Showing respect is an essential and meaningful way for supporters to help tick-borne disease patients. Your respect can help patients feel valued, comforted, and championed during complicated journeys through symptoms and treatment.
As a supporter, you may be among a patient’s closest allies. This means your respect may significantly impact their experience.
By recognizing and counteracting the dismissal and marginalization that people with illness and disability (including your loved one) so often go through, you can become one of the strongest and most needed kinds of supporters.
It starts with respecting your loved one’s autonomy and experiences.
You can show respect in different ways, including but not limited to:
Being kind and courteous, understanding that your loved one is going through something extremely challenging and may need extra time, space, consideration, resources, attention, and patience.
Listening to your loved one and holding space for new differences in experiences, knowledge, behavior, and needs.
Thinking before you speak, as your use of language may profoundly affect how your loved one feels.
Offering help and practicing compassion. (See our Supporters Home page for more details and tips!)
Avoiding gossip and any conversations that may be considered discriminatory or bullying.
Speaking up if others around you are disrespectful, discriminatory, or bullying.
Minding personal space, property, capacity, limitations, and boundaries, acknowledging that even if your loved one is not feeling their best, they are still a whole person.
Understanding that everyone has their own unique experiences.
Being willing to evolve and admit mistakes.
Withholding judgment even when asking difficult questions that may come with complex answers that you do not initially understand.
It is also important to respect any patient as they are today, celebrating their strength and resilience in the face of illness. It can be a sign of disrespect (and frustrating) for you to suddenly expect an earlier or healthier version of your loved one to appear. Illness and disability do not work that way.
Instead, focus on how you can love and support them today. That will help them feel like you are on their team, and together, you can work toward a better future.
Respect also applies to you, the supporters. To best assist patients, supporters must and deserve to respect themselves, their health, and their boundaries. Make sure you have people to talk to—who support you, too.
We are excited to hear about what respect means to you. To meet and speak with other Lyme supporters, join us for our monthly Meet-Ups for Parents and Supporters. Tap the link below to find the right Meet-Up for you!
Source credit: University of West London