Understanding why psychologists say "Don't Share you own Story"
September 28, 2024 5:23 AM   Subscribe

Stories have an amazing power to connect and empathise with people. However, psychologists often recommend NOT to sharing your own story when empathising with people.

For example, if I broke my arm tomorrow, I’m sure I would not be too happy. However, if someone came along and said “oh, I broke my arm 5 years ago, the pain was terrible, but I got over it after a few weeks”. Or, if was dealing with a grumpy bus driver - the type that would upset your day. Then you hear from someone else, “oh, that bus driver of the number 10 bus has a terrible attitude, I had a row with him last year”. These stories are like a balm. You instantly like the person who shares them because you feel like they’ve been in the same boat as you. They brighten your day.

However, I cannot understand why some psychologists recommend, in some contexts, never sharing your own story when empathising with people. Instead, they recommend saying stuff like, “I know what you must be going through".

Now, I know the above examples I gave are fairly trivial (in the grand scheme of things). I know that life throws much more serious issues. But I’m trying to figure out when it is appropriate to share your own story of woe and when it is not appropriate.
posted by jacobean to Human Relations (42 answers total) 6 users marked this as a favorite
 
I think it’s because it puts the attention on you and not the person you’re empathizing with. It can sound like one-upping or diminishing their experience. I know when people have tried to relate like that to me when I was going through something tough (not minor annoyances) I didn’t feel consoled but annoyed and just thought “and???”
posted by VirginiaPlain at 5:27 AM on September 28 [35 favorites]


The first example almost sounds minimizing to me - as if you're trying to make clear how well you dealt with your broken arm, and are dismissing their pain as something they'll get over.

So that's one reason.
posted by sagc at 5:33 AM on September 28 [5 favorites]


Instead, they recommend saying stuff like, “I know what you must be going through".

I don't know about the psychologists you're referring to, but in medical training I was taught specifically to say the opposite of this, like "I can't imagine what you're going through." Many people find it insulting when others presume to know their inner life and feelings just because they had an experience with superficial similarities.

Even the example you gave of a "balm"—“oh, I broke my arm 5 years ago, the pain was terrible, but I got over it after a few weeks”—sounds dismissive to me. Oh, your arm hurts now? Well when that happened to me I got over it quickly.
posted by telegraph at 5:36 AM on September 28 [22 favorites]


I completely agree with you about your examples and the general advice not to use personal experience to empathize. I, too, appreciate it when other people do that and would fine your examples comforting. I, too, am always surprised how much some people hate it. It definitely seems to be a social norm, and even those who prefer to receive others' stories in their empathizing seem to be better off following the norm, I guess, even if it doesn't make sense to us.
posted by hydropsyche at 5:38 AM on September 28 [10 favorites]


I find it intensely irritating and sometimes lonesome-making when I'm telling someone about something bad or sad that happened to me, or something bad or sad that I read about happening somewhere else, and their immediate response is to talk about themselves. And it's not a brief derail --that person never goes back to what I was saying in the first place, they just take over the conversation entirely. Perhaps you are lucky enough not to encounter many people who make everything All About Them. It happens to me often, so perhaps I am unable to appreciate the times when the shared story could act as a balm instead.
posted by JanetLand at 5:48 AM on September 28 [17 favorites]


Sharing your own story directly after another's can often feel like something other than empathizing. And the difficulty is that you don't know how it feels to the other person, how they will interpret you sharing your story. It may feel like:
- One-upsmanship: my experience is better / worse / more interesting / more dramatic than yours
- A bid for attention: no one listened when that happened to me, maybe I'll try telling my story 'over' yours to see if you'll listen to me now
- Dismissive/minimizing: I don't care much about your experience and am going to plow ahead with mine
- Controlling/Authoritarian: Here's how I handled that same experience, you can do the same
- Delegitimizing: you are not unique because I have had the same experience
- Emotional suppression or fanning the flames: I cannot handle or accept whatever emotions you're expressing or not expressing, and feel compelled to suppress yours or amplify yours
And really a whole host of other ways.

What seems to work (in my experience) is listening to another person's story and asking genuine questions (not questions in order to get to your own story faster) before even considering telling your own story. You can even say "I have a story like that." If they say, "Oh gosh, tell me, I'd love to hear it," then you've got the green light. If they don't, then you know they're not ready.
posted by cocoagirl at 5:52 AM on September 28 [38 favorites]


Worth noting that this is a common difference in communication by autistic people, which is intended as being caring, but experienced,(often by non autistic people) as being self centred.

Sharing your own story can be done in a self centered way, but it can also just be a different way of showing empathy.
posted by Zumbador at 6:00 AM on September 28 [44 favorites]


Sometimes stories can be used to pull the conversation in a direction the second person decides to go, instead of exploring what the first was trying to get at. Sometimes that's okay in a rollicking comradery kind of way, and sometimes it squashes the first person. In the bus example: it might be nice to hear about other grumpy drivers as assurance that one's own grumpy driver was just part of a group and not to be taken personally, but it also might be the case that the first person was sort of hoping to say something deeper that they needed to work up to, like that the grumpy driver was just one more thing in a rough day, or actually the grumpy driver was being kinda racist/sexist/ableist otherwise more horrible than just "grumpy," etc. Or that the first person has some other problem the bus driver was merely yet another burden on top of. Basically, by picking a story that seems to match, one might easily miss out on nuance and emotional depth.

