Pity Limits

Posted by fxckfeelings on March 16, 2015

For most people, or at least those that aren’t evil, cyborgs, and/or hardcore Libertarians, it’s instinctive to want to help someone close to us when they’re down on themselves and their lives. Unfortunately, it’s also instinctive to want to hurt those same people if they won’t hear your advice or are faking helplessness in the first place. Avoid wasting time, effort, and needless anger by not feeling obliged to repeat help that isn’t really helpful. You may be more helpful by reminding them of their choices, assuming they have the strength to cope with them, and reminding yourself that being a not-cyborg doesn’t mean you can help everyone.
–Dr. Lastname

My baby brother is having a tough time with his wife, and he’s willing to tell me how her drinking is screwing up their family, but it’s amazing how quickly he can go from talking shit about her to defending her if I even tried to agree with him. Not that I would ever try or tell him to leave, because he always tends to do the opposite of what I suggest, anyway (just in general, but especially when it comes to her). Plus he really loves her and thinks he can change her, so he keeps on telling me what he told her and how it ended in a big fight, and then I think to myself how not surprising her reaction is and how she’s never going to change, but I just have to bite my tongue. I’m getting really sick of hearing about how crazy she makes him, and even more sick of not being able to say anything. My goal is to get him to see that she’s ruining his life before his endless bitching ruins mine.

You may feel you’re being called on to provide emotional support for your brother, given all the emotion he lays upon you. Unfortunately, given his reaction to your attempts at support, you think he doesn’t want your honest thoughts as much as he just wants a captive audience.

Were he to let you help him with his problems, you could tell him you feel his pain, second his assertions, and, given your level of empathy, tell him what you would do. It would be a win-win reaction, because you could help him to both feel better and change the subject.

Unfortunately, your brother doesn’t seem to want your help or to stop bitching, and, like you said, you don’t want to hear it anymore.

As personal as his conversational/emotional steamrolling might feel, it’s really due to the fact that he’s caught up in the usual dilemmas of family alcoholism. No one has found a solution to loving, and trying to live a life with, a drinker. He’s probably as frustrated as you are, which is why sharing your feelings about his wife causes him to defend her and accuse you of insensitivity.

On the positive side, this means you don’t have to feel obliged to ease his pain or solve his problem, just to re-frame his dilemma in unemotional terms that protect his loyalties.

Don’t echo his feelings of helplessness, victimhood, and failure. Instead, urge him to consider his options. Ask him whether there’s anything he could do better or differently that would help his wife change her behavior. Even if he’s done nothing to cause her drinking, he may be reacting in some way—by yelling, or trying to control her—that’s making it worse.

Remind him that people often feel responsible and guilty even when they’ve done nothing wrong and that he may have to work hard to judge and confront his own negative feelings so that they don’t drag him down and cause him to behave badly. He may benefit from coaching from a therapist who’s familiar with his situation, or from an experienced peer in a twelve-step Al-Anon group.

Urge him to consider the self-protective steps he needs to take if she is unable to control her addiction, and thus unable to do her share of chores, childrearing, or making a living. Yes, it’s unfair, but he’ll do more harm than good by arguing or complaining. His job is to get moving and create a long-term survival plan. Give him the tools to protect himself from undeserved guilt and non-acceptance, and share your belief in his ability to find a positive way forward.

You can’t help your brother feel better or solve his marital problem, but you don’t need to encourage his complaints or feel his pain. If he can change his approach to the problem, then you might be able to change the subject of your conversation sooner than later.

STATEMENT:
“I feel helpless when my brother tells me what his wife’s drinking is doing to his life, but I can help protect him from self-recrimination and remind him that he has the strength to lead a meaningful life, even if he can’t help her.”

I really like my new job, and know I’m lucky to have it, but my co-worker is starting to drive me crazy in ways that are probably going to get me into trouble. Despite being a grown woman in a senior management position, she fishes for compliments like a teenaged girl; she asks how ugly she must look or how bad she did in a meeting, knowing that she looks great and did great, just so I have to fawn over her like a minion. And the thing is, I’m not her secretary—we work together, but as separate department heads—but every freakin’ time she fakes modesty, I’m obliged to heap on the compliments, and I’m this close to snapping and telling her she’s right, she is having the worst hair day and she is a terrible person for finishing the Splenda. My goal is to learn to fake nice before I get real angry.

It’s easy to feel responsible for saying positive, complimentary things to clients and co-workers, particularly if it’s part of corporate culture, but there’s a difference between being nice and being nudged. Whatever the setting, you really don’t have to provide regular re-assurance to someone who fishes for it, but it’s especially deadly in the workplace where you can’t leave or lose your shit. You’ll find yourself resenting colleagues who compulsively put themselves down and expect you to hook ’em and lift them back up.

Before feeling responsible for being the office uplift, compose your own standards for office behavior. Obviously, you’re there to A, do your job and B, not be rude (if only so as to keeping doing A). As a manager, you may need to provide encouragement and fight negative thinking for those you manage, but you should ask yourself whether offering personal reassurance or compliments is really necessary or helpful.

Indeed, if someone who worked for you was repeatedly negative about her appearance or performance, you wouldn’t consider it helpful to offer her endless re-assurance. Instead, you would ask her why her self-assessment was negative and, even if it was justified, wonder whether expressing self-criticism in public might harm her by causing others to see her negatively or undervalue the quality of her work.

If, as I suspect, you decide that reassuring your colleague is neither necessary nor helpful, feel free to change the subject. If she persists in asking what you think, insist on your right to be focused on other things. You’re not withholding your real feelings or criticizing her questions; you simply have work issues on your mind that you’re trying to address.

Once you decide that you’re not obliged to shore up your colleague’s ego, don’t do it. Give yourself alternatives that allow you to be a friendly person while insisting on your right to stay focused on work. If your colleague feels hurt, you’ll know you’ve done nothing wrong and have no need to defend or retaliate. If she wants re-assurance, she’ll have to find a new fishin’ spot.

STATEMENT:
“My colleague’s need for reassurance gets under my skin, but I can be friendly about work without getting personal, and I will use that ability to protect myself from feeling obliged to support the overly needy.”