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Supportive Environments

Providing Nutrients for Personal Growth

BY: T. Franklin Murphy | May 2018 (edited 2-1-2021)

A lady in a field of wheat. An article on supportive environments

Adobe Stock Images

We must create surroundings that supports wellness.

A delicate flower blooms when the environment is right. The sun, the soil and the moisture interweave to provide the necessary nutrients for survival. When the environment provides in abundance, the flower flourishes, blooming in abundance. Our environment is also essential for our wellness. With enough nutrients, we survive. In exceptionally kind environments, we flourish.

Inner and Outer Environments

Human environments our rich with people, social systems, and information. Our environments also include inner happenings. Health, emotions, thoughts also provide or borrow from life giving sustenance.

Antonio Damasio, a Professor of Psychology, Philosophy, and Neurology, at the University of Southern California, explains in his book The Strange Order of Things, "the 'surround' of a nervous system is extraordinarily rich... It includes the world external to the organism...that is, the objects and events in the environment surrounding the whole organism. But the 'surround' of the nervous system also includes the world within the organism..." (2019, location 1,179).

Behaviors, beliefs and thoughts are major contributors to the "surround" of our nervous system. The environment is supportive or draining. Our wellbeing depends upon the conditions—a supportive environment. We are not impermeable. People and places also contribute or subtract. External environments matter.

We provide nutrients as part of the environments of others. They respond to us and we respond to them. By providing or subtracting from their wellness, we initiate and invite a reciprocal response.

Key Definition:

Outer environments are the external elements surrounding our organism such as employment, partners, family, social groups and governments.

We Can Compensate for Lack

We can compensate when a few critical elements are missing. However, we can't consistently ignore the imbalance. When a person in our outer environment harshly violates our tender being, we suffer. The maltreatment draws from our strength. We can temporarily compensate for the grating external pressures with internal kindness; however, eventually energy to compensate diminishes and the abuse injures our souls.

Conversely, supportive others in our outer world may lift our spirits, but when their goodness is filtered by our nasty inner critic their decency loses potency, leaving us unnourished and empty.

Key Definition:

Inner environments are the inner elements of thought, beliefs, and emotions that stimulate our nervous system. Elements of the inner environment interact with outer elements, increasing or decreasing the impact of the outer element on our wellness.

Cultivating Supportive Environments

Our positive actions contribute to the environmental nutrients by cultivating the good and distancing from the bad. Whether our environment is rich or impoverished, we can adjust, improving the conditions and harvesting more of what we need.

If our histories are sparse, missing necessary mentors to guide, we must reach a little further, opening new doors to find the support that change demands. Climbing from the valley of death to the bountiful golden fields of plenty isn’t a simple adjustment. Just as one child may drift from a genealogy of greatness, we can also prevail over a bleak heritage of lack.

See Trajectories for more on this topic

Cultivating an External Supportive Environment

The wellness dogma that outer environments don't matter is bunk. We don't choose every emotion. We don't make lemonade out of abuse. Our wellness can't thrive in emotionally deprived relationships. We don't naturally grow from systemic suppression. We must work to improve outer environments in community and personal levels.

Community Environments

Community level change is stubborn, involving many resistive elements and varying needs. Yet, we can't forget the importance of contributing to these necessary ingredients for fair and equal support. We can't sit on the sidelines complaining, expecting others to make necessary changes.

We can:

—Vote

—Volunteer

—Mentor

—Contribute Resources

"Ideally, schools should be supportive environments for students. Unfortunately, zero-tolerance policies tend to funnel vulnerable students out of schools and into prisons, low-income jobs, and poverty." ~Kimberle Williams Crenshaw

Individual External Environments

We must believe in the possibility of transformations. We don’t have to carry our parents' burdens. The path to an unfamiliar lifestyle is often obscured by inherited limits on vision. We can't strive for successes we can't envision.

We need new exposures that open possibility to developing necessary skills, and knowledge to know what actually needs to be accomplished. We need supportive mentors to guide us through the awkward steps of change into unknown territories. For our output to change, we must attend to the input.

We must take control of our world. Accepting personal responsibility for the quality of our lives motivates action. Certainly, community level obstacles impact, but we can compensate.

We can:

—Leave Abusive Relationships

—Cultivate Supportive Friendships

—Improve Employment Skills (Education)

—Budget and Save

Individual Internal Environments

We can't ignore our internal environments. We need a well functioning system to support the heavy demands of life. Self-care is essential.

We can:

—Exercise

(See Exercise and Mental Health)

—Prayer, Meditation, Quiet Reflection

(See Finding Peace)

—Nutritious Diet

(See Ten Power Foods)

—Optimistic Attitude

(See Realistic Optimism)

—Passion and Purpose

(See Passionate Purpose)

You may also enjoy reading Wellness Basics

Our wellness is sensitive to surrounding environments. Desires to change behaviors while ignoring environments is a fool's game, setting up for a failure. Whether we are abandoning addictions or practicing healthier habits a supportive environment is necessary. When we improve our environments, growth naturally sprouts. A properly nourished life from supportive environments blooms, giving fragrant joy and flourishing confidence.

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T. Franklin Murphy

Wellness. Writer. Researcher.
T. Franklin Murphy has a degree in psychology. He is dedicated to the science of wellness. In 2010, he began publishing his findings.