I also think your two examples are different from one another in an important way. "I too experienced that and it got better" vs "I too experienced that and it sucked." Both are probably true–the broken bone was painful; the grumpiness was survived–but one meets the first person more where they're at currently than trying to move them along to where the second person now is. But even trying to meet them where they're at involves a ton of assumptions about where that is, if all you have to go on is the short vignette.

Definitely agree that "I know what you must" isn't what's taught in medical training. Even when it's followed by "I get migraines too" or what have you, a much softer "I think I can imagine what you might be going through (but please tell me more)" is far more appropriate.
posted by teremala at 6:03 AM on September 28 [7 favorites]


Seconding what Zumbador said. When others share their experiences of going through things similar to what I'm going through, it tells me (1) they listened! and (2) they understand!! (I'm also autistic.)
posted by heatherlogan at 6:09 AM on September 28 [12 favorites]


Any therapist is in a different relationship to the patient than a non-therapist would be, and that's why. What a therapist does isn't what a friend does - they aren't there to provide friend-type listening and sympathy, or most people wouldn't need therapists and could just rely on a good friend. Friends are great, friend listeners can be enormously helpful, but if they were enough in all cases we wouldn't have therapists.

A therapist makes a therapeutic relationship with you, where they have some distance from you and they are acting the role of knower and expert. For instance, when I saw my very good therapist, a lot of what I did was just tell him once again the things that I'd told people in the past and that I could not let go of. But because of the therapeutic relationship, because he had [in a way illusory] "authority", somehow telling him those stories helped me to feel heard and validated and helped me to move past them.

Like, I was not thinking as I would with a friend "how great it is that we have a similar experience, we should talk about that". I was thinking inwardly about my experiences and what they meant so that I could work through them.

Therapy is, when it's good, a little bit of a separate/sacred space apart from the world, where things are different and it's really just about your problems and that's okay - you don't need to worry about responding correctly to your therapist's revelation that they too had something tragic happen to them, you don't need to worry about consoling them or saying the right thing, you don't get thrown off your stride when they say something that is radically different than your experience or slightly alienating. All the things that you would do for a friend or even a friendly stranger, you don't have to do for your therapist, because that is not what they are there for. That's partly why the therapist doesn't tell you about their troubles.

Then there's also the fact that the therapeutic relationship has power and authority built into it - the therapist is a professional, they bill your insurance and take case notes, etc. There is no way to make that reciprocal, even if they tell you how they felt about their broken arm, so it's often a bit better to keep some distance so that it doesn't seem like a friendship except one person is being paid to be there and can write down medically important things about the interaction. Just like you can't date your doctor or your minister, you can't befriend your therapist.

There's also a practical reason - therapists need to be sure that patients won't push for too much or the wrong kind of connection. Sometimes that's "I need to make sure that my patient, who is really struggling and has a lot going on, doesn't find me and show up at my house", sometimes it's just that a therapist is showing all this kindness and focus and it can't turn into a parasocial kind of relationship. Your therapist can't be both your therapist and your friend.

Also, therapists have their struggles too. Sometimes that's what makes them interested in being therapists. A good therapist is going to be very careful not to put that stuff on you.

~~
There are other roles and relationships, different kinds of counselors, advisors and organizers whose role might in fact involve talking about what you share with them, and that could be great. It's just not what "go to the therapist's office and talk about your experience" therapy is structured to do. (I sought out a therapist with a similar background to mine on purpose, so that I felt that he'd get my situation, but he didn't talk about personal stuff.)
posted by Frowner at 6:32 AM on September 28 [2 favorites]


I like sharing-as-empathy as well, but I always make it short and circle back to the original problem-haver. Like "OMG yes, landlords are the worst about repairs! Mine made me wait for two weeks before he even aknowledged my emails, I had no running water! So I feel you. What did you do next?"

Because if you don't circle back, you're hijacking their tale of woe and making it a jumping off point for your own story - stealing the attention and sympathy they were hoping to garner, as it were.
posted by Omnomnom at 6:50 AM on September 28 [41 favorites]


Turns out people like different things when they are struggling, and personal stories can be told in many different ways. Thus there can't be any general advice for what works, despite what anyone says.

Also, beware of hearsay advice like this on the internet. Everyone shares that kind of "don't make it about you" clip, thinking that one self-centered annoying person who does that, and not thinking of times a story is successfully used to show sympathy and empathy and feels good.
posted by SaltySalticid at 6:50 AM on September 28 [19 favorites]


Best answer: I guess it just goes to show how different we all are because I, too, find it incredibly reassuring to hear other people sharing their stories of similar bad things happening to them. I can ask them for what worked and what didn't work for them. I feel like they know I feel; it almost feels like a hug. I find it intensely comforting.

Some months ago my phone was stolen and I felt terrible about it! I felt much better when friends told me - oh that happened to me, it sucked!!

I have elderly, sick relatives with chronic conditions, and I belong to Reddit and Facebook groups dedicated to these conditions because reading about other people's experiences of comparable situations makes me feel so much less alone.

I do not have an autism diagnosis.
posted by unicorn chaser at 6:51 AM on September 28 [11 favorites]


I realize now that I automatically assumed that this was about therapists training therapists and why therapists don't talk about themselves, because I've never heard one say "don't share your own story"!

