The Answer Is In The Word

 

Somebody you love is upset.

And there's this thing that happens, almost automatically, before you've decided anything. You start explaining why they don't have to feel that way.

It's not that bad. Here's another way to look at it. This will pass. It's going to be fine. Let me tell you three reasons this isn't worth getting upset about.

You're being helpful. You genuinely are. You want them to stop hurting, and you can see a way out, so you hand it to them.

And it never works.

I've watched this in a lot of rooms over a lot of years, and I have never once seen the other person say, oh, thank you, that changes everything, I feel completely different now.

What actually happens is they get louder. Or they go quiet and cold. Either way, something got worse rather than better, and you have no idea why, because you were trying to help.

Here's what I think is going on.

The answer is sitting right there in the word.

Feelings are to be felt.

That's the whole instruction. It's not a metaphor. A feeling is a wave of energy moving through a body, and it has one job, which is to be experienced. Once it's truly felt, it's done. It shifts. It lightens. It passes.

But when you rush in with a fix, you block the wave.

And a blocked wave doesn't disappear. It builds. It goes looking for another way out. That's why the conversation escalates, and why a small thing turns into a large thing at eleven at night, and why two people end up arguing about something neither of them cares about.

The energy needed somewhere to go, and you put a door in front of it with the best intentions in the world.

So what do you do instead.

Help them feel it.

That's the assignment, and it's much smaller than the one you were giving yourself.

Tell me more about that.

Then listen. Actually listen, not listen while assembling your response. And then say some of it back to them, in their words rather than yours.

Here's a practice, and I mean this literally. For the next week, listen to people well enough that you could repeat their last three words back.

Try it. It's harder than it sounds, because they keep talking and now there are three new words, and then three more. It forces you to stay present in a way that almost nothing else does.

And when you do say it back, something happens in the other person's face. They feel heard. Sometimes for the first time in a long while.

One more thing, and it's the part that surprises people.

When somebody actually feels heard, they usually talk themselves down. Not always, but often. They'll say, I know it's not that big a deal, I'm just tired. They arrive at your fix on their own, and it sticks, because it's theirs.

They could only get there because nobody was pushing them.

You didn't have to solve anything. You just had to not block the wave.

I'll leave you with the thing I actually want you to remember.

You are not responsible for making the people you love feel better.

You are responsible for being someone they can feel things in front of.

Those are very different jobs, and the second one is easier and worth more.