Don’t Feel that Way. Feel Better?

By Michelle Malay Carter on November 19, 2008 

Don\'t tell me what I feel.A Common, but Misguided?Strategy
Trying?to make a person feel better by telling them not to feel what they are feeling is a strategy doomed to fail.??

How often do we, with the best of intentions,?tell people not to feel the way they do?

When a person is upset, telling them they shouldn’t be upset usually only makes them more attached to the feeling and determined to defend it.

Explaining Away Feelings Doesn’t Work
Isn’t it?the equivalent of telling a person who says she’s hungry that she just ate.? Will that change her feeling?? If someone is cold, will announcing the temperature in the room make them feel warm?

The best thing to do is give the person the space and permission to feel what they do.? As I said in my last post, once they feel heard and understood, they will be in a better place to be rational.? This may be all they need to release the emotion themselves and move on.

Validate – Whether You Agree or Not
Maybe they will continue to cling to the emotion.? Even so, by validating their feelings you have strengthened your relationship with them, rather than damaging it with misguided attempts to make them feel better and/or snap out of it.

Validating another’s emotion is nothing more than acknowledging that they are feeling it.? You need not even agree with it to acknowledge it.? Something as simple as, “I know this is very upsetting for you,” can do wonders.

Plucked from the Headlines of My Life
As I mentioned, my 10-year-old son has dysgraphia, and he attends three hours of after school therapy a week aimed at strengthening his ability to get words on paper.? To add insult to injury, the therapy has homework.? Most Sunday afternoons, overcome by the injustice of it all, he melts down, cries, and rolls?on my office floor when faced with copying several sentences out of a book as part of his homework.

As his Mom, this breaks my heart.? I want to fix it for him, but I can’t.? Instead, I simply?agree with him, empathize that it’s hard, it’s unfair, and it’s grueling for him.? After about 10 or 15 minutes, he wipes his tears, gets up, does his homework, and then goes outside to play with his friends.?

I don’t suspect my telling him that “it’s really not that hard”, or to “suck it up and be a man” or that “others have hit worse”?would change the way he feels, but it might change the way he feels about me.

If you want to be a person of influence in others’ lives, give them space to feel what they feel.

I’m OK. You’re OK.? Let’s fix the system.? How do you feel about this?

Filed Under Corporate Values, Employee Engagement, Managerial Leadership

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