I'm not sure this is really what most therapists would say, because sharing one's story is so situational.
posted by Frowner at 6:58 AM on September 28 [1 favorite]


Patients are often not talking about what the therapist may think they are talking about.

I may be talking about a grumpy bus driver because:

a) I'm having a bad day and they made it worse
b) The grumpiness reminds me of another time when I was grumpy with someone
c) The grumpiness reminds me that I grew up in an environment full of grumpy people
d) Their grumpiness hurt me at a surprisingly fundamental level

For the therapist to leap in with their own related story requires them to guess which of those I am talking about, and to get it wrong leads to one of the situations cocoagirl described above.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 7:01 AM on September 28 [3 favorites]


some helpful thoughts, via ubc, include an example of "Diminishing
“At least you got 51%. And hey, I heard someone got, like, 20%. You did so well in comparison!”

Maybe your instinct is to find the silver lining in a challenging circumstance or to compare your friend’s situation with those of people in a worse spot.

However, by starting statements with “at least” or comparing to other people's circumstances, it can actually make the individuals you're comforting feel like they have no right to feel the way they do."
psychologytoday:
Highly empathic people are good at spotting the emotions of others—but not necessarily interpreting them correctly. They might spin an inaccurate narrative about why someone else is having a particular feeling, or they may get stuck in feelings arising from within. It can be helpful then to pause, put your interpretation on hold, and explicitly check in by observing, “Wow, that sounds really important. Tell me more of the story.”
...
One way to ensure you are taking care of someone you love while keeping track of your own feelings is to convert excess empathy to compassion. When a friend is distraught, instead of assuming the feeling of distress yourself, take a breath and a step back and say, “That sounds so awful. Is there something I can do for you?”
dr. allison:
"Empathy is feeling someone’s pain from their shoes and vantage point" [original emphasis]

nih:
"empathy not only highlights the distinction between one’s own experience and that of an-other, but also focuses on the “foreign” experience of the other person"

some recommend sharing stories, e.g. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/crazy-for-life/202002/the-healing-power-of-sharing-your-story

you might also appreciate a distinction from a sciencedirect paper:
(a) similarity in experience, which refers to a relatively spontaneous and implicit process whereby the perceiver's own emotional memories of a similar event are triggered, and (b) perspective taking, a route that constitutes a more explicit and deliberate process of imaging one's own or the other's emotional reaction to a given event [original emphasis]
posted by HearHere at 7:16 AM on September 28 [4 favorites]


Seconding that there can be a neurodiversity angle to it. I’ve seen this come up in ADHD/AuDHD/autism YouTube videos. And, as anecdata, as a person with ADHD who gravitates toward other neurodiverse people, sharing own experiences is active compassion. Of course not to take over the conversation, but to relate.
posted by meijusa at 7:19 AM on September 28 [6 favorites]


You might also enjoy this post and the site it links to. (Mobile version unfortunately unwieldy).
posted by Omnomnom at 7:22 AM on September 28


I agree there is no universal truth here, but I'd say the problem is less with sharing your similar story than trying to universalize a certain experience. So take the broken arm example - your comment turns the experience of breaking an arm into one universal experience of terrible pain followed by a quick resolution. But that fails to understand how the other person might be experiencing the event. Maybe they broke their arm doing their favorite hobby and now they are worried they'll never enjoy that hobby again. Or maybe they are an athlete and they're worried it might not fully heal, or they will end up missing a number of games and their team was counting of them, etc. Or maybe they are a new parent, and not having use of their arm will mean more caregiving falls to their spouse, etc.

In short, telling a story as a way of relating can be comforting and show of empathy, but can backfire if it prevents you from understanding how an individual may experience the same general event/scenario quite differently from you.
posted by coffeecat at 7:27 AM on September 28 [8 favorites]


I had a therapist who would often share her own story when we were discussing challenges I was going through, and it was fucking infuriating, for many of the reasons listed above. It felt like she wasn’t acknowledging the differences between our situations and experiences, and holding herself up as an example of how to act, which was very invalidating.
posted by Jon_Evil at 7:33 AM on September 28 [5 favorites]


People in helping positions (like therapists) shouldn't do it because it shifts the focus in ways that might undermine treatment. Is the client now going to feel like they have to shape their story to conform with the therapist's experience? Is the client now going to feel like they should console the therapist? Was the client going to say a bunch more and now feels interrupted and cut off, and like there's not room for their own emotions? A lot of those concerns are due to a power differential in therapy relationships.

I am baffled as to why this advice to therapists has gotten generalized in the way it has to apply to all relationships. This is a normal human thing to do, which is why therapists specifically have to be trained to avoid it. Yes, make sure you're not constantly talking over your friends or expecting them to be just like you, but friends share stories with each other.
posted by lapis at 8:08 AM on September 28 [14 favorites]


I had the sobering experience of trying to empathize with a friend who'd just lost her partner. I'd lost my sister a few months earlier, and was trying to share what I had gone through so she'd know she wasn't alone.

She turned to me and snapped "This is not a COMPETITION."

I was floored. I had no idea that I was coming across that way. I apologized, of course, and went home and thought about the way I communicate, and the ways it's not always helpful.

