Four things I learned from running immigrant support groups

By Pola Koba, M. Sc.

It’s late spring, and the sun is flooding the room with light, making the smudges on the windowpanes more visible. It’s the third meeting of the support group series I launched as a part of the Expats Mind Care Club initiative, called ‘Life in Transition.’ So far, we have covered topics such like immigrant grief, guilt so many of us face upon leaving our home countries, and the need for belonging; today, we are focusing on identity.

Upon wrapping up the session, as usual, I invite the participants to share their thoughts about today’s meeting. One of them raises their hand and says: ‘you know, it might sound weird, but I am finding it so much easier to open up to almost complete strangers than to my friends about the struggles… perhaps it’s because there is no filter to it, you know? You guys here don’t know me very well and don’t perceive my struggles through the lenses of any other role I have played in your life. I find that extremely helpful.’ The rest of the group nods eagerly. It’s a comment that will stay with me for a long time.

Upon founding Expats Mind Care Club, my focus was on the power of social support. It is my observation (and personal experience) that the act of immigration is very often a lonely one. Suddenly we find ourselves pretty much out of any social network, and the remote support we get from our friends and families, however comforting, is, in fact, remote, and cannot always supply for what we would need at the moment – that is, someone with us here, ready to nod their head and say, ‘I really get it; it’s been rough for me too.’

Psychologists define social support as ‘the perception or experience of being valued and connected with a social network that encourages mutual assistance and emotional care.’ There are 3 main types of social support that have been distinguished – informational support (focusing on delivering concrete facts, guidance, or feedback while facing a problem), instrumental support (offering practical solutions in the problem-solving process), and emotional support (focusing on offering empathy, care, and reassurance). Research on social support and mental health stays consistent: the better the social support, the better overall health. It has been shown that on average, perceived social support has the largest associations with better mental health, work performance, better physical health, as well as lower risk-taking and better emotional functioning. Social support can also function as an excellent stress buffer, meaning that in times of increased stress and/or anxiety, we can either have a higher threshold for it or deal with stressful situations better.

Immigrants – specifically upon starting out in a foreign country – have significantly fewer opportunities to help from/offer social support; it is therefore crucial to include activities including social context for overall better immigrant health. How does this data translate when running an actual support group for immigrants in Denmark? What are the social needs of the participants signing up to become a part of the group? Here are a few things I learned:

1. The power of shared experience

The power of exchanging experiences that are common/familiar to other people is one of the most powerful components of support groups. When expressing the motivation to join support group meetings, statements such as ‘I want to meet like-minded people’ or ‘I want to meet people struggling with the same issues as me’ were prevalent. Voicing our worries and struggles can be a challenging task, yet once it is done – and met with understanding and mirroring – it can alleviate a lot of pain, shame, anxiety or worry. While running the group and observing its participants exchanging their experiencing, a thing that stood out was genuine empathy that immigrants showed to one another. Even though our backgrounds and backstories might differ, it is ultimately a lot of the shared struggles so many of us experience – feeling of missing out, guilt for leaving our families behind, anxiety over what our life abroad will become, confusion regarding our social roles, language struggles – that can make us feel closer to one another. Knowing we are sitting in one room with people who find our experiences relatable and validate them can therefore be a very uplifting experience.

2. Offering support to others is a major well-being booster

Another phenomenon I have been observing while running support groups is how much giving support can affect our own mental health. While support group participants are generally discouraged to offer advice to one another (e.g. statements such as ‘I think you should…’), they are free to share what helped them go through a particular struggle and how they dealt with the specific issues. The aspect of giving support – be it emotional through showing empathy to other participants, or instrumental through sharing tips on how to deal with a particular, e.g., administrative, problem – made the participants feel helpful and made their own experiences of more importance. I could then argue that the feeling of being helpful/useful or simply mattering to other people can positively contribute to our own well-being.

3. Being able to help others makes us want to help ourselves

As the participants were getting to know each other and opening up about their own struggles, I could see how they were also willing to ‘try out’ the solutions shared in the group in their own lives. It was an interesting dynamic to observe, and one could argue whether such change could happen because of the feeling of agency. Agency can be defined as a person’s capacity to control their own life’s actions and outcomes. In life abroad, the feeling of agency can be temporarily shaken as there can be fewer things we are in control of (e.g., administrative issues, waiting times, job search, etc.). What I observed in the meetings was that when support group participants were shown that their peers taken some of their experiences/tips to heart, this feeling of impact/agency could then prompt them to make changes regarding their own life, be it implementing some self-care practices, overcoming resistance as to try out something new, or simply reflecting upon their current life situation and what changes they would like to implement in it.

4. Companionship > leadership

From my psychological stance, the experience of running support groups has highlighted the importance of the companion role of a psychologist. Support group is not equal to therapy group – it is a space for the participants to offer support to each other and learn from each other; my role was to moderate the discussions, bring them back to the session theme and, when necessary, share some knowledge on the psychological aspect of the issues discussed. That approach has been incredibly helpful when establishing mutual trust (participants-myself, and participants with each other) and showing the participants they themselves have a lot of expertise in the discussed topics which contributed to their overall feeling of agency, as expressed during the meetings.