Foolish Games

Stay thy tongue

I have come to a greater realisation in recent times of the value of someone just listening and expressing support in a simple manner when a friend is distressed and troubled. This is fairly obvious, I would have thought, but the fact is that we love to solve our friends' problems for them. Certainly there are times where advice is sought, and times where a sounding-board is desired, but, sometimes people just need a sympathetic ear.

Being the overcomplicated person that I am, I must admit that I usually try and offer solutions to my friends problems - offer options, offer hypotheses and rationale and philosophise situations. Is this tendency always helpful? Well, perhaps not. A friend who is distressed about something may simply need reassurance, or someone to express their pain to, or just know that someone else shares their problem and is thinking of them.

How do we know when to give advice and when to just listen and comfort and reassure then? A good question, to which there isn't a simple answer, but I would suggest that being slow to speak will help. Lend them your strength, rather than attempting to overpower their distress by your will.

A couple of things that may NOT be appropriate to do are:
- Simply telling your distressed/depressed friend that they shouldn't be thinking the way they are. This may be true, but a person in an emotional state generally is less rational than they usually are.

- Ignoring or dismissing the concerns of your distressed/depressed friend as childish, irrational, unfounded or stupid. I know most people would be gentle in how they deal with their friend in this situation, HOWEVER, it is easy to be dismissive by not acknowledging and addressing the issue and ONLY giving generic advice like "You'll be fine", or "God knows what's best for you". This may come across as "Suck it up, there's nothing wrong, just have to get over it, let's talk about something else". People like to wallow in self-pity, and you don't want to indulge them in this, but you also don't kick someone when they're down.

Anyway, that's about all I wanted to say in a generic fashion. Any further discussion would have to identify the different emotional states and different problems. Besides, I'm no psychologist =P So, in summing up, like the old saying goes - be quick to listen, slow to speak.

posted by Son @ 19:57