclusion that there are people in her team that quite simply cannot do the job.

As the neurodiverse brain is better understood and recognised it would be my hope that instead we can reconfigure our world as a whole, in ways that make individual adaptations and supports less necessary
Reconfiguring the world? You realise that would involve massive amount of financial funds and resources (which is mainly people) that just don't exist. That IS exactly the problem! Expecting miracles that are unrealistic and fighting for resources, taking it away from those more at need.

This utopia thinking needs to stop and people needs to learn that except fir a minoimrity who are genuinely unable to self support themselves (ie. those with severe needs) the rest of the world need to adapt to the current world. The fact that 'it's not easy' doesn't give anyone a pass. What is at one point not easy becomes much more so once its been faced and managed.

We live in a society that values more and more avoidance and with am expectation that others pick up the slack. This needs to end. Avoidance very rarely solve anything. It is a great relief in the short term, usually a disaster long term.

I agree.

I have been “supporting” as part of my job for the best part of 20 years - I’ve pretty much built a career on being able to communicate clearly and having common sense.
The difference in the last 5 years or so is the expectation of younger people coming into the workplace who have support needs but have also been told their entire lives that they are ‘entitled’ to additional support/reasonable adjustments/mental health days etc. Every new hire comes with a couple of pages of required adjustments and the inevitable OH referral (OH are the big winners in this, those companies are coining it in!).
There is also a complete lack of problem solving and resilience generally, the education system is producing academically qualified young people who seem to have never developed these skills and then really struggle.
My role has pivoted completely from my original skillset and is now basically 100% people management, doing HR mandated courses on managing people with Autism, ADHD, supporting through menopause, mental health first aid - and one course aimed at ‘supporting’ me which offered nothing other than common sense stuff about eating well, getting good sleep etc.
How are we meant to keep supporting all these people?!

I often think people who need support are often unrealistic about how much support others can give. Someone I used to be friends with had a fairly serious crisis and her friends were glad to help out. Then she had another and another. It got to the point where she and her husband were really surprised that their network of “support” also had jobs and children which came first.

Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times
We have lived for so long without war, famine and real hardship that so many people can't really imagine truly hard times. It all becomes relative. The Silent Generation built the welfare state after enduring unbelievable horror and hardship. People lost relatives and loved ones regularly. People were forced to fight for their country in the worst conditions. There was no choice but to get on with it.

Now we have had a few generations pass since then and we have a lot more time and energy to devote to introspection and wellbeing. The saying 'you will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of' comes to mind.

I also think that society is becoming more binary in many ways. You are ND or NT, disabled or not disabled. This just doesn't reflect real life where most of us have ND traits, significant struggles and half have chronic illnesses. The reality is it's all a bit grey and messy but support doesn't reflect this. We are obsessed with labels as a society. I have seen on a thread recently someone proclaim that another poster wouldn't understand a particular struggle because they aren't autistic. How on earth would they know that? You can have significant autistic traits (BAP) and not be diagnosed as autistic. The implication was that the person without the diagnosis must make more allowances for the person with a diagnosis even though their struggle in a particular area might be exactly the same. Nuance and compassion has gone.

It's expected that those without a diagnosis or recognised conditions must be superhuman and super accommodating when everyone is struggling with their own shit. Maybe they can't compensate and support others all the time especially the amount of people that demand support and accommodations without any real regard on the impact this will have on the support givers.

In our parents generation families was mentally and geographically closer and you'd get support from them. But that's not so much the case now.

You get support from friends if your lucky enough to have them. But I support my friends as much as they support me so it's all even.

However when family move many miles away ( mil moved abroad thousands of miles away, fil moved 300 miles away). They was never involved with us or the kids it's proving impossible to build bonds that feel familiar or comfortable enough to get involved with care. Fil is very much still wanting dh at arms length so how do you support him? My kids don't even know him. Basically I think that extended family loss of closeness becomes more normal

Our youngster has a peer at secondary school, who has some complicated health conditions, but our teen and his group were his friend at first, kept an eye on him, checked he was ok and accompanied him to the medical room on numerous occasions (missing class themselves)

This has developed into “you can’t confront him in case he has a seizure”, ok fine, this has now developed in him being an utter dick.

So they actively avoid him now. They are teenagers as well they deserve to have a teenage not full of obligation or putting up with dick behaviour.

So he went from having a lively group looking out for him to totally pushing them away.

Piss taking in a microclimate.