So yeah, there are some times to share what you're going through, and other times where you shouldn't do that.
posted by Archer25 at 8:13 AM on September 28 [5 favorites]


I find it more helpful to go with, "I can't imagine what you're feeling," rather than chime in with a similar experience, because it sounds like I'm playing "Topper," literally, "my experience was so much bigger/worse/bloodier/more annoying than yours, get over it." YMMV. If I know the person well, I might ask if there's anything I can do to help.
posted by Lynsey at 8:14 AM on September 28 [1 favorite]


Just for the hell of it, I'll add that I personally hate being told "I can't imagine what you're going through" or similar. It just comes off as a trite cliché that people feel expected to say. It doesn't help me at all, and usually makes me annoyed and more upset.

Obviously many people disagree; I add this only to highlight that there's no one right answer. The best way to support people is to come from a place of understanding the person and reading the room, not emulate stock advice. And if you don't know the person that well, you're probably not the best person to give that kind of support.
posted by SaltySalticid at 8:39 AM on September 28 [10 favorites]


I really hate when someone tells me they "can't imagine" what I'm feeling or going through. Great, my life is UNIMAGINABLY awful!

I'm not saying this to shame anyone, but to show that there's no totally workshopped perfectly acceptable response to hearing bad news or an upsetting life story. It depends on your relationship to the person, the context, what they are looking for in sharing the information. In general my advice to myself would be to talk less and listen more.

(On preview, jinx)
posted by muddgirl at 8:42 AM on September 28 [11 favorites]


I'm guilty of sometimes reaching for a personal anecdote as a way of expressing support, and it took a while to learn when and how to employ that tactic appropriately.

Even that hypothetical psychologist's "correct" response of "I know what you must be going through" is self-centered because you're responding to something that happened to someone else by starting your sentence with "I" instead of "You," or by saying something observant and sympathetic like, "That sounds so hard."
posted by emelenjr at 9:42 AM on September 28 [3 favorites]


I am torn about it, because I totally get how it can be annoying for someone to essentially say "that reminds me of me." On the other hand, it would be weird to never talk about how to relate to someone. Like if someone talks about collecting sneakers and you ask a ton of questions about sneaker collecting, then mention a different day that you are also a sneaker-head, wouldn't it seem strange - and borderline deceptive - that you never mentioned that at all in the first conversation?
posted by catquas at 10:44 AM on September 28 [4 favorites]


On the "I can't imagine what that is like" vs. "I can imagine how hard that is" vs. "I know what that's like" debate, my theory is that there is no universally right answer. If someone is talking about something terrible that happened to them, anything you say could come off as hurtful depending on the person.
posted by catquas at 10:49 AM on September 28 [4 favorites]


catquas, I would say there's a difference between two sneakerheads chatting about their favourite sneakers and the pitfalls of sneaker collecting VS. trying to console someone going through something shitty, like breaking an arm or a death or not getting a job or some other tribulation that many of us have been though.
posted by VirginiaPlain at 10:55 AM on September 28


My instinct is always to share an anecdote as a way of connecting, but it never, ever, ever works. And I hate when people do that to me (or try to offer solutions to the problem I'm having!).

I've had much better success with "That really sucks," "I'm so sorry to hear that", "What a jerk," or other simple and direct reflection of whatever emotion they showed, followed immediately by a question so they can talk about it more if they want. Even just "Oh my gosh! What happened next?"

If I actually have a directly relevant experience, I've had some success not reciting my experience, but asking a question about their experience that I expect will be relevant because of my experience. Like "Oh my gosh, what a jerk of a driver! Did you have to wait around long for the cops to arrive?"
posted by bluesky78987 at 11:24 AM on September 28 [5 favorites]


Sometimes an anecdote might work to show empathy, but in emotional situations especially, it's key to let the person talk themselves out before offering anything from your own experience. Doing otherwise might come across as prioritizing your own situation and/or minimizing or dismissing theirs.

One guideline I use for myself is that when I notice I'm on edge waiting for an opening to get my story in, I take a deep breath and refocus on simply listening. There's usually an opportunity down the road to share whatever is relevant, but it probably won't be when someone is upset.
posted by rpfields at 11:50 AM on September 28 [5 favorites]


this is always contextual, it isn’t an absolute prohibition even for hard-line rule-followers. if somebody was falling apart over not knowing how bad the pain would get or how long they could tolerate it, it would be very helpful and empathetic for someone who’d had a very similar injury to report their own experience - if they had reason to believe their own experience was typical - because this would give the sufferer vital information and lessen their fear. or if a new parent was afraid their kid was dying from a very normal childhood thing & you were in a position to say Don’t worry, this always happens at age X, it happened to all of mine, you don’t need to go to the hospital unless X happens, that would also be helpful (if true). and the further away in time you are from an incident, the more acceptable it is to treat a disclosure as the opening to a mutual storytelling session. generally,

when counter-sharing is deemed rude is in those circumstances where it turns an urgent disclosure into a pair of competing monologues. when someone is in distress and badly wants to talk about it, it does not demonstrate concern to respond as if you are taking turns at show-and-tell. people who are disclosing intimate troubles are not usually under the impression that nobody else has ever suffered, they do not need to be reminded that hey, man, we’ve all got problems. if they trust you enough to tell you their troubles, they hope for you to take some sympathetic interest not just in the universal elements but in the particulars that are only theirs. if you want to convey that you understand and they are not alone, that is not best done, as a rule, by first responding to news about them with Say, that reminds me of me! that can be a worthwhile addition to sympathy, but it’s not a substitute for it.

