•FEAR OF NOT HAVING TIME/BANDWIDTH
We’re busy, life is crazy, and we don’t want to commit to more than we can handle. We’re not sure how much of a commitment this stuff involves.
GOOD NEWS:
WE’RE MAKING IT HARDER THAN IT NEEDS TO BE!
One day, while in the car on the way to preschool, Kelsey’s young daughter Georgia piped up from the backseat, “Mom, what do you actually do for a living?” Kelsey paused, trying to come up with an answer.
“Well,” Kelsey said, “I help friends be there for each other when they are sad.”
“Oh,” said Georgia, “that’s easy.”
“Oh, really?” said Kelsey. “What would you say to help someone in need?”
Then Georgia rattled off this list:
Take a minute and read this short list again, and consider that Georgia just blew up the notion that helping isn’t an ability we’re born with, or a skill we naturally pick up between learning to tie our shoes and figuring out a glue stick. Sadly, something happens as we grow up. We change from being completely unself-conscious and intuitive about how to comfort someone to being self-doubting, freaked-out messes.
How did we get here? We believe it comes down to what Aaron T. Beck—widely considered the founder of cognitive psychology—describes as our two main fears:
1.I am unlovable.
2.I am incompetent.
That about covers it, doesn’t it?
We’ve all felt the emotional sting when our overtures of friendship are rejected, our intentions are misunderstood, or our attempts at being kind are disregarded. These little hurts start on the playground and build up over a lifetime. We’ve all had the feeling of being unable to connect and, buried deep below that, considered the Universal Questions that gnaw at us:
And, as we all know, doubts like these remind us of our limitations. So, often we try and play it safe by avoiding the situation altogether. When someone is in a difficult time that we don’t understand, the stakes can feel pretty high. And it’s really, really tempting to avoid the risk of failure entirely, especially when we are not sure if trying will help.
But here’s the thing: you can pretend to be somebody who doesn’t make mistakes, but (a) that’s impossible, and (b) it’s not actually all that supportive. Because when we’re feeling vulnerable and scared, who do we immediately want to turn to? It probably isn’t the person we know whose life appears to be perfect. We go to the person we trust. And this has very little to do with perfection. (Often, it’s the opposite.)
If we really want to have authentic connections with others, then we need to talk about two kinds of psychological baggage we tend to carry around, which make us completely self-conscious about our capacity to connect with people: (1) guilt about how we’ve let others down, and (2) resentment about being let down by others in the past. The resulting beliefs—that we are not enough, and that others are not enough—get in the way of trusting our innate capacities to give.
EMPATHY WARM-UP:
YOU’RE GOOD ENOUGH, YOU’RE SMART ENOUGH,
YOU KNOW THE REST
You’ve been let down—we all have—but you’ve let someone down, too, and because we’re not monsters, we feel guilty about that. Guilt can be useful when it reminds us to do better, and when it lifts us up to be more responsible, mature people. But when guilt’s end game is simply more guilt with a side of guilt, without ever changing us for the better, then it only drags us down.
One way to free ourselves of guilt is simply to accept who we are. (There’s a good reason the Internet is plastered with quotes about this.) Kelsey can feel guilty every time she gets a scone with her morning coffee. Or she can accept that she likes (needs) a deliciously carby reward for making it out of bed and grooming herself most mornings, and that with middle age fast approaching, her college body is a thing of the past. It feels really grown-up in a good way when we accept things about ourselves, like not wearing heels, not liking whiskey, or not wanting to tell the cabdriver our life story on the way to the airport. Then we can relax into who we really are and stop using up energy on things that don’t matter.
Some of the ways we manage guilt, however, are not so helpful. Particularly: avoiding guilt by resigning ourselves to being less than we are—meaning less capable, less loving, less present. It’s a self-defeating, rather than self-actualized, choice. For example, it’s one thing for Kelsey to accept that a scone is a small price to pay for a good mood in the morning. It’s quite another to tell ourselves that people are better off without our help because we’re just no good at giving it. Not only is that not true—it’s a lot easier to learn to be kind than it is to give up carbs—but it’s also dangerous.
BELIEVING THAT YOU’RE INCAPABLE OF CONNECTING DURING PAINFUL TIMES CAN ISOLATE YOU FROM LIFE’S MOST CONNECTED MOMENTS.
In this book, we’ll give you a lot of really helpful tips on showing up that even the most feelings-averse among us can master. But to believe that these skills will work, you will first need to believe in the benefit of you, THE FLAWED YOU, trying. And that begins with being a lot less hard on yourself.
So we’re going to ask that you get some of that guilt off your chest.
EMPATHY WORKOUT:
BEING KIND TO OTHERS
BEGINS WITH BEING KIND TO OURSELVES.
•Take some stickie notes or index cards, or cut some paper to create your own cards, and write down one to three times when you shied away from someone’s suffering. Consider the following truths (yes, they are true):
—Because I shied away, it does not make me an awful person.