And whilst we were understanding as parents at first it has got to the stage of yeah fuck sweetheart there’s only so much you can and should do and you have done plenty (like 3 years plenty it’s not like they didn’t try)

Similar has happened throughout both of our children’s time at school, at detriment to them. Once bitten (twice, eighteen, nineteen) times bitten etc So now we advise, and they agree, why bother it always ends the same.

And ours are resilient, they do know right from wrong, they don’t make other children’s (or adults) lives a misery, they have part time jobs, do green volunteering, sort out as much of their own problems at school themselves, get to and from school in all weathers, are accommodating and understanding, will talk about their problems, feelings, worries. They aren’t too bad. And if even they are realising that some people are entitled pricks, then yeah good luck if you are a taker, teens nowadays can spot it much more than we could and they are learning to avoid it.

I’d love some support but I won’t/can’t get it so it’s just tough shit for me.
I lost my Mum while pregnant last year and tried several different avenues for counselling because I was scared I’d end up with postpartum depression, I was put on a waiting list, I’m still on the waiting list and my baby is 6 months old and sometimes I feel like I’m drowning.
I’ve put my grief to the back of my mind, I can’t process it yet because it doesn’t feel safe to (without going into a dark place).
I don’t want to go to a GP because I feel like I’d be taking that appointment away from someone who’s found a lump or is suicidal or their child is ill.
There just isn’t enough to go around 😕

Well, this is what happens when you atomise wider families, you unravel the silent network of support which operated for eons and which was flexible enough to absorb a crisis in the short term and scaffold longer term support for vulnerable members in the long term. The state is a very poor substitute.

I think it's just more likely that people who either need support themselves or with their child are more likely to start threads about it or post about it on online communities such as this.

My child will always need personalised support in school and at work if he is able to manage to work when he's older. Unfortunately, we can't magic him to not be disabled as much as we'd love him not to need so much support for basic things such as school.

Is there a reason everyone can’t support everyone, OP?

Society has changed massively over the last couple of generations. People are more insular. People move away for work etc. Women work now when they would previously be in the home.
Neighbours dont talk to each other. Church congregations fell through the floor, although Ive read that they are on the rise again. Children dont play out on the streets as they once did.
I was born early 60s, my Grandparents lived next door but one, great grandparents in the next street, Auntie, uncle and cousins up the road. We went to church/Sunday school every week. There was always people around .

I agree - I think the seeming 'neediness' epidemic is down to the quite recent fragmentation of human societies. Until quite recently, most people lived in the same place all their lives, surrounded by family, friends and acquaintances, attended their local church, which provided a lot of support, had a family doctor who knew them, a local school that had educated generations of their family, and in some cases local police and SS who knew the family and were well aware of their support needs. For many people, a lot, or all of that is gone.

Because that's not realistic nor is it what's happening at the moment?

Even if you look at things from just a financial perspective, we aren't all supporting everyone equally are we? Some people are contributing a lot more than others into the system and some are taking a lot more from the system than others. To a certain extent this is largely expected as you can't expect a severely disabled person to contribute as much as a billionaire. The rub of course though comes when people are very happy to take and not so happy to contribute even though they obviously could contribute more. This is true for time, effort and energy too and any other resource we might have. Some people will want to take and not contribute or accommodate other people's wants and needs.

I think what is always ignored in conversations like this is that it's easier being the client/taker/beneficiary than it is is being the contributor or support provider. For example, if I want to earn more to pay more tax then I have to work more hours and sacrifice time with my kids. It is crap and I really would rather not! If I want to support my friend through a hard time then I have to go out to their house after work, leave my kids with my DH and sit and listen to their problems whilst trying not to also think of my own. If you work in a support providing role then you are expected to absorb an awful lot and remain professional and compassionate. Ultimately we are all human and there are limits to the support we can provide to others and to be fair to everyone people reality should try to be as resilient and independent as much as they possibly can. We can't look to others to support us because that's easier and the alternative is hard. Life is supposed to be hard! The idea that it isn't is a huge issue in itself.

I guess it's the lens you look through, if you give the right support / adjustments people can fly. For lots the support can look like teaching strategies to support themselves independently.

My DD is dyslexic and need adjustments, because of these and some wonderful teachers, she is in top sets at school. If you removed the adjustments she would be ok, but would need more time off school due to burnout. On top of this she has learnt wonderful strategies (she won't remember so sets an alarm, writes list to help organise herself) She support her self by having chilled anti-social days, good sleep habits and plenty of exercise to help her regulate (suspected AuDHD but chosen not to be diagnosed).

I am concerned about the number of children with SEN support with the system at crisis point. What is going to happen in terms of employment and support as these children get older? People don’t have the equivalent of TAs in the workplace and there are only so many concessions that businesses can make which mark financial business sense.