it’s a natural human reflex to perk up when somebody says something we can relate to, because for most of us it is a greater pleasure to talk about ourselves than to focus on others. but we have to suppress the impulse sometimes. people in distress who want to talk about it want to be spoken to as individuals whose own individual suffering and present emotional circumstances matter to the listener as more than a reminder of something similar. so you have to listen to them before deciding what to say. if they say, I feel like I’m the only one, sure, tell your story to show them they’re not. if they say, I feel like my pain doesn’t matter because other people have it just as bad or worse, maybe don’t. there are a lot of factors and scripts don’t apply.
posted by queenofbithynia at 12:51 PM on September 28 [10 favorites]


Your broken arm story sounds dismissive and minimizing to me, too - there *are* ways someone could share that story that would make me like them or feel comforted, but that isn't one. The bus driver response in contrast feels like it's imparting specific useful context I might not have, which could be helpful.

I struggle with this tendency a lot in myself (and yup, it's the autism!). I think where I've landed is that there's a lot of nuance to when and how personal experiences land helpfully vs. sounding self-centered, and it's hard to get the balance right. So for those of us who are not skilled at it, the safer advice can be to just find other ways to connect and support.
posted by Stacey at 2:04 PM on September 28 [1 favorite]


I think it's fine to comparison-share as long as you go back to the person originally talking and not just override it all with you.
posted by jenfullmoon at 6:14 PM on September 28 [2 favorites]


I've been trying to train myself to stop when tempted to launch into an anecdote and ask "would a similar story of mine would be helpful or annoying?"

If it would feel jarring to ask that question, I take that as a signal that I should reach for other assistive strategies.

I've just learned that even when we study someone, it's too easy to mistake a grimace from a gas bubble for disapproval of a remark, and especially when someone has asked for support, I would rather ask.
posted by Vigilant at 7:44 PM on September 28 [2 favorites]


This seems to be an issue on which neurotypicals and neurodiverse people are divided. Neurotypicals tend to find sharing your own story annoying because they perceive it as you trying to make their pain about you instead, whereas neurodiverse people tend to find sharing your own story as you relating to them much like how you described in your post.

The optimal solution is to try to get a sense of which type of person you're talking and behave accordingly. Perhaps initiate telling them about something bad that happened to you that's fairly common and see if they respond with "that must be hard" or respond with sharing a story of when the same bad thing happened to them. Then make a mental note of which type they are so you know how to respond to them in the future.
posted by Jacqueline at 12:48 AM on September 29 [5 favorites]


If I had to describe it succinctly I would call it "pain Olympics"

Maybe the person you're talking to sees the similarities in the shared experiences, maybe the person you're talking to needs to out-compete you in the pain Olympics and doesn't give you any shared experience/empathy
posted by I paid money to offer this... insight? at 8:44 PM on September 29


Best answer: Saying, "Oh, friend, that is such bullshit, I'm sorry" and then shutting up (allowing them to speak or sitting with them in silence) is always, always appropriate and helpful. Just in case you're looking for suggestions of what to do rather than simply a list of what not to say.

I think just about the only time it's good to share your experience is when you are sharing it as a way to communicate and underline the above sentiment, viz., that this is bullshit and you're sorry they're going through this bullshit.

So for example, if a few months from now a friend of yours breaks an arm, you might say, "Oh, friend, that is such bullshit. I've been where you are, broke my arm just a couple of months ago. It was bullshit. I'm sorry." And then, IF AND ONLY IF they ask you, "Oh really? How long did yours take to heal?" -- that is when you share how quickly it was over, but still in a sympathetic tone as if to say nonverbally that those quick healin days were still hella bullshit.

PS: my repeated use of the word bullshit is intentional, it's meant to communicate that specifics are almost never appropriate. Find a generic word for pain or frustration or sadness that you are comfortable with if you don't like bullshit. Use that to sum up the experience you are sharing about yourself, mentioning nothing outside of that generic summation unless specifically asked by the other person to share a specific detail.
posted by MiraK at 6:59 AM on September 30 [4 favorites]


I'm not neurotypical and I hate when people do this. When I want to share something and get support from a friend, it's really upsetting when they make it about something that happened to them. It makes me feel like they aren't interested in what I'm saying, and I feel obligated to comfort them about their thing instead of talking about my thing. I've spent a lot of my life getting shut down when I ask for help, so that's probably why I have such a strong reaction to this behavior.
posted by birthday cake at 6:27 AM on October 1 [2 favorites]


I've been thinking about this for awhile, because it's a complicated question. Many replies say that the psychologists are wrong and others are saying they are right. I'm going to start my answer by discussing some related situations.

The first one is phatic greetings. When two people who have to share a space need to interact they will frequently use phatic greetings to affirm that they are not going to be hostile or intrusive. "Good morning, did you have a good weekend?" "It was great, thanks, how about you?" "Lovely!" is useful exchange even when the first speaker broke up with his boyfriend and over the weekend, and is facing homelessness and the second one is battling depression and wondering how to break out of the trap of not leaving the house all weekend while obsessively scrolling websites that make them upset. This is because the ritual conversation is signalling that both participants are not going to require anything of each other, and they are safe to be around and can be ignored. Neither is going to solicit emotional labour, or commit micro-aggressions, or be pushy to get attention, or refuse to interact and snub the other, or out-group them - The phatic conversation seems like a waste of time, but it's a process of setting a friendly boundary where you acknowledge the other person exists and has an equal right to the space and that they are safe to ignore you other than to perform necessary functional interactions.