—Because I shied away, it does not mean I am bad at empathy.
•Write out your regret on the cards: “I regret _____________.” Consider this as you fill the cards out: “I did the best I could with the tools I had at the time.” Because that’s probably true, too.
•You also have permission to admit some of the deeper things that got in the way of reaching out. Like the following:
—I was self-involved and didn’t see their suffering.
—I didn’t think my effort would matter that much.
—I was afraid of getting sucked in.
—I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to give enough.
•And then write out on your cards: “I forgive myself for a time I shied away because _________________.”
•Now, take your cards, and create a little ceremony of letting them go. You could burn them on the beach, in your yard, or in your fireplace—or a sink or trash can will do just fine if you don’t have access to a beach, yard, or fireplace. Or plant them in the soil with a seed or young sapling. Or fold them into paper airplanes and send them off the roof of your building. You get the idea.
We’ve found that actually destroying the paper makes a psychic difference, instead of just throwing it in the garbage or leaving it in a journal. It sounds a little woo-woo, but having your own personal ritual of letting go can literally (and symbolically) feel like the psychological baggage of guilt is burned away.
NEXT UP: SCARY CONVERSATION TIP #1
You can apologize to the person you shied away from, too, if you want to. You can do it with an email or a card, or you can talk. And you know what? It may be that the behavior you’ve been agonizing over for years is not even remembered by the person you’re reaching out to. Or it’s possible that reaching out may bring up some anger you will have to accept. Or it may result in sincere appreciation for your intention to make things right.
When I got sick, I was twenty-four. If you’ve ever known a twenty-four-year-old, or been one, you understand that in general, this is not exactly an age rife with sage wisdom and life experience. None of my close friends had ever known anyone with cancer beyond a grandparent, let alone someone their age. Everyone was really scared, and we all fumbled very awkwardly through it. Some people shied away because they didn’t know how to handle it, and at the time, I interpreted it as them not caring about me.
Over the
years, various friends have reached out to apologize for things they did or didn’t do during that time. In a couple of cases, this was over ten years later. A lot of the time, I didn’t even recall the particular thing they’d been lying awake at night over. These conversations have clearly been way more stressful for the other person than for me, and even though I let go of any resentment long ago (if there ever was any to begin with), it’s been really touching and meaningful to me every time someone reached out.
LETTING RESENTMENTS GO
We’re human. Most of us carry grudges. They can be useful, too. Grudges are helpful in shielding us from the people in our lives who’ve treated us badly or taken advantage of our vulnerability. But as much as that coping strategy might work to protect us in the short term, too many grudges are like excess scar tissue, blocking our ability to make rewarding emotional connections. That’s when our smart strategies at self-preservation turn into harmful forms of self-sabotage. If we want to develop relationships that weather life’s imperfect times, we have to be capable of weathering people’s imperfections, too.
One way to let go of these resentments that no longer serve us is to first consider what was given to us that we may have failed to notice at the time.
IN ORDER TO RECEIVE, WE MUST NOTICE WHAT IS GIVEN.
In the depths of our suffering, “valuing what we receive” can be a lot harder than it sounds. Sometimes, the vastness and intensity of emotions of despair or fear can crowd everything else out and keep us from seeing the beautiful things being offered to us. The irony, of course, is that this is the time when we need these beautiful things the most.
My own family experience taught me the value of being able to receive care, however I found it. But this lesson didn’t come easy. My younger life narrative—the one in which I believed no adult had stepped up when I lost my mother to mental illness—experienced a much needed shift when I happened upon some contradictory evidence.
The evidence was in the form of a letter, which came while I was volunteering with the Peace Corps in Africa. I’d written to my mother’s only friend about being scared to return to the United States with no place to go home to. In her response, my mother’s friend didn’t offer me a place to stay, and that had hurt. Fifteen years later, I read the letter again and found something important that I had failed to see earlier, which represented a completely different story from the one I’d told myself.
My mother’s friend had actually written: “Sometimes we all need a mom. I want to be your mom when you need one.”
Somehow, in the depths of my longing, I missed what I had probably most needed to hear. And it’s probably true that I was disappointed with many of the people in my life, which upon reflection, was a lot about failing to notice what I was being given.
We know this is difficult advice to follow, but when you think about your experience of pain, and how others were or were not there for you, it’s useful to pay close attention to, and learn to recognize, who is there for you now. Notice each gesture from a friend, family member, stranger, colleague, or neighbor that comes your way to give you comfort: a hug, a listening ear, a car ride, an offer to see a movie. Cherish it. No need to write a thank-you note or express anything outwardly—just the act of noticing the gesture will reflect your gratitude and make you an easier person to whom to give.
This act of noticing and gratitude is not about becoming someone who sees the bright side of everything (because that person is really f’ing annoying). Instead, it’s about opening ourselves up to notice the generosity that is actually there, and often, that comes in forms we never expected.
