Sometimes people tell me about something that’s making them feel emotional and I’m not sure how to respond.
Let’s say my friend Emma tells me about an incident she read about online, and it’s making her angry. I see that it’s something important to her, so I don’t want to be dismissive, because I care about her feelings, but I don’t have any emotional reaction to the incident.
1. Should I try to express anger out of solidarity, like the story is making me angry too?
2. Should I express condolences because the story is making her feel bad?
3. Should I show happiness so she knows I appreciate that she would share her feelings with me?
4. Should I just not show any emotional reaction because the story isn’t eliciting any reactions in me?
5. Should I show that I’m feeling anxious that an emotional reaction might be expected of me, but I’m not sure which one it is?
This kind of thing comes up more often than I would like, and it feels like I keep getting it wrong.
2 comments
You should be glad your friends share with you. This is how you learn about each other and bond. You don’t have to feel the same way about social topics. Some thing you will be passionate about and one of your friends won’t really care, that’s okay to.
First of all, don’t worry about what your face is doing—just let that be natural. If your friend is angry about something, you can say, “That sucks, I can see it’s really upset you.” This is called validation: you recognize what the other person is feeling and you validate their feelings by naming them and expressing understanding of why those feelings came up, even though you don’t have those same feelings and may not even agree with their state of mind. The reason you validate feelings is because emotions are things that happen to us, and with strong emotions like fear, hurt, anger, sadness, etc, we can’t usually control the emotions. What helps the most to resolve those emotions is to talk to a friend about it. So, all you have to do is validate and listen.