I prefer positive comfort when sad, as opposed to negative empathy. Does this make me weird?

In My Humble Opinion
1

So, a little thing - due to a work conflict, I had to bow out of what was going to be a really fun and exciting outing for me. Not a huge deal, but I was definitely disappointed.
When I voiced this to my sister (basically saying, “I’m really bummed out about it,”), her response was, “Yeah, life sucks, does it?” She often replies to my negative emotions this way, (“so-and-so was talking about me behind my back.” “Well, you can’t really trust most people,” and so forth). I don’t like it. I’d much rather hear “I’m sorry. We’ll do something fun together that you can look forward to,” Or, “It’s okay, you still have ___ planned in a couple months,” or something.

I thought this might just be different personality styles or approaches to sadness or something, so I looked up, “People who need positivity when they’re sad.” Turns out I’m quite unique - people apparently hate cheery reminders when they’re upset. They find it shaming, or like it belittles their right to be sad. I don’t feel this way at all. I already know I have every right to be sad. I’d just rather not be.

Am I alone in this?

2

Interesting point. The social and cultural norms pretty much emphasize sympathy and empathy – “I feel your pain.” Your suffering makes me suffer too. We’re all together in this woe.

But changing it around to reactive celebration – well, why not? Okay, you had a shitty day: let’s have ice cream! Your dog died and your wife left you and your motorcycle is broke? Okay, bub, time for Disneyland! Or just c’mon over my place and we’ll watch TV and have pizza.

It isn’t how I was brought up – but, hey, why not? If it’s how you prefer it, then it isn’t wrong. It isn’t really “weird” at all, just different.

One question involves the practical application of this. If I say, “I feel bad for you,” I’m actually doing something. I’m feeling bad. It’s pointless, and it doesn’t benefit you, but it is an actual response. How would I apply your preference? “Well, I hope you have a better day tomorrow, and, for now, I’m gonna go eat a big pizza and think happy thoughts.” It seems vaguely disrespectful. It feels, to my way of thinking, as if I’m celebrating your unhappiness, rather than attempting to remedy it.

Say I just lost my best friend to cancer: how would you (Golden Rule) apply your own ideas on helping me out by a positive and upbeat response?

3

If you cut out the bit about having fun and pizza while I’m sad, I’d like it. Let’s say I had a bad day at work. “I hope tomorrow’s a better day for you,” that’s the kind of thing I like. “Yes, working here sucks a nut,” makes me feel worse.

I’d say, “I’m so sorry for your loss. Is there anything I can do to help? If there is, just let me know.” I would never try to put a positive spin on death, or a life changing event. That would be gauche as shit, and mean.

4

Nope I’m the same way.

When I’m worried or scared about some nebulous problem potentially looming ahead, I actually kind of hate it when people validate my feelings. What I want is reassurance that everything will be ok, not seeing people confirm that I’m indeed in deep shit.

Years ago, something embarrassing happened to me at work. What helped me through it were people who were willing to crack jokes about it. People who expressed sympathy left me thinking the incident spelled the end of the world. The jokesters reminded me that this shall too pass, so we might as well see the humor in it right now.

I didn’t think feeling this way was so rare, but I guess maybe it is?

5

I prefer encouragement to “yep, life sucks” type sentiments. I also googled your phrase, and I found people arguing against a sort of blind positivity, and against a refusal to even acknowledge a negative emotion.

I guess it depends on the situation. If I were talking to my sister about someone talking about me behind my back, for instance, I would be taken aback if her response was “yeah, you can’t trust most people” and that was it. That would strike me as not at all empathetic. She is not validating my feelings in that instance; she is dismissing them. Same with the work outing example. Saying “Yeah, life sucks” wouldn’t make me feel better.

But at the same time, trying to squash my negative emotions into some sort of faux positivity wouldn’t work for me either. If I am sad, someone telling me to “stay positive!” would make me anything but positive. Sometimes I am blue and want comfort, sometimes I just want to vent, sometimes I want advice…it all depends.

But in your two examples, I wouldn’t like just getting a shrug and a “yeah, whatcha gonna do” response. That doesn’t feel like empathy to me.

6

As with most things, I’m in the middle.

I do like having my feelings validated to a certain extent. Because sometimes I do worry that my feelings aren’t understandable…that they are “wrong” or weird somehow. There’s nothing worse than sharing your worries or sadness with someone, only for them to laugh at you and tell you’re over-reacting. Sometimes it really is comforting to hear, “Yeah, I’d probably feel like that too, if I were in your shoes.” But that’s different than saying “life sucks”. I don’t think that’s validating.

Positive comfort is good too, but I agree with raventhief. There’s encouragement, and then there’s platitudes. I don’t really want to hear that it’s going to be alright unless there is advice to go along with it. I don’t want someone to tell me not to worry unless they are going to do something to rectify the situation. I guess when I hear these kinds of things, I do feel like I’m being misunderstood or belittled. A suggestion to go out for ice cream would cheer me up, though.

I think I share my problems with the internet before friends/family because I know I’ll get a mixture of validation, advice, positivity, and “tough love” on a message board. With individuals, I’m gambling on one approach.

