Solutions or comfort?
The comic about emotional support I've been sharing for years
Today I want to talk about the very simple formulation I try to keep in mind whenever someone approaches me with an emotional issue. I’m not always great at it, to be sure. And I’m not always great at asking for it, when I’m the one expressing emotions and not feeling heard. But I’ve found it to be a fantastic, first-principles kind of question if you’re really interested in helping someone out.
That question is: Are you looking for solutions or comfort?
[Description: Two cute creatures, called Things, are talking.]
Thing 2: I have a sad
Thing 1: Are you looking for solutions or comfort?
Thing 2: I would like to be angry, then sad, then comforted, then adventure for solutions, then giggles
Thing 1: Let’s start!
Thing 2: Raar
So many emotional conversations take a bad turn because nobody stops and bothers to answer this fundamental question, which can be phrased in any number of other ways. “Do you want any advice right now, or do you need to vent?” “I have some ideas, but I can also just listen if that’s what you need.” “What would be more helpful, for me to help you solve the problem, or for me to hug you and say ‘I’m sorry, that sucks’?”
Many people—myself very much included!—skip this step, and either go straight to problem-solving, or go to validation and comfort when the person would really like advice! It’s definitely rarer, though, for people to understand that when someone is emoting about a problem, sometimes what they need is for you to 1. listen, 2. validate, and 3. comfort them. The fourth step, offering advice or solutions, is the one people most often leap to. And yet, it might not be required at all.
This problem has been portrayed countless times in media, and discussed every way from Sunday in self-help, in a very heteronormative, men-and-women-are-from-different-planets kind of way. John comes home from work, complaining about his boss. Jane fusses over him saying “you poor dear,” and “I’m sorry your boss is so mean to you,” and John just gets more and more frustrated, because what he’s looking for is something to Do About It. Meanwhile, Jane tells John about an upsetting interaction she had with their neighbor, and John suggests that he’ll go over and set the neighbor straight, or that they build a higher fence, and Jane gets more and more distraught because she’s just looking for John to acknowledge how helpless she’s feeling and tell her it’ll be okay.
But these kinds of dynamics can happen to anyone, in any configuration of emotional needs. Which is what makes the simple question in this comic so powerful. Solutions, or comfort? It has the follow-on benefit of putting some agency in the hands of the person who is having the “sad” in the first place—the person who is probably feeling agitated, possibly powerless, afraid, angry, or despairing. There’s probably never harm in saying, when a person first comes to you with an emotionally-charged problem: “Wow, that sounds terrible, I’m sorry that happened to you.” But there’s something uniquely powerful in giving a bit of direction: Hey, what would be most helpful right now? They’re probably going to know, better than you do.
One thing I’m proud of from this pandemic period is a Slack instance I helped create and moderate for polyamorous folks to organize mutual aid, as well as to communicate while we were all so isolated. We were very careful to create special rules for the channel called #feels, and the most important rule was that, when someone posted how they were feeling about something, responses should always be supportive and validating, and solutions should only be offered with prior consent.
The result of the conscientious application of these rules by the incredible members was the cultivation of an overall more respectful mode of interaction across the entire Slack. Even in other channels, when someone expressed something that seemed emotionally fraught, folks would say, “Do you welcome advice on this? I have some ideas but don’t want to presume.” Or, “Are you willing to engage in debate on this topic? I have some opinions on this that are different from yours, but if you’re not up for it that’s cool.” Flame wars and pile-ons have been vanishingly rare, and people have reported feeling safer in the space than in other places online.
It turned out that implementing a simple rule that gave people a way to hold space for each other allowed all of us to see how useful holding that space is, and how good it feels, too. It’s all another way of bringing consent culture to the fore, even in how we talk to each other.
Honestly, I fail to see a downside.
Let’s start! (Raar.)