DEAR WORLD ❖ being there (and not saying the wrong thing)
let's talk about how to be a good friend
If there is one thing I’d like for people to understand better, it’s how much of our personal problems can be the result of well… organisational issues. The order in which people relate to each other and how.
Once someone called me to console me about someone close to me passing away, and then proceeded to sob the entire call, resulting in me consoling them for about an hour. It was absurd and honestly hilarious in retrospect. Like why are people like this? He could’ve just punched me in the face and it would’ve been less laborious.
But also I get it. Who actually knows what to say when people cark it? No one.
And in a sense what he was doing was kind of understandable. Even if I’m closer to the person, it’s not just about me. But like, in that hour specifically, couldn’t we have just please made it about me?
Sometimes other people make their shit your shit. Pretty often, actually. And if we could see it more broadly as part of a relational system, we might have an easier time not taking it personally.
Relational systems
There is always an implicit hierarchy to how we ideally give care. Most of us at our best get this intuitively, but I really like how explicitly Susan Silk lays this out in the scenario of when a support network is dealing with crisis, for example: sickness, death, or even break-ups and everything in-between. It’s called “Ring Theory” or “Kvetching Circles”:
The LA times explains it well:
When you are talking to a person in a ring smaller than yours, someone closer to the center of the crisis, the goal is to help. Listening is often more helpful than talking. But if you’re going to open your mouth, ask yourself if what you are about to say is likely to provide comfort and support. If it isn’t, don’t say it. Don’t, for example, give advice. People who are suffering from trauma don’t need advice. They need comfort and support. So say, “I’m sorry” or “This must really be hard for you” or “Can I bring you a pot roast?” Don’t say, “You should hear what happened to me” or “Here’s what I would do if I were you.” And don’t say, “This is really bringing me down.”
If you want to scream or cry or complain, if you want to tell someone how shocked you are or how icky you feel, or whine about how it reminds you of all the terrible things that have happened to you lately, that’s fine. It’s a perfectly normal response. Just do it to someone in a bigger ring.
I think this model really shows how crises need to be understood and managed as network problems, and we can relieve ourselves from the burden of trying to solve everything ourselves until we implode.
There’s a related point that I wish was also better understood here, which is that complaints and negativity have a very legitimate function. They release built-up pressure through a support network. And, also, they strengthen ties and interdependency, which I think is something that gets lost in over reliance on self-care.
Interdependency doesn’t seem well understood either, and people often hear this as ‘codependency’, but the difference between interdependency and codependency is in the organisation of relations. Codependency arises when problems, venting, emotional energy etc. circle around a system endlessly instead of being released outwards. The same complaints just bounce back and forth, amplifying themselves. I get why some people cringe when we talk about energy in a non-scientific sense with scientific models, but I really do believe that emotions weirdly behave according to physical laws like this.
In general, I think we could all be better served by taking a little time to imagine how our relationships interact with each other. What kinds of energy are being generated when these people get together? What are these people dealing with that might affect others? What vulnerabilities and what strengths might this network of people have in this arrangement?
Don’t just do something, stand there
Another point from the above: “Listening is often more helpful than talking. But if you’re going to open your mouth, ask yourself if what you are about to say is likely to provide comfort and support.”
John Green wrote that when he was a chaplain at a children’s hospital, he would often find himself at a loss with what to do or say to families whose children were sick and dying, or had died. His mentor told him, “Don’t just do something, stand there.”
The importance is not really about what you say - I catch myself, too often, reaching for something wise to say, or useful to do, which usually doesn’t do much other than reassure myself that I don’t suck.
But the thing about being there is you can demonstrate that these are emotions are safe to be simply experienced, that they can be withstood, held, without freaking out. By simply staying put you can demonstrate a lot: OK, you are sick and needy and that does not repulse me. OK, you are angry and I don’t think you are a bad person. OK, you are afraid and confused and I don’t think less of you. And what that means is that you aren’t alone.
The last thing I’ll say is that of course being there isn’t the be-all end-all. If you have solutions, that’s worth a lot, just not all the time.
💌 An invitation
Every now and then I’ll release a post about community. I have a lot of questions about it: Are authentic communities incompatible with capital and why? What to do with people who need community most but are too ‘far gone’ to integrate? Why is community the biggest buzzword ever right now and what does it say about our politics? What structures hold communities in place and why do they matter? Why is ‘Western society’ so confused about what it is (many people seem to think it’s a professional network, lol)?
If you have any thoughts, structured or unstructured, I’d love to hear them in the replies/comments.
💬 Housekeeping
I’ve changed my substack. It is now analytical cat, not Empathy Machine. My friend Leila drew this logo for me (WIP). I love this lil guy.
📖 One related read
We live in a house made of eachother: “What was I before I learned to be a friend? Beyond my self-identification as an antisocial misanthrope, I was deeply lonely and disconnected, burrowed deep into my head and busy forming ideas about people based on delusion.”
It’s an interesting framework to view relationships through. I’ve never thought about it like this