7

Most people don’t actually agree that life sucks, and when presented with the argument, will move to take the other side – “No, life does not suck. I just had a bad day”.

But very few people like to have their feelings and experiences minimised – “Life sucks. Get over it” or “Tommorrow will be better. Get over it”

And I was going to say – we don’t get to choose our sisters --, but hey:
I hope tommorrow is better: We do get to choose our friends.

8

As with everything, I guess it depends. Personally, I’ve always tended to wallow in my own misery, and seek out people who will get in the tub of sadness with me. However, that is clearly not always the best strategy.

The topic immediately made me think of a particular incident from many years back. When I was younger, I had two best friends. One was a girl, one was a guy, which may or may not be relevant. When I was feeling down, I would always seek out the company of the girl-friend. She was the empathy-type, who would hug me and “feel my pain”. My guy-friend was of the no-nonsense macho type and not into displays of emotion, so I would tend to avoid him for the touchy-feely talks. He was more the kind of guy who would help you move. (Yes, BTW, I do structure my friendships along the lines of a surrogate mother-father-child model. But that’s a therapy session for another day. Anyway…)

There was this one time when I was on holiday in a far-off country with the guy-friend, and an ex-girlfriend of mine was sending me text messages about how she had recently hooked up with a new guy (hey, I was young, this counted as a problem). I still had a thing for her, and I was feeling heartbroken and miserable. So, my normal approach would have been to seek out the girl-friend (not the girlfriend, the girl-friend… oh, you’re following me, I guess) to cry on her shoulder. Only I couldn’t. I only had my guy-friend available, since we were traveling together.

So, I tentatively tried to explain my misery to him. His reaction was, predictably, a flummoxed and bothered “Um… okey-dokey. How about we don’t talk about this, pretend you never brought it up, and go do something awesome in this fun and exotic location we’re in instead?”

Which was exactly what I needed. I basically shrugged and thought to myself: “Screw it, this isn’t going to work at all. I’ll be sad when I get home, and spend this week having fun first.” It was the best week ever, and I don’t think I gave that particular ex-girlfriend a thought for the rest of the trip. And not that much of a thought after I got home, either.

It’s a minor and not very significant episode, but it was something of an epiphany to me, and changed how I approach these things. Hey, maybe I don’t have to feel bad about all kinds of nonsense. And maybe I shouldn’t try to feel other people’s pain when they come crying to me. Maybe I should channel my guy-friend rather than my girl-friend in those situations, and just take them out for ice cream.

Don’t get me wrong: If there’s a real problem on hand to be solved, for the love of God, solve the problem. But if there isn’t, really, and you’re just feeling sad: Yeah, ice cream.

9

I’m with the OP. I happen to be going through an extremely physically-painful period right now, and I’m getting a wide variety of responses from people:

“I feel your pain.” This doesn’t help me with my own pain.

“Oh man, it really sucks to be you.” I hate hearing this because it’s not true. As bad as the pain is, it’s no reflection on what it’s like to be me.

“At least your partner can help out when he’s in town.” Positive encouragement.

“That must be awful, but I bet you’ve got some great plans for the summer, when you’re back on your feet.” Actually my greatest plan is to GET back on my feet, but I appreciate putting the emphasis on future wellness.

"That really sucks. Let me take you food shopping. And can I help you with housework?” This is the best: empathy, plus tremendous actual help!

10

Listening and empathising is not something that comes naturally for many people - there are training courses to learn how to do it effectively - most of what you learn on such a course is self restraint - that is, keeping a lid on:
–The urge to turn the conversation toward yourself; “me too/mine is even worse/I know, because listen to my story…”
–The desire to offer tangible advice; “what you should do is…/why don’t you just…”
–The tendency to reinforce the problem by unhelpful agreement; “yeah, life sucks”

A good listener is someone who helps you get out everything you want to say, and unpack your own feelings about your problem. Often, just allowing that to happen is enough to create a sense of relief, or allow a solution to start to form.

11

My feeling about this is that if the person is not going to help, I do not care how they are not going to help, as long as they don’t take too much of my time with their not helping.

If I express sadness to a person, and they don’t want to help, I don’t care if they say “sucks to be you” or “you’ll do better next time.” Both answers suck, but not because they are positive or negative. They suck because the person is not helping. But I am ok with either answer because I can understand that not everyone is going to be able to help me when I need help.

What I hate is when someone takes up too much of my time with nonsense. For example, if I tell someone I’m unemployed and they start talking about how I should go on a vegan diet.

12

I’m finding this all fascinating. I really struggle with sympathy/empathy/any other pathy. I grew up in an emotionally abusive family and have done a lot of work on myself to try and understand subjects like this.

From what I gather, sympathy is feeling for, and empathy is feeling with. People don’t really like sympathy because it makes them feel alone or looked down on. Empathy is what they want, someone to jump in the pit with them and be there for/with them. However, the one thing that I don’t often see discussed in these discussions is the impact on the one being asked to empathize.

