Question Before You Answer
Have you ever been in a situation where somebody has told you something they are concerned about and you reassure them that it'll all be fine - only to find out their worries were right all along? And then you feel terrible.
It is great to offer our support, experience and advice to our friends and those we care about the most. At one stage or another, we all need to both be a listening ear or have a shoulder to cry on. There are, of course, occasions where we worry about things which may be completely unfounded. Anxiety and our enotional state can play all kinds of tricks on our mind. Does that person not like me anymore? Have I done the wrong thing? Why did they react to me like that? Sometimes all we need is a little reassurance that perhaps our attachment to the situation, our past experiences, our particular sensitivity to that topic or even something as simple as a lack of sleep or being over-worked is causing us to overreact to an innocent misunderstanding. Perhaps our boss was just having a bad day and didn't mean to be so blunt. Maybe our mother never meant to offend us, it's just her way with words. Or it could be that the person we're dating really was too tied up to get back to us, but was thinking about us the entire time.
However, while there are always perfectly valid explanations for things which might upset us such as these, they can also be red flags. They can crop up at first as minor indicators which gradually reveal themselves to be something far more sinister. So, what are we supposed to do? Go around expecting the worst of everybody and not trusting a soul? No, what I believe we must do is the complete opposite of that, in fact - give our loved ones a little more credit and not dismiss them quite so readily.
We all know how tricky it can be to voice a concern about anything and a great deal of the time, many of us choose to combat the awkward feeling this invokes by simply remaining silent. Still, when we do dig deep and find the nerve to relay our worries to another, we have equally all been in the scenario where somebody cut us down or at least poo-pooed our problems. We get told we are being melodramatic, worrying too much, not cutting somebody enough slack or even being paranoid. This can feel like a huge injustice and injure our pride, self-esteem and confidence in our own judgements even further. This is where a toxic cycle can then be created, where we are being treated badly, voice our concerns, get told we are being foolish and inevitably become more vulnerable to ever more disrespectful behaviour. We are trapped and those who we considered to be closest to us, who we expected to throw us a lifeline are telling us to grow us, stop being so negative and get over it already!
We are all guilty of thinking we know best, when actually we only know the small surface details which are being scratched by our friend. We must not assume we have all - or even most of the whole story. We must resist the temptation to rush in all guns blazing, even if we think we have been in a similar situation before. We must not force our opinions onto our friends, as though they are facts. We must be careful not to tell them that they simply have to accept what is utterly unscceptable, if we did but know the whole truth.
This is not to say we cannot offer our opinions or our advice to those who seek it. However, the most important thing we must do is to listen. Quietly, patiently, curiously listen. Without jumping to conclusions. Without filling in half the story before it has even been told. Our minds are built for speed and we often want to rush to the end just a few seconds after a story has begun and yet we all know there are usually some extremely unexpected plot-twists along the way, which can so easilt change everything. We need to create an environment where we show our loved one that we respect them enough to know that if they have a concern, it is something that we are going to take seriously. It is certainly not something we should turn back around on them. None of us want that from the people we are the most vulnerable with, the people with whom we share our greatest insecurities. If we are that person to somebody else, we are priveliged. And yet we can lose that honour very quickly and easily, if we inadvertantly shame them into silence.
Everyone, at some stage, will have been on both sides of this see-saw. We need to be open and encouraging and supportive, instead of rushing to give all of our best answers before we have even properly listened to the question.