If you work in an office with fifty-two other people, many of whom have significantly different lives and experiences and positions than you, you can't be on intimate terms with all of them - simply because if you were, the entire day would be taken up with supportive social interactions and no work would ever get done. Phatic conversations, as above, express the commitment that you are not going to create an out-group and exclude this person, nor will you create an in-group and exclude other people so you can turn your attention and energy to mutual support with them. You're going to keep it friendly but formal. Phatic conversations are the ones where there is no true sharing of stories and it would be wrong for anyone to share.

The second related situation I am going to talk about is shibboleths, where the greetings are significant tribal markers. This is done in a group where both sides greet each other with an in-group expression of loyalty. Examples of this include, "Long live Chairman Mao!" or "God be with you! And with you!" or "God Save the King!" or "Let's Go Brandon!" They are very clearly intended to signal that only people who are enthusiastically partisan on the correct side are welcome here and that any deviation from loyalty to this in group will be punished severely, perhaps even lethally. You are part of our in-group, they are saying, and don't you ever forget it. In this situation you can express strong emotions - but only those on a short list, such as admiration for the chairman, or how sure and certain is your belief in God. Anyone expressing sadness for people starving during The Great Leap Forward, or doubts about the certainty of a future in Heaven making their current troubles unimportant is going to get in trouble.

The third situation I am going to talk about is the performance. You have a diva and she stands centre stage and she sings. You have the supporting cast, and crew doing the spotlights and the ticket sales and marketing and the wardrobe and hair styles, and you have the audience sitting there with their cell phones turned off, sucking on fisherman's friends to ensure they don't cough, all raptly staring upward at the small sequined figure in the spotlight warbling away... and then she pauses, takes a breath and smiles and says, "Everybody, sing along!" And the answer is a roar of song, everyone, even those who know they can't stay on key and can't remember more than a quarter of the words belting out "Sweet Caroline!" or "Far Too Late" or "O Mio Babino Caro" or whatever it is, all irrespective of how well they sing, just blissing out on being one with the diva and the song they all love so, so much.

If the diva does not say, "Everybody sing," just one person talking can ruin the performance and get themself ejected from the theatre. Until she says "Sing" it's shut up and listen time. The audience's role is to shut up and listen, and worship, and any attempt to insert themselves - heckling, or prompting, or trying to outshine the diva, or even audibly taking a emergency phone call from a distraught babysitter - that's going to result in an entire performance venue worth of people thinking you are dog meat. "I can't believe.... They must have been drunk... And we paid seventy dollars for those tickets..." The diva can share anything and everything and the fans will thank her for it, but the fans only get to share what she asks of them, when she asks it.

Fourth situation. Young married couple. One of them is annoyed. He kept me awake last night trying to talk about that TV show. Both of them are annoyed. She left dirty dishes on the kitchen table again. He over excites the toddler at bedtime when I am trying to work and it's too noisy with giggles and splashing. She sticks me with the bed time routines every night and says I do it wrong. There is a low grade simmer going on in this household.

And then he comes in and happily announces his sister is getting married, and she loses it because having to do a wedding is a last straw, the three or more lost weekends with showers and fittings and ceremonies, the expense, his totally aggravating family... When she starts to raise her voice, he loses it, because she's always mad at him, she is never supportive, she sticks him with all the domestic work, he's been patient because of her job... And then she loses it even more, because she is working her self into misery supporting the three of them because he never finds a job that brings in enough to help, and she never gets to see her kid, and he's needy, needy always looking for attention...

This is a couple who are going to find themselves in divorce court unless they figure out the one of the basic rules of relationships is that you can't both be mad at the same time. If you get mad at someone when they get mad at you and neither of you backs down it escalates. Things get said that are irrevocable. The pain builds and builds. It's not safe for either of you to stay in the relationship anymore, because living with someone who is furious all the time is much too hard on your mental health. But the thing is you have to take turns because, if whenever he expresses a little discontent she turns on the rage just enough to shut him down, then he's the one living with someone who is always mad at him and she's a red flag partner. That's not sustainable either. If only one of you gets to be mad, than that one is a bully. It doesn't matter if the one who is mad all the time has good reasons to be mad or not. It's no more fair to be the only one who gets to be mad than to be the only one who gets to eat.

In the situation with the unhappily married couple, if they both share their marriage is in big trouble but if they learn to alternate they may end up very happy they stuck together and becoming a much better team.

And then the final related situation is the psychologist providing therapy to the client who is slowly trying to figure out how they think about a bad situation in their life. "My wife gets mad a LOT. I think it's my fault, but then..." When the client is unable to find words, the psychologist leaps into the breach to encourage them. "My ex was the same way. He always used anger to control me. He NEVER respected my feelings. He was furious all the time. And everything he was mad about was so petty. I had to realise he didn't care about me. It was hard, but I didn't let him destroy my life. I was so afraid of him I had to sneak around behind his back, finding hook ups and getting my sexual needs met elsewhere. But then I met the love of my life, and I dumped him. I escaped from my abusive partner and you can too!!"

