What to do
Resist the urge to downplay your friend’s problems
Your friend Alex messages you, upset that he received a B in a college class. Your first impulse is to ignore the message – you think Alex is overreacting. He can handle this non-event on his own, and you don’t get why he is so upset. After a while, you figure you should respond. You write: ‘You’ll be fine, I don’t know why you’re worrying! Getting a B is pretty good and not the end of the world.’
When we think that someone is catastrophising something that (to us) is not a big deal, it can be tempting to ignore them, downplay them or be dismissive, but that would be a mistake and will likely end badly. Whatever your own take on your friend’s dilemma, it’s important to be responsive to their requests, and to prioritise trying to understand how they feel. Some studies suggest that being supportive is helpful only when we are responsive in this way. Moreover, being responsive to other people – trying to understand them, valuing their opinions and abilities, and making them feel cared for – is a cornerstone of good relationships.
So, in the above scenario with Alex, you might send a more thoughtful response, showing that you’re trying to understand how he feels: ‘I get why you’re upset, that sucks. I know you’re a hardworking and smart person, and I bet you’ll be able to get an A next time.’
In the longer term, a way to work on being more responsive and less dismissive is through setting compassionate goals. These involve focusing on supporting others, being constructive in interactions, and being understanding of others’ weaknesses. In a study with college students, people who reported setting goals that were more compassionate and less selfish had roommates who felt more supported by them. Cultivating a compassionate mindset is a useful background for all the remaining steps in this Guide.
Ask questions and really listen
You have coffee with your friend Jamie, who has just had a big argument with his partner. Your knee-jerk reaction is to think to yourself ‘Oh no, not another argument,’ to infer that Jamie is ready to leave the relationship (after all, that’s how you’d feel if you were him) and to show him that you’re on his side. You’re inclined to tell Jamie straight up that you get why he is angry, and that you agree it’s probably time to let the relationship go.
Just as playing down a friend’s problem is unwise, so too is trying to empathise too quickly, including jumping in with rapid advice. While this impulse is understandable and quite normal, it is also likely to go wrong. Although we tend to assume that we can tell how other people are thinking using our empathy, research has shown that we’re actually really bad at taking other people’s perspectives. One study, led by Tal Eyal at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, involved researchers asking people to put themselves in another’s shoes in 25 different contexts, including taking other people’s perspectives on movies, on activities, on social issues, and even on whether jokes were funny. In all these experiments, trying to take another person’s perspective didn’t work, and sometimes it even backfired.
So how might you best address the situation instead? In the research by Eyal and her colleagues, directly asking was the only thing that helped one person understand how another person felt. This suggests that in the above scenario it would be better to slow down and start by asking directly how Jamie is feeling, rather than thinking about how you might feel in a similar situation. In short, we’re not as good as we think at intuiting other people’s feelings, and it is better to ask questions and listen to the answers.
Listening well can also be a challenge, but again there is psychology research that can help. To be a more effective listener, you can begin with two easy tactics. First, be attentive to the other person, and signal that you’re listening carefully by using nonverbal signals (such as nodding and smiling) and brief phrases (such as ‘Mmhmm’ or ‘Oh really?’) Second, provide ‘scaffolding’ questions that help your friend to elaborate on their story or their feelings, such as: ‘And what happened next?’ or ‘How did you feel after that?’ This can help them feel supported and heard. These skills may seem self-evident, but they’re particularly easy to forget in the moment, as we get distracted by our phones, or inclined to hurry our friends along to get to the point of their stories.
A related technique to try is active listening, which is commonly used by therapists, and relatively simple to implement. One form of active listening involves paraphrasing what your friend is saying in your own words, which can help them feel better. For example, your friend might spend some time explaining a series of stressful events across their week, describing arguments with their spouse, a mounting workload and some worries about debt, and you might paraphrase by saying that it sounds like they are overwhelmed both at home and at work right now.
Give emotional support first, cognitive support second
Your friend Casey comes to you upset that she has lost a big client at work. You want to jump straight in and help Casey think more positively about things. You know that this client was taking up a lot of Casey’s time. So, now that client is out of the picture, Casey can do less overtime, and spend more time on new, exciting clients. This kind of reframing is likely to be helpful for Casey in the long term, but it’s not the best place to start your support.
