Dancing through conversations when everything is happening all at once
Given the rollercoaster of various news, events, and the general fatigue that the last few years have brought, I want to talk about navigating emotional and creative burnout (which I have found to often go hand-in-hand.)
This is a topic near and dear to my heart: I am somebody who experiences empathy on a deep, physical level, with a tendency to process things very intensively. If you, like me, also possess some of these qualities, you may know that they can be wonderful gifts and sources of exhaustion (especially when a lot of things are happening at once to you and those you care about.)
I’ve found that my emotional sensitivity and tendency to serve as a natural social hub for many people can easily lead me to a dynamic where I’m regularly the recipient of multiple torrents of others' emotional energy.
Over time, and especially during stressful situations, this can lead me to a place of burnout - especially so when I want to be able to keep showing up in the ways that I am accustomed to, but do not have the inner resources to do so well.
There’s lots of things I can address, and lots of wonderful advice already out there - boundary setting, time to recharge, getting external support are all common suggestions, and they are all excellent ways to prevent and navigate emotional burnout. However, sometimes taking a break just isn’t an option. Sometimes we’re short on resources. Sometimes we’ve already tapped all of our support structures and set all the boundaries that we can, and we want to keep connecting with our loved ones because that connection itself is a source of comfort and familiarity.
For the purposes of this article, I want to share some concrete tools to stay engaged