#autistic social skills
I really can’t grasp the concept of telling someone about a problem if you don’t want help fixing it. I mean I guess I get it if it’s something that can’t be fixed and you just want to vent like if someone close to you died or something, but if you tell me about a problem why would you not want help with solutions????? What else am I supposed to say???
I’ll ask “Do you want advice, or do you just need to get this off your chest to a listening ear? I’m cool with either.”
Good things to say when someone only needs to vent are things like:
“Wow, that really sucks!”
“Really? Dang, I’m sorry that happened to you.”
“OMG, that was crappy of them to do / say.”
“Geez, I totally don’t blame you for feeling (emotion) about that.”
I want to comment on this because for the longest time I didn’t understanding the concept of talking to other people for emotional, rather than practical support. This led me to see people as negative, irrational or needy when they told me about things but didn’t seem to want me to offer solutions.
The thing I realized was that my understanding, empathy or validation might in itself be the solution for the other person. They may be in a space where they are really unsure about the validity of their own experience and they need my help with that.
You may not understand why they need what they need exactly, but you don’t need to understand it in order to respect it. If you’re not in a space in your own life where you rely on other people for validation that’s ok, but that’s not a reason to dismiss the people who do. Their need to feel seen or heard is not unusual or wrong.
If, like me, you’re pretty bad at this kind of conversation, here are some pointers:
1. Ask, without judgment, whether they are after emotional support or solutions.
2. Validate that you heard them - this can be as simple as saying “yeah that makes sense” regularly.
2. Validate their experience by for instance repeating back what you understand of the situation they are describing. Try hard to see it from their perspective, but feel free to add your own insight, as long as you are not offering solutions (”you are thinking too much about this” or other statements which tell them they need to process things the same way you would do not count not insight).
If in doubt ask the person you’re preparing to give emotional support to beforehand what they find helpful in this kind of situation.