IF WE VIEW PEOPLE’S EFFORTS OF KINDNESS AS “NOT ENOUGH,” THEN WE WILL LIKELY CONTINUE TO BE DISAPPOINTED.
That’s because if people are afraid of failing us, they will more likely shy away. Not because they are bad people or evil people. Like all of us, they’re just scared humans who hate the feeling of failure.
There are people who let us down, over and over again, and learning to expect less of them is a great practice in self-care. But the kind of people we want to be attracting in our lives are sincere and well-meaning. With them in mind, we advise that the more likely we are to notice what we do receive, the less likely we are to notice what we failed to get.
This is a useful outlook that helps us not only experience more bounty, but also give with more joy, too. Because when we feel others have failed us with their “deficient” efforts, we’ll often judge our own efforts to comfort by the same (impossible) standards. Such high standards of ourselves can make us feel inadequate, prompting us to shy away and do nothing for fear our effort will fall short. Or, they can cause us to give too much or with excessive worry, which are tendencies that make our gifts harder to receive. (We explain what both of these possibilities look like on this page.)
EMPATHY WORKOUT:
THERE’S MEDICINE IN FORGIVENESS.
•Think about someone who let you down in either a big or small way, but in a way that really matters to you—it could be a close friend, a family member, a neighbor, anybody. (Don’t think about somebody who always lets you down; that person should just be an ex-friend.)
•Write down a small fictional note to that person with this prompt: “I felt let down when you _____________________.”
•But before you write the note, ask yourself these questions. (The answers could be yes to any or all of these, and you still are allowed to feel disappointed. The answer could be no to all of these, and you still are allowed to feel disappointed.)
—Did I fully admit to my needs at this time?
—Was I able to fully appreciate the person’s authentic gift (that didn’t look like what I thought should be offered)?
—Did I ask for more than this person could handle at this one time, or over a series of times?
—Is the person a different person now?
•And then: if you feel prepared, you can consider forgiving this person. The point of forgiveness is not for the other person’s benefit. It’s purely for yours. Because once you recognize your grudge or anger and see its source, this will help bring compassion and empathy to the situation and help you discard the resentment that can get in the way of helping others who need you.
“I forgive the person for shying away from me because ______________________________.”
EMPATHY TIP: Forgiveness doesn’t mean burying our feelings and crossing our fingers that they’ll just go away. In order to successfully forgive, we need to take a look at the source of our anger or hurt, with the help of listening friends and occasionally, a professional. Often, such feelings are rooted in our own sense of unworthiness. Forgiveness comes when we’re able to recognize that the other person’s actions were more about them—their own motivations and context—than about us. (And that insight may or may not justify their behavior.) It’s not so much that we forgive to forget, but that we forgive in order to learn about others, learn about ourselves, and let go of resentments that hold us down.
NEXT UP: SCARY CONVERSATION TIP #2
Once you’ve done the above exercise of letting go of resentment, consider how you might talk to the person about how you felt let down. Yikes! Scary. This is a very vulnerable conversation to have, so we’d suggest doing two things:
1.Start by telling your friend you feel really vulnerable even raising this issue.
2.Then tell your friend that you want to build a stronger connection with them by first recognizing a basic fact about humanity:
THIS SHIT IS HARD FOR ANY OF US.
BOTTOM LINE:
WE ALL MESS UP
(BECAUSE WE’RE ALL HUMAN)
When looking back at all the cringe-inducing things you might have said or done to someone in their darkest hour, it’s easy to feel like you don’t have the right kind of fancy emotional training to provide support. And when thinking back on the times when we have been let down by others, we may feel ashamed of how needy we were, that we didn’t deserve support, or maybe that we we
ren’t lovable enough to be supported.
Just because most of us aren’t confident about knowing what to do, or because we have some baggage about being let down or letting others down, that doesn’t mean we’re all fatally flawed in the empathy department—it just means we’re human. And humans get scared, awkward, and uncomfortable.
Now that we’ve unpacked some of our own fears and issues around showing up, let’s take a look from the other side: the perspective of the person in crisis.
CHAPTER 2:
STANDING IN THEIR SHOES
“Friends and family turned away when we needed them most.”
—Mary, whose toddler was diagnosed with leukemia
Alexandra looked at the “Five Stages of Grief” poster in her therapist’s office and wanted to scream, laugh, and cry at the same time. Five stages? she thought. How about five hundred.
Her sister had died in a car accident six months earlier. Alexandra had gone back to work a week later, since she couldn’t afford not to, and that’s just what people do. There had been a recognized mourning period, where it felt permissible for her to be sad, but that had long since passed, and everyone around her seemed to just be back to normal. Back to spreadsheets, and pointless meetings about sales targets, and stupid things like fighting with strangers over parking spaces.
There Is No Good Card for This Page 2