Your relationships are living breathing systems that share, create, do and feel. Although each piece is important, you need feeling in order for your relationship to survive.
Oh, wrong…your love relationship can can survive without feeling, but not very well or for very long.
When people in relationships don’t share much emotion eventually they ask themselves…is this is all there is?
As kids we intuitively understood feelings and we knew how to be with someone while they felt sad or upset. If you’ve ever seen a child comfort another child you know what I’m talking about.
The child offering comfort will simply be with the other child. And, here’s the best thing, they will sit or stand or whatever, usually in silence – with the other child without attempting to move them away from what they’re feeling.
As adults it’s hard for us to do this because we feel we need to do something – and, we want them to stop that feeling! It’s overwhelming to us, even if we didn’t cause the emotional pain.
Some people try to explain away the emotion or offer guidance about how to stop feeling it. And, as a last resort, may even toss out the often dreaded – “me too.”
Although the me-too is a well meaning attempt to let someone know that they aren’t alone, it actually can do more to disconnect you than connect you. Because the person in emotional pain still yearns to have what they FEEL validated and now you’ve just stolen that.
I think we really want to comfort others, but it’s just too uncomfortable to do it!
So, I came up with some ideas to help me remember to pull back and feel, not fix. I hope these will help you too:
- say to yourself, I don’t need to fix this for them (unless you do)
- say to yourself, just being here and listening is enough for now
- pretend your shoulders are touching and as they talk, try to see what they see and feel what they’re feeling and respond to what you imagine they see and feel
If all else fails…a simple, heartfelt “I’m sorry” will work wonders.