From a reporter, sent to me and countless others:
Hi!
I’m looking for two types of stories to include in my next column, and am hoping you can help.
I’m writing about how the very best emotional support or advice sometimes comes from a surprising source. And I’m looking for people who have a story about asking for emotional support/advice from someone who has NOT been through the problem they want help with. (For example, maybe you asked someone who does not have kids for parenting advice and it was great. Or maybe you were grieving the loss of a loved one and you found the best emotional support from someone who had never lost someone but who has been laid off from a job.)
I’m also looking for people who asked an obvious person for emotional support–someone who has already been through what they are going through–and it wasn’t helpful. (For example, maybe they just wanted to tell you about their experience, not listen to your problem. Or maybe they thought that because they’d weathered the storm, they dismissed your worries.)
Also, if you are a researcher who studies how to decide who to ask for support–or you know someone who does–please let me know.
My reply, 10 minutes later:
Hey Elizabeth,
Ordinarily, I’d point you to a source or two to help with the stories you’re proposing, but the second angle you suggest here resonates deeply for me personally. I don’t know how helpful it is exactly for what you seek, but I want to riff a bit about what’s been on my mind this year by way of receiving and in turn giving advice to others.
I’ve always been a social extrovert, someone who gets energy from others, and who craves more time in the company of others. In my young adulthood, I came to realize that I wasn’t being selective enough about WHO gets my time, merely prioritizing to maximize time spent not alone. That itself didn’t lead me down a bad path, but in hindsight I know I wasn’t building deep, lasting relationships with others, more passing the days with others surrounding.
I’ve course-corrected for that issue by now, seeing the pandemic period as a natural, fresh reset for all of us to determine first who we want to be going forward, coming out of the isolation period of 2020, and second who we wish to bring with us. After all, if you didn’t have occasion to speak with someone in those very difficult 12-15 months, what relationship really remained there?
The people I prefer now are the ones who lead with kindness. I model by behavior and my decision-making around what I see in them, the ones who don’t complain about unfairness, rather who push ahead despite the setbacks and adversity that unexpectedly arrived. I live at the center of the past 50 conversations I’ve had, and I need to be particular about who gets that time with me, as they will rub off on who I know to become.
On the subject of advice, I have learned a ton from paying attention. The reason most advice is bad is that it’s not well thought out, and people are responding to what they hear the other person say, less so what they mean. Most advice boils down to “Have you tried the most obvious thing?” I say that in jest, but also if you begin to listen for it, it appears everywhere. Much of what people suggest to others, even when they are well-intentioned, is pandering to the keywords they recognize, not being responsive to the underlying issues that their friends are enduring causing the indecision and the insecurity to materialize.
In the past chapters of my adult life, I’d stay up late and copy and paste notions and nuggets to people oriented around what I believed to be the right thing to say when some topic or theme came up, to match keywords, to say the first thing that came to mind, to make the problem feel less so for them and also less heavy for me. These days, I remain quiet for longer. I allow people to get it all out, to make the connections themselves, and I have discovered along the way that it’s more powerful to give advice in the form of questions to guide them toward resolution than for me to guess my way toward it. I have become a better listener from watching what others did for me in my time of hurt. I see a therapist regularly and I study what she says and does so that I can bring that care to the next person.
Recently, I was seated at breakfast with a new professional contact, and she was outlining over a series of minutes what was going on in her career. I spit back in my own words what I heard her say, asking at the end, “Did I get that right?” She nodded. Then I said, “OK, I have a number of thoughts here.” When we bid farewell, she told me that it’s refreshing to sit with someone who actually, actively listens, and that she liked my energy. I thanked her for the compliment, told her I’d been working on it this year in particular, and that I haven’t always been this way. We scheduled another breakfast for later this summer. I’ve gotten my energy under better control, to emit what I have long sought in others to stabilize me, in part because I trained myself to hold back from saying the first thing that comes to mind.
Not only do I credit the internal work I did during the pandemic to make myself a better listener, and as a result advice giver or - better yet - emotional guide, I believe part of that training stems from the Zoom mute button. We got so used to having to unmute ourselves to make our side comments, our little jokes and references that interrupted others, that we declared them not worth making at all. Too much trouble. And it has had a lasting impact for the better on me in real life, too, where I am slower to interrupt and jump in with my insights until the other person has finished with theirs.
I can’t say that I have any or all of the answers. What I can say is that I have improved at catching myself and refraining from saying the most obvious thing when seated with others. Usually, the most obvious thing is not the right thing to say. And we should bite our tongues and listen for longer for what’s really going on, and then when it’s our turn to begin with something else that others they’ve spoken to wouldn’t have asked about or thought to share. Because when you consider all of the most irritating people in your life, what they have in common most likely is that they default all of the time to saying the first thing that comes to their minds. And I don’t want to model my behavior off of them, even if those comments are commonly found. At age 41, I want to operate at a higher lever and to go deeper with the people I’ve chosen to bring along with me.
Best,
Danny
Addendum: She was kind in her reply to me, and we both agreed I wouldn’t be the right source for this column. It was valuable for me to find reason to jot down this idea. And, now, to share it with you.
My next column goes out as usual on Saturday evening to paying subscribers. It’ll cover the subject of fixing what can be fixed.