‘That’s just like me!’ - is your support selfish?

A little gentle competition between friends does no harm. But when a good friend comes to you in need, it’s time to put your own agenda to bed for a while and focus solely on their wellbeing

It’s easier than you think to turn another person’s problems into a podium from which to launch a sermon on your own troubles. Before you know it, the conversation puts you in the starring role – leaving your friend frustrated and defensive.

We tend to provide advice based on our own experiences and knowledge. If a friend has just terminated a relationship, or suffered a recent loss, then the automatic reaction of our brain is to look for relevant past experiences from which we can draw to offer a solution – but what if it isn’t a solution they are looking for?

Is a listening ear better than a helping hand?

When faced with a friend’s distress, your loyalty or affection for them may lead you to search for a solution to their upset, to find the answer. But often with emotional struggles, daily pressures and stresses – they may just need you to listen.

This battle between listening and solution finding is most often fought out between the sexes. When faced with a problem, men tend to focus more on solutions than they do emotions, whereas women tend to be the opposite. She complains that he ‘just won’t let me talk about it’, while he bemoans that she ‘won’t stop harping on’. 

Whether male or female, you may not be able to find solutions to another person’s emotional complexities and problems; there often is no answer. But you can encourage them to explore their own emotions by asking questions like ‘Do you want to talk about this a bit more?’ or ‘Why don’t you tell me how that makes you feel?’ This way you are paving the road for them to explore their issues themselves with you acting as a guide, rather than a guru.

Put your problems to one side

If you went to a doctor and told him your symptoms only to be told ‘How extraordinary! I have exactly the same pains in MY chest!’ you wouldn’t have much confidence in that doctor. The same works for friendship. There is nothing more frustrating than going to a friend for some support, and ending up either wallowing in the self pitying mud of your combined woes, or worse still mentally wrestling over who deserves the most sympathy or validation.

Resist the urge to play a game of problem ping-pong by giving them the free, uninterrupted time and space to talk to you about what is happening to them. Place yourself in their position, and ask yourself what you would need if you were them – more than likely they just want you to listen without judgement, confident that you are on their side.

Emotional pain thresholds

Is your first instinct to tell your friend to ‘pull themselves together’ because that is what you would do? If so, remember that people have different pain thresholds, emotionally and physically, and it’s possible that your friend needs to get some things off their chest to identify what the real issues are.

Often people present problems in the first instance only to find – after some gentle probing – that it is actually a completely different event that is causing their distress. For example, your friend may have had an argument with a colleague at work. After discussing what caused the argument, and how it made them feel, they may realise that the problem isn’t the colleague, but the job itself – identifying a need for a change of direction.

Support through the good times and the bad

Finally, remember that friendships are based on supporting each other through the good times as well as the bad. Tempting as it might be to tell a friend who just got a great new and lucrative promotion how much harder the work will be or how much extra time they will need to put in – especially so when your own job feels like it’s going nowhere – engage brain before mouth! Celebrate their success – it shows them that your friendship is sincere and honest - and gives you the opportunity to be inspired to think about making your own life changes.

See our article on ‘How to unlock emotionally inhibited friends’ for more information

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