The psychologist is NOT supposed to self insert, let alone use up one third of the session telling a person anecdote. That's your basic minimum requirement for a psychologist. We are now never going to know if the client was going to finish their train of thought with "...maybe I shouldn't have killed her kitten when she was ignoring me." or "... she tells me no one else could ever put up with a loser like me and I don't have the money to leave, but I'm so scared." or "...this self help book suggested we should each get a day to air grievances and I'm scared I'll upset her if I say she reminds me of my Dad." It's your most basic rule for psychologist trainees is that you let the client do their own talking. You don't minimize what they are saying, because the kid that starts by saying their Dad won't let them choose their own clothes might continue to say that he also climbs into her bed at night, and the man that says that he's fed up with his coworkers and his family being jerks might continue to say that he threw his gun into the lake because he was afraid he would turn it on them, but has been collecting pills so he can swallow them all at once and get away from the pain that way, and the woman that says her mother is insufferable might come back the next week and laugh and say it was her wretched premenstrual dysphoria and actually she feels silly now for being so upset about finding celery in the salad.

I think this is why psychologists are so big on saying that you should not share your own experiences with others even to validate their experiences because when a psychologist does it, it's a big boundary violation. The client is there to be listened to and to figure out what their issues are and how they can handle them. They are not there to get advice. They are not there to be judged. They are definitely not there to listen to the psychologist top them, squelch them, over ride them, or deflect them from saying things that are heartbreaking or infuriating about their own life even when it distresses or overloads the psychologist. They are paying for someone to listen and to help them think more clearly.

But you are not a psychologist. And this means that every person who comes and tells you their story is going to have different needs and different rights to your emotional labour. You didn't just get paid $160 to listen to them talk about their issues for fifty minutes. Some of them just want to vent and want you to make the right noises in agreement with them while they do so as if you were a psychologist. Some of them want you to show you care about them, and are soliciting action, whether it be a hug, you to go incandescent with rage on their behalf, or you to come up with a solution for them. Some of them want you to tell them they are smart and tough and can solve their problems. Some of them want you to play the role of audience to the diva. Some of them want you to tactfully cut them off short because they KNOW they shouldn't be complaining about their boyfriend to the clerk at the car rental counter, but they can't seem to shut up. Some of them want to know they are not alone and other people go through this too and come out the other end just fine.

It's a case by case thing. You probably know some people who like the shared experience empathy thing, or you wouldn't want to do it. That's probably the way your family, or your friends do it. But when your boss decides to vent at you, you can predict that he's not inviting you to join him in a shared misery in-group. He's being the diva who doesn't invite the audience to sing. You're being paid to hold his hand and make sympathetic noises and stroke his ego, all on company time. And when the broken stair in your friend circle corners you to triangulate how evil someone was to set a boundary, you probably will gain points by claiming her new victim was a bitch to you too, and that might just be the safest, if unethical way to extricate yourself.

I think you need to calibrate each individual situation. Is this person someone who wants to consider me a peer and get closer to me? A good rule of thumb is that the more upset the person is, the less they want to hear from you. Is this person someone who wants to rant and is irritable? If so, sharing with them is likely to make them irritated with you, because they are in a rage spiral.

It is always worth asking yourself if this person is sharing a story with you that you actually don't want to hear and didn't consent to? If so, the temptation to minimize their experience can be near irresistible. Faux sympathy is more socially acceptable than saying, "Yeah well, our professor is a bitch to everybody, and if you rant about her at me you'll ruin my mood too." Sometimes people leave us with no good options. It's not like they won't know that you are snubbing them if you tell them you have to catch a bus. For one thing if you do it tactfully enough that they don't know it's a snub they are going to corner you the next time you have class and rant at you some more. For another they may try to corner you at break when there are no good excuses not to talk to them. Still it is better to figure out a way to deflect that that isn't passive aggressive.

I think the reason why this debate exists at all is because at the core there is a question of who has the right to get our sympathy and support. The person who is telling you their story is soliciting your emotional labour and your attention. Some people very much have a right to this but their right is based on an imbalance of power. Maybe they are a customer, or a client, or a boss, or someone whose position in your social circle is much higher than yours.

It will be extremely rare that a friend will come to you in such a crisis that anything but rapt attention and support is a deflect. If someone comes in bleeding and collapses, you don't derail by telling them that you were hit by a car as a kid, but that you were fine afterwards. It's not actually a comparable situation, because their emergency is bad enough that your priority will be to get them to professionals who can help. If someone in your friend group tells you they are suicidal, you need to get them professional help because you are not trained in suicide intervention any more than you are trained to evaluate if someone who was hit by a car has a brain bleed. You do not try to handle it by sharing sympathetic stories and putting them to bed to sleep it off.

Providing emotional labour can feel good, and be good for our ego. Picking up a toddler and giving them a hug and a kiss and feeling them relax happily in our arms feels good. So does listening to someone and making encouraging noises and seeing them brighten up, and turn around happily resolved feeling that they can handle whatever it was that distressed them. Even having a shared rage spiral with someone can feel good to most people. You can be going along not distressed at all, when your friend walks in and explodes about what Those People Are Doing Now, and this triggers you into agreeing and telling him what Those People Did To You and the pair of you can indulge in a ten minute hate, vibrating with rage glee, and feel awake and alive and angry and ready to fight - energized. So a person who provides emotional labour, even if it upsets them isn't necessarily being imposed upon. We value chances to do emotional labour. There are a lot of people who get their identity and feeling of connection from providing for other people and doing emotional labour for them. The taciturn father, who hands his daughter twenty $100 bills and tells her "Get yourself a prom dress" leaving her gasping with happiness is not just providing the cash through his time working, but in picking the right gift and the right time is doing emotional labour. Sometimes being able to do things like that can be the only thing that makes a person feel their life is worthwhile.

