The Mistake I Made With My Grieving Friend
The instinct to give a “shift-response” is so strong, yet so ineffective. Learning to give a support response can take your leadership to the next level
FEELING SEEN
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A good friend of mine lost her dad some years back. She was absolutely distraught and I didn’t know what to say to her. So, I started talking about how I grew up without a father. I told her that my dad had drowned in a submarine when I was only 9 months old, and I’d always mourned his loss, even though I’d never known him. I just wanted her to know that she wasn’t alone, that I’d been through something similar, and could understand how she felt.
But after I related this story, my friend looked at me and snapped, “Okay, Celeste, you win. You never had a dad, and I at least got to spend 30 years with mine. You had it worse. I guess I shouldn’t be so upset that my dad just died.”
She walked away and I stood there helplessly, watching her go and feeling like a jerk. I had totally failed my friend. I had wanted to comfort her, but instead, I’d made her feel worse. At that point, I felt she had misunderstood me. I thought she was in a fragile state and had lashed out at me unfairly when I was only trying to help.
But the truth is, she didn’t misunderstand me at all. She understood what was happening perhaps better than I did. When she began to share her raw emotions, I felt uncomfortable. I didn’t know what to say, so I defaulted to a subject with which I was comfortable: myself.
I may have been trying to empathize, at least on a conscious level, but what I really did was draw focus away from her anguish and turn the attention to me. She wanted to talk to me about her father, to tell me about the kind of man he was, so I could fully appreciate the magnitude of her loss. Instead, I asked her to stop for a moment and listen to my story about my dad’s tragic death.
From that day forward, I started to notice how often I responded to stories of loss and struggle with stories of my own experiences. My son would tell me about clashing with a kid in Boy Scouts, and I would talk about a girl I fell out with in college. When a coworker got laid off, I told her about how much I struggled to find a job after I had been laid off years earlier. But when I began to pay a little more attention to how people responded to my attempts to empathize, I realized the effect of sharing my experiences was never as I intended. What all of these people needed was for me to just listen to them and acknowledge what they were going through. Instead, I forced them to listen to me and acknowledge me.
Sociologist Charles Derber describes this tendency to insert oneself into a conversation as “conversational narcissism.” It’s the desire to take over a conversation, to do most of the talking and to turn the focus of the exchange to yourself. It is often subtle and unconscious. Derber describes two kinds of responses in conversations: a shift response and a support response. The first shifts attention back to yourself, and the second supports the other person’s comment. See sample illustrations in sidebar.
Shift responses are the hallmark of conversational narcissism. They help you turn the focus constantly back to yourself. But a support response encourages the other person to continue their story. These days, I try to be more aware of my instinct to share stories and talk about myself. I try to ask questions that encourage the other person to continue talking, especially when what they’re sharing about is very important to them. I’ve also made a conscious effort to listen more and talk less.
Recently, I had a long conversation with a friend of mine who was going through a divorce. We spent almost 40 minutes on the phone, and I barely said a word. At the end of our call, she said, “Thank you for your advice. You’ve really helped me work some things out.” The truth is, I hadn’t actually offered any advice; most of what I said was a version of, “That sounds tough. I’m sorry this is happening to you.” She didn’t need advice or stories from me. She just needed to be heard.
.
“We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.”
EPICTETUS
SHIFT RESPONSE
Sarah: I’m so busy right now.
Jacob: Me too. I’m totally overwhelmed.
SUPPORT RESPONSE
Olivia: I’m so busy right now.
Ben: Why? What do you have to get done?
Here’s another example:
SHIFT RESPONSE
Hannah: I need new shoes.
Lucas: Me too. These things are falling apart.
SUPPORT RESPONSE
Arielle: I need new shoes.
Theo: Oh yeah? What kind are you thinking about?