Cheering People Up
“We want people to feel with us more than to act for us.”
George Elliott
It’s an old joke that men do not know how to listen without giving advice. While this stereotype may be truer for men, I’ve come to realize, it is a cultural issue affecting both men and women.
A friend tells you about a fight he had with his significant other. A colleague complains about her job. Your mom complains about her neighbor. Often when people come to us with problems, the natural instinct is to reply with advice. After all, we want to help and be helpful. But is that what people are looking for when they share their problems with us?
Giving advice to people tends to make them feel disconnected, which is the opposite of what we want when we are vulnerable. It often closes the very door we are trying to open. More often than not, what people are really looking for is to be heard, to be understood, to be empathized with, and to get help processing their feelings. They may or may not consciously realize this is why they are reaching out, but it is nonetheless the true reason.
Cheering someone up is generally something we do more for ourselves than for others. It is to make us feel better and avoid our discomfort around someone else’s discomfort. We may also think that we’re helping, but we’re actually denying that person connection and the opportunity to better understand what they are feeling. “Cheering someone up” implies their emotions are not valid, that they should feel something else, something we perceive as better. We mean well, but we are invalidating their feelings, which can drive the person who needs help to repress and avoid their own emotions. This procrastinates and intensifies the problem rather than solving it.
Like "cheer up," generally telling someone to calm down, worry less, or relax does not actually help them cheer up, calm down, worry less, or relax. While these statements might sound like good ideas, they all imply that what a person is currently feeling is not valid. This makes the very emotion they hope to avoid a more intense internal struggle.
As Mel Robbins explained in her book The 5 Second Rule, “When you tell a person to ‘calm down,’ you are asking someone to go from 60 mph to 0 mph. It’s like trying to stop a freight train by throwing a boulder in front of it; it’ll jump the tracks. A study in the journal Behavior Research and Therapy shows that people who naturally try to suppress their unwanted thoughts end up being more distressed by said thoughts.”
Cheering someone can be a well intentioned attempt to break a cycle of rumination or obsession, but be careful not to deny someone’s right to feel their feelings. In most instances, it’s far more helpful to feel with them. This allows people to do the real work of beginning to process their emotions. Feeling one’s feelings and having someone empathize helps us get past so-called negative emotions. When this happens, we are “cheered up” on a much deeper level.
I was on a plane once and watched a young woman cry as she headed off for army basic training. The well-meaning gentleman next to her attempted to distract her and told her, “Don’t cry.” She tried to act strong for him, even though he was a stranger she had never met before. After all, he meant well and was saying, “Don’t cry,” thus unknowingly implying her emotions were wrong. I watched her struggle to keep her composure and fight her feelings in an attempt to appease the well-intentioned man and act like she thought she should. I couldn’t help but wonder, what if he had taken a different approach? What if instead of trying to cheer her up, distract her, or give advice, he had listened for the emotion behind what she was saying? What if he had acknowledged that what she was going through was sad and difficult, rather than implying that she was wrong to feel sad? Would that not have helped her more?
Mirroring is a simple and amazing technique. It’s also different from how most of us are used to responding to people, so it takes practice. It involves listening for the emotion, not just the content of what someone is saying, and then feeding that emotion back to them. Next time you have the urge to give someone advice, instead take a guess at how they feel. To start, you can ask them, “Do you feel _____?” If you get it right, they will feel understood. That right there is a huge gift. Furthermore, often when someone identifies our emotions, we go even deeper into ourselves. We go from understanding that we are sad to understanding that we are depressed, dejected, hopeless, forlorn, or heavy hearted. We go from understanding that we are angry to understanding that we are aggravated, annoyed, furious, hostile, or resentful. We are on the path to understanding our own feelings deeper, which is the key to releasing ourselves from those feelings. Often we don’t know how we feel until someone asks.
If you guess incorrectly, the person will still realize you care and are trying to understand what’s going on with them. This is an invaluable gift. The act of correcting you by telling you how they really feel also helps them get more in touch with their emotions. And getting in touch with how we feel is how we begin to process those feelings.
Mirroring helps people feel understood. It can de-escalate emotional situations. Angry people become less angry when they feel heard and understood. Frustrated people begin to calm down. Understanding helps us feel and connects us.
Once connected, often people are more open to hearing advice should you then choose to give it. They are no longer in that vulnerable state where having their emotions invalidated can feel so uncomfortable. Shields are down and caring has been established, which means communication can really begin.
Ask Yourself:
How do I feel when I go to someone wanting to be heard and they respond with advice?
How do I feel when, in an emotional state, I am told, “cheer up,” “calm down,” “don’t worry,” or “relax?”
Next time I want to give someone advice, would I be open to instead asking them how they feel? What is an opportunity that might come up to try it imperfectly?
Next Letter: Changing Someone's Mind