“I wish I could take it away,” he says. My friend who doesn’t know what to do with my sad feelings. He tells me, with sincerity: “I wish I could take some of this away for you.”
I have big feelings, and I spill them out a lot. I am not the sort of person who struggles to talk when I’m sad. Or happy. Or horny or excited or in love. I pour my feelings out all the time, to anyone who’ll listen. And I am very grateful to those who do – including you lot, who often respond below the line or on social media. Sharing my stories and your own, and joining me as we unpack this stuff together.
Right now I am sad. Humiliated. Depressed. Angry. A tangle of everything grim and self-pitying that I wish I could just slough off and hurl into the bin.
I don’t like being the quietest, saddest person at any given party. But I don’t really know how to fix that either, except by talking and talking. Hoping that the more often I tell the same stories, the less impact they’ll have each time they’re retold. Going from meaningful expressions of emotion to memorised phrases and rehearsed punchlines. No longer a roar of anger, but a choreographed routine that expresses the same thing with more polish and therefore less power.
My friend doesn’t always know how to deal with my sad feelings, which is fine because I don’t know either, but he wishes he could carry some of them for me.
And oh, God. Don’t we all wish this in some way? Doesn’t every person with kindness in their soul at some point wish they could use some of their spare emotional capacity to help someone else with their baggage? I’m not going to claim my advice is universal here, but if you’re a friend who wants to help, here’s the sort of thing that works for me.
To the friend who wants to help but doesn’t know how
You can’t fix this, and I’d never expect you to.
Just hold me. Tightly. Let me cry on your shoulder.
Do not give me advice.
Listen to me. Hear the things I am saying and make sympathetic noises.
Buy me a pint. Make time for a conversation.
Ask me questions. Don’t seek to solve things, just find out more. Show that you’re willing to come on the journey as I process exactly how I feel.
Distract me sometimes, too. When we’ve talked about the sad things for ages, it’s OK to change the subject. Help fill my life with fun to break up the despair.
Just talk to me. Hear me. Hold me. Make space for me.
You want to take my sad feelings away and I get it, but it’s just not possible for you to pack up my emotions and cart them off so I don’t have to feel them any more. If that were possible, we’d all be doing it, and none of us would ever feel any pain. Somewhere there’d be a landfill brimming with misery: heartbreak, self-pity, anger, disgust, humiliation and all the rest. Or maybe we’d pack it into capsules and fire the whole lot into space. Grinning in placid contentment as we watched the rocket launch, taking all the bad stuff far away so it couldn’t hurt us.
That isn’t possible though.
There is no rocket, no landfill, no magic place where the bad feelings can be sent, to rot away outside our perception. The only way to get rid of them – for me, at any rate – is to talk them through. Say them aloud over and over until they no longer hold so much weight. Eroding each rock of bitterness, or anger, or self-pity, by wearing it down over time. Telling the story until the sharp edges have softened and I can slip it into my pocket. Not gone, exactly, never gone, but now easier to carry.
You can’t fix anyone’s problems, or take away the jagged rocks of their sadness, but you can listen while somebody talks. Help them describe the shape of their feelings, and give them other, warmer ones to focus on.
You can’t pick up my sad feelings and carry them away, but that’s fine: I’d prefer you right here with me anyway.