The reason that this debate as to whether sharing stories is empathetic or not, is because sometimes it's really not appropriate to share a story, but we are disagreeing on when and who. I think this is at heart a debate about who is entitled to emotional labour and when. One side is saying that you are not entitled to ask for emotional labour from me, if I am not entitled to ask for emotional labour from you, and the other side is saying that some people are sometimes entitled to emotional labour without reciprocity.

The question is which side is the side being entitled. If someone tells me about their troubles and is not encouraged by a story from me about how we have shared experiences, are they not in fact using me, and just dumping on me? If they don't care enough about me to hear that I have similar lived experiences, maybe they shouldn't be telling me their story at all. Just because someone shouts at you in tears, "You're not listening to me!!" doesn't mean that we are in the wrong not to listen to them. Who is the person who is oversharing? The first person telling their story who doesn't want to hear about the second person? Or the second person who is inserting their experience and taking the focus away from the first person?

I think there are three factors to consider: Depth of crisis, difference in power, and closeness of relationship. The greater the crisis the greater the first person's right to share and the less the second person can help by sharing. The higher the difference in power, the greater the right of the more powerful person to share and the less the second person has a right to share. However the closer you both are the more you both have a right and even an obligation to share. If your sister finds a lump and you support her through it and then she discovers that you are going through chemo but not telling anyone, your sister is going to feel some really staggering pain and shame - in fact, the support you gave her though the lump will feel like you conned her into thinking you cared when you don't.

I think the mismatch is happening because often when someone shares with us, we mistake that for closeness when in fact it is the other person pulling rank. The boss who complains to us about the parking situation is not sharing out of a desire to get closer to us. He's just dumping because we are a peon required to provide emotional labour. The high status girl at high school who drunkenly told you her boyfriend is a jerk was like the Republican saying "Let's Go Brandon!' She didn't even know your name. She was just demanding your enthusiastic sympathy. She didn't want to know that you have yet to meet a boy you'd be willing to date, and that the jocks are the worst.

That mismatch in agreeing on degree of crisis, our social rank and our closeness can even happen in a very close relationship where your sister comes to vent about her exams and then storms off saying you always make every conversation about you. You might think it was a situation where equal time telling stories was suitable, she might think that she was in crisis, and entitled to be the centre of attention. She might even think this if your crisis of not being able to make rent and about to become a couch surfer is a far smaller crisis than her getting a C in Biology - but in this case the reason she thinks your problems are negligible and hers are large is because she believes in her own rank, that she is entitled to get your attention and sympathy and support without reciprocating to anything beyond the most token amount. Who cares if you are homeless? She has a grade lower than a B!
posted by Jane the Brown at 8:02 AM on October 3 [2 favorites]


Response by poster: I am in complete awe of the breath and depth of some of the responses here.

I'm now looking at this issue in a completely different way.

However, I still don't think that I could bring myself to say "I can't imagine what you're going through". It would sound fake and contrite. There must be a reason why some comedy writers in film and TV use this line so much in comedy when they're trying to portray a character trying to do fake empathy. (Sorry, but that is my interpretation)

I'm incredibly drawn to the answer from @miraK. It sounds natural but it also leaves the door open for the other person to ask you "what happened?" instead of foisting it upon them.

So for example, if a few months from now a friend of yours breaks an arm, you might say, "Oh, friend, that is such bullshit. I've been where you are, broke my arm just a couple of months ago. It was bullshit. I'm sorry." And then, IF AND ONLY IF they ask you, "Oh really? How long did yours take to heal?" -- that is when you share how quickly it was over, but still in a sympathetic tone as if to say nonverbally that those quick healin days were still hella bullshit.d feel fake and contrite to me.

Yet again, AskMefiers show themselves to be the most broadminded and empathetic people in cyberspace. Thank you.
posted by jacobean at 9:52 AM on October 5 [4 favorites]


My physician does this. I’ve realized it’s gone from “mildly inappropriate but sort of intimacy-building thing this person does, perhaps because we’ve been to some of the same professional development things and she sees me partly as a peer” to “actively getting in the way of the relationship we need to have because I do not get enough airtime to talk about real problems.” Which is to say, I think it’s contextual. How serious is the thing your person is venting about? I agree with others who said the bus driver and broken arm story are different from each other, not just because the broken arm example feels didactic or one-up-y but also because it feels too serious. You shouldn’t take airtime away from someone who just had a trauma. But a pissy bus driver is normally pretty low-stakes.

Positionality: I’m from an autism family, and possibly autistic myself. I have the habit (probably this answer gave that away), and yet when my mother does it, it drives me bazoo. On balance it’s probably a bad habit, definitely a risky one, but it genuinely can work sometimes.

P.s. I know we’re not supposed to focus on other commenters, but Jane the Brown, I really enjoyed your explanation of phatic communication. Real lightbulb moment there for me. It also exposed for me why I hate work icebreakers — they are probably supposed to serve this function but I just wind up fishing around for something bland and unrevealing to say and feel incredibly self-conscious the whole time.
posted by eirias at 4:41 PM on October 8 [1 favorite]


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