If you come to me and ask me to get down with you in the emotions of what you’re feeling, it often feels to me like you’re taking from me. Now, some would label that selfish, but is it any more selfish than asking others to feel some negative feeling or news with you? It seems like the whole thing is a negotiation that sometimes will work out, other times you’ll be left standing alone, and at other times you’ll put upon someone else your feelings and bring them down.

I like to offer suggestions to help as I’m a “fixer” due to the way I was brought up. I now know that not everyone wants such suggestions and I refrain as much as I can. Rephrasing what someone tells me to show that I understand seems to help. Some positivity like offering to do something positive kind of seems like distraction/denial to me. I can see why some would want that as a temporary escape, but if the pattern were to be to want that wouldn’t there be a danger of actually not feeling your feelings and just living in denial until things built to a point where they became a huge obstacle?

Sorry if I’m derailing anything here. I’m just really trying to understand. I don’t ultimately think there’s any one way to do this as we’re all different, and each situation carries its own nuances with it as well.

13

One thing I’ve learned through therapy is that I don’t really need a person to feel what I’m feeling. Because I know that I’m not going to feel everything they feel. Feeling alone doesn’t do anything. And like you intimated, it’s kind of selfish to want someone to feel what you are feeling. All I want is for someone to acknowledge that my feelings are not totally unreasonable. When someone says “Don’t be sad! It’s gonna be okay!”, sometimes I fear that what they are really thinking is: “It is ridiculous for you to be upset over something so trivial! Get over yourself!”

One day, my therapist got real with me by disclosing that she was unable to relate to the majority of my feelings and experiences. This should have broken my heart since the main reason I was seeing her was to get a handle on lifelong alienation and emotional isolation. But instead, her admission made me understand what providing emotional support really means. It means saying and doing the right thing. Not feeling the right way. You can hate someone all you want, but you can still pass the peas at the dinner table or bake them a birthday cake. It doesn’t matter that you may not know how it feels to be in whatever situation a friend has found himself in. You can still provide a listening ear and say the things he wants or needs to hear. Even if you don’t actually believe them. For a long time, I thought feelings were what makes someone a decent human. But now I know how wrong this is.

14

Okay, I totally get the first part. I too have lived in alienation and emotional isolation, to just to be validated feels really good.

Honestly the second part kind of breaks my heart. I see where you’re coming from in that you can’t make others feel what you feel (that is an unfair expectation), but something seems off in paring it down to doing and saying the right thing. I don’t know about you, but if someone is telling me one thing but they really feel another way about it I can usually tell and it feels disingenuous. I’d rather them not say anything at all. I guess that in the case of your therapist though, you could see the intent behind it. She did truly care, even if she couldn’t relate. So to me it seems like your realization is part of what matters, doing and saying the right things, but would it be fair to say that it must be done with genuine care for the person? Maybe that’s it. You don’t have to empathize by feeling with them in that you feel what they’re feeling, but you feel with them in that you care for them in the moment enough to do and say the “right” thing. Just being present with a person would help a lot.

I dunno, just thinking out loud. It makes some sense to me.

15

The trouble with offering helpful suggestions, however well-meaning you are, is that they are pretty unlikely to help - for a whole load of reasons, but chiefly:
–You probably have sight of a very small part of the picture - I.e. the part that the person has described to you. The actual problem needing fixing (if even possible) may be entirely hidden from your view, so your advice may be wide of the mark, for nobody’s fault.
–The person doesn’t necessarily want you to suggest a solution, or may not be ready for that to happen, until they have first unburdened themself of the issue by talking about it
–it’s probably not as simple as it appears, and giving someone a solution to a simple problem when they actually have a complex problem, may just depress them more.
–The problem might not even have a solution that can be fixed by advice - for example, if someone is clinically depressed, no amount of telling them to cheer up is actually going to help

If someone explicitly asks fkr advice, that’s a different matter, but many people just need someone who can listen, understand and give them space and opportunity to unload.
It’s not your fault that you want to help, but trying to help often just seems glib and unrealistic to a person with a problem. They sort of need to be allowed to bottom out before they can start to bounce back.

16

But unless they tell me how they really feel, I cannot possibly know they are faking. So I would never know they are being disingenuous. All I would know is that they care enough to say the words I need to hear.

Yes, this is what I’m saying. And I think that’s what sympathy is, IMHO. I can feel for someone not because I’m feeling the exact pain they are feeling, but because I care enough about them that I don’t NEED to. If I stub my toe, the last thing I want to hear is, “Well, I don’t know how that feels since I’ve never stubbed my toe, but it doesn’t look too bad to me! Cheer up!” What I want to hear is, “Well, shit, you must be in some serious pain if it’s making you cry. Let’s put some ice on it!”

It wouldn’t concern me if my friend told me they don’t know how a stubbed toe feels. But it would bother me if my friend didn’t try to provide me with any comfort because they thought I was being melodramatic. That doesn’t make them a terrible person. But it does mean we aren’t compatible as friends.

17

I want a little commiserating just to know you’re listening, but, after that, yeah, I prefer comfort. Problem is, people keep asking me what I want them to do, and I can’t think of anything when I’m down.