In contrast to downplaying a friend’s problem – the first pitfall I mentioned above – helping a friend see a situation in a positive light (known as reframing) is a supportive strategy. However, it’s important that you don’t jump straight to it. In the situation with Casey, it would have been better to start things off by validating her feelings, which is a form of emotional support. Casey has come to you feeling awful, and jumping straight to discussing the bright side might leave her feeling as if you aren’t getting it. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have tried to find a silver lining for Casey at all – but, rather than beginning there, better to validate and comfort Casey as she talked through the situation. Once you’d shown that you get how she feels, then you could have helped her find the bright side, which is a form of cognitive support in the sense that you’re helping your friend to think differently.
It’s important to provide both emotional and cognitive support because, although people prefer to receive and provide emotional support (and to avoid cognitive support), emotional support alone is often ineffective at making people feel better over the long term. Using emotional support first and cognitive support second makes people feel better, reaping the benefits of both approaches.
One additional concern with cognitive support is making sure that the reframe you suggest doesn’t slip into invalidating or downplaying your friend’s feelings. The dividing line here can be difficult to navigate. The key is to ensure your reframe doesn’t negate your friend’s feelings that the initial situation was upsetting. Instead, focus your reframing on unexpected upsides not yet considered, or future avenues to move past the initial problem. In the example with Casey, the aim wouldn’t be to convince her that losing her client wasn’t hard, but rather to help her find other parts of the situation that might soften that blow.
More generally, adopting the one-two punch approach of always beginning with validation is likely to help with this problem: if you begin from a perspective of validating, it’ll become more obvious to you when the reframes you provide are contradicting that validation.
Don’t take charge
Your friend Jay has a terrible boss. Jay has been struggling to deal with this for a while, and they’ve been constantly unhappy. You think Jay should quit and find another job with a better mentor, and you tell them as much.
Although you had good intentions, telling Jay straight up to quit would be a mistake. Very direct and obvious help can sometimes make people feel as if they are helpless. In research, people who received obvious and visible social support – rather than subtle, invisible social support – felt more stressed about an upcoming negative event. If your support is too directive and take-charge, it might make your friend feel like they aren’t able to handle things on their own, like a kid who needs their parent’s help to manage their problems.
Instead, it would have been better to ask Jay what they want, and how they might be able to change this situation, and then listen to them talk through their options one by one. In doing this, you provide a sounding board for Jay to take control of the situation on their own. Your aim should be to facilitate the other person’s choices, rather than dominating them. This will help them organise their thoughts and come to some solutions, without feeling like you did it for them.
Avoid venting together
Your housemate Jordan calls you to complain about your other housemate Kirby. Kirby hasn’t been doing her share of the chores, and Jordan is at the end of his patience. You too are annoyed at Kirby and, after a while, you realise that you and Jordan have been going back and forth complaining about Kirby for 10 minutes, and now you’re both feeling pretty upset.
Sympathising with a friend’s dilemma and venting together might seem like a supportive strategy that shows you’re both in the same boat and you’re happy to talk it over at length. However, this approach can go too far. In the above scenario, it’s likely to pull you and Jordan into a downward spiral of negativity.
Although I’ve discussed ways in which talking about problems with your friends can help, if taken to an extreme, it can become a problematic issue called co-rumination. This involves talking excessively with other people about problems, and constantly dwelling on those problems together without looking for solutions. Such behaviour results in both people feeling worse, with co-ruminating associated with increases in anxiety and depression over time.
How might you stop that downward spiral? The good news is that, according to researchers, simply knowing that co-rumination exists might help people avoid these kinds of negative spirals, although this has not yet been directly examined in a study. So, begin by being on the lookout. In the scenario above, once you’d identified the venting spiral, you could have pointed it out to Jordan. Distraction can interrupt that feeling of being stuck in a problem so, next, you and Jordan could have agreed to stop the discussion for a few hours, and do something that distracts you both, before coming back to figure out how to deal with the issue. At this point, you could have considered enacting the validate-and-reframe pattern I mentioned earlier (supporting such an approach, there is evidence that reframing can interrupt spirals of rumination).