Some of us might be able to afford to rely on the market but a great deal more didn't or couldn't and relied heavily on family support groups funded by councils. We now have 4.5 million kids living in poverty, with many more living just above. These families rely on societal help, a lot of the time because their extended families aren't in a position to drop working hours, or help them pay for "market" lead assistance

The other half of the threads on here are anti MIL, hating the hubby/partners family. Any kind of differences people suggest going no contact. Stepmothers hating their stepchildren, having their own, then wanting to pretty much ignore the SC. Mums give birth and don’t want to see anyone including their own mothers/MIL for a month

You aren’t being unreasonable. The idea of family is changing

helping neurodiverse people to function in a neurotypical world

This line is one of the things that irritate me so much. It’s a weird victim complex of “THEY” made the world wrong for “US”. There seems to be this view that everyone who created the world was NT - without any evidence that’s the case. You read all the time where more and more famous historic figures are “diagnosed” and being ND. (Obviously I realise you cannot actually diagnose dead people). So are you saying that none of these “ND” historic figures ever had any input in creating this world? What about Elon Musk? He has plenty of sway. Do you think his company is run fully inclusive to every ND condition? Or do you think he runs it how he wants it to be run? Ah but he’s an arsehole is what everyone comes back with. He doesn’t really count! It’s the “nice” ND we want influencing the world!

The majority of people in the world think things would be better the way they want them. But the problem is, everyone wants them differently. And that goes for ND people as well! If I was asked to design a school for how I think it should be run to benefit me, I would want hard core structure but shorter days. So maybe 9-2. But straight lessons - focusing on maths as it’s very logical - with only a small break to eat if absolutely necessary. Plus we all eat in mainly silence, or maybe very light chatting. Ideally I want to talk at people about things I like/am currently obsessed with. Shall we do that then? I’m ND (autistic) so my design should work for all ND people I’m sure! Or, not.

So how do you know these supposed “NT” who created the education and work system were actually NT? How do you know they aren’t actually like me? I absolutely thrive on order and structure and quiet. If I had to go to school now and was forced to have movement breaks and kids with fidget toys and lots of social breaks outside i would be in hell.

I share your sentiment, OP. Not necessarily in regards to children - as I think we put kids into a rigid education system and therefore we do need to support those who need adjustments made to help them thrive. I will always say that investing in children should be society's biggest priority.

When it comes to adults needing support at work, though, I think a slightly firmer line is needed. In my view there is a responsibility on the individual to find a job that works for them. In my role and in my organisation, I see a lot of people who want to get paid a higher salary but require adjustments to the role that, to be frank, mean they really aren't operating at the level they should be and this has consequences for colleagues having to pick up slack (say adjustments of 20% extra time to do tasks, requiring support with organisation and time management etc - but even with these adjustments their output is still poor quality). In my view, some of these people are using their reasonable adjustments as a mask for not having the aptitude to do the role and some are understandably finding the role stressful because so much of it is outside their comfort zone.

It makes me sad that an "overuse" of reasonable adjustments creates further barriers for those who really benefit from having them. Having said what I said above, I also know some people who are truly excellent at their job and their reasonable adjustments are a big part of this.

I think we need to be more critical with our use of the word "reasonable" and if a reasonable level of support is provided but someone still cant engage in the right way, then maybe it's fair to say they need to find another role.

Absolutely this. My mum, who i think says some wise things, always said there is a tendency these days to overanalyse, label everything and everyone even though most people probably aren't really anything at all except normal, and she thinks there's far too much navel gazing.

She is definitely of the "get on with it" type of people, who won't suffer fools gladly.

I have to say I agree in lots of ways, and there's certainly something to be said for tenacity, stoicism and doing the best you can in spite of adversity.

But OTOH, being less empathetic and colder isn't great either. A balanced approach is also good too.

Well I am autistic and was not diagnosed until I was over 60 so I have a lifetime experience of trying to do "just cope". It did not really go well, at one point I was forcibly put into a psychiatric institution so then everyone at work had to cover for me for a while, at very short notice. So I think people getting the support they need is a better way, and as has been said people can support each other. I have helped friends when they have had mental health problems, just as they have helped me.

So many people seem to expect reasonable adjustments at work that it causes more work for other people. People not wanting to come into the office, not wanting to attend away days, not do the trickier tasks, start late - all due to anxiety. All it does is cause more stress for the rest of the team.

💯 agree.
People have always struggled to get by, nowadays everyone needs to find the reason. The main reason is we have the time to deep dive into life.