Redefining online community Part 3: Resource matching platforms – your “go-to” when you need to find help

We all need help sometimes!
The singularly toughest period of my life, in which I faced one major life transition after another, felt like a series of waves crashing over me so quickly that I could barely catch my breath. A painful divorce. The birth of my son the same week the divorce went final. Leaving a job. Starting a new job. Selling a home. Buying a home. The death of a loved one. Seven of the most challenging things I’d ever faced, all hitting within a few months of each other. I wasn’t prepared for all of this – I mean, who gets taught how to navigate this kind of thing? Not knowing where to turn I reached out to family, friends, church, therapists … and in the end, I found that all of them wanted to help, but none of them could truly understand me, much less help me. And so I felt alone; like I needed to figure it all out on my own. And I did, and I learned and I healed and I grew … and I resolved to one day create a “safe port in the storm” to help people understand that they aren’t alone even in those dark times and to help them find the resources they need. Major life transitions sometimes do come at you in waves, and when they do you’ll have to figure out how to navigate more than one major life change at the same time like I did. If you find yourself in that position here are two things I learned that may help: the first is that we’re actually a lot stronger than we know. Our true strength doesn’t reveal itself until we’re tested. The second is that with hope, inspiration, belief in ourselves, and access to resources, we can get through just about anything.  

I’ll put it right out there that I brought most of these big changes – and the massive stresses that came with them - on myself. I could’ve made different, safer decisions and chosen an easier, more comfortable path, but doing so would’ve meant taking another big hit of Novocaine for the soul, and accepting a life in which I could never truly be myself. The decisions I made – starting with the gut-wrenching decision to end a marriage that looked idyllic to most – weren’t popular or easy to understand. That first decision set in motion a domino effect that ended up costing me nearly everything that was important to me at the time, but in the long run allowed me to reclaim my soul and become someone I’m proud of today. 

​Sometimes it’s really hard to find the help you need, when you need it. 
When shit hit the fan, my first instinct was to turn to family and friends.  I’m blessed with a loving and supporting nuclear family that loves me and wanted to help, so I went to them first. But we lived across the country from them, so they didn’t see the day-to-day things that wore away at what started as a lovely relationship. I found that my decisions and direction were outside of what was considered normal or acceptable in the eyes of my family and church, and so it was hard for me to really open up to them and to not feel judged in some ways. While my ex and I were also blessed with large group of friends, most of them didn’t understand my decisions and vilified me to the extent that I came out with only two friendships intact. In an October 2019 American Psychological Association article titled “Manage stress: Strengthen your support network”, authors Mary Alvord, PhD, Bert Uchino, PhD, and Vaile Wright, PhD, write “Emotional support is an important protective factor for dealing with life’s difficulties. The 2015 survey found the average stress level for those with emotional support was 5.0 out of 10, compared to 6.3 for those without such support.” My experience taught me that family and friends can be an amazing source of support and love during challenging times, but I probably needed to invest more in strengthening those relationships much earlier - and even then, they can’t always see things through your eyes and may not be able to give you the support you need.
 
I also turned to professionals for help for the first time ever, and admittedly I found it really hard at first. I felt like asking for that kind of help was a weakness and it took some work to overcome the stigma of “working with a shrink.” I’m really glad I did though; there are huge potential benefits of therapy as explained by Sara Lindberg in her October 2020 Healthline.com article. My (ex) wife and I worked with marriage counselors trying to get things back on track, and even though it didn’t work well for us, I learned a lot about myself in the process. When that failed, I sought out another therapist for individual counseling. Once I found someone that I was comfortable with, I did a significant amount of work on my own and again learned a lot about myself in the process. In the end, however, it felt to me like he wanted to figure me out, put a label on my “condition,” and write a prescription to fix it. I disagreed with his course of action and decided to follow my own heart, much to his disapproval, and again felt judged harshly by someone I had turned to for help. I learned from this that therapists and other mental health professionals can teach us a lot about ourselves and give us new tools that can be a huge help in times of need, but also that therapy isn’t for everybody, every therapist isn’t a great fit, and that sometimes the professionals don’t have all the right answers. 
 
Depending on what you’re facing, I think you’ll find there are a plethora of other resources and programs that can help, many of which you can access online. One example is United Way 211, a free and confidential service that helps people across North America find the local resources they need 24/7. Most of the yearly 20 million 211 calls, web chats, and text messages are from people looking for help meeting basic needs like housing, food, transportation, and health care. Another good example is The Life Transition Zone, an online resource-matching service that offers you hope & inspiration through the power of personal story as well as access to local and national resources to help on your journey. Their resources are organized by major life transition, so finding what you need in your area is as simple as choosing the transition you’re facing and then setting filters to narrow down the search results. I find that current resource-matching sites like these can be excellent ways to quickly and privately find what you need, but they’re limited to the resources that are currently listed in their databases and they can also yield an overwhelming amount of information to sort through to find what might work best for you.

​A better way! 
If you have an existing network of trusted family and friends, that’s a good place to start when looking for help and support. Working with a therapist can also be extremely helpful, if you can connect with one that you’re comfortable with and whose style and skills get you the results you need. Using tools like United Way 211 and The Life Transition Zone may also help you find helpful programs and resources, though they have limitations as well. Recognizing that there should be a better way led me to create a nonprofit company called The Intentional Living Collective years later, and we envision a better tool that anyone can use to find the resources they need, anytime they need them. That tool is being built as a multi-sided platform that will make it very fast and easy to find a breadth of relevant services and programs and then filter through the results to narrow it down to your best options. We’ve prioritized keeping your information secure, our privacy policy ensures your data will never be sold or misused, and our member code of conduct ensures that you can safely share what you want without experiencing rude or hostile responses from other members. There’s a unique “Community Support” feature that makes it easy for like-minded individuals in the community to give help to or get help from each other, and a transparent member-rating system based on feedback from other community members helps you figure out who you want to trust.  This resource-matching tool is one of the really cool features you’ll find in our Eos Community Connections Portal when it’s released – stay tuned!

Coming up next: The big world of blogs and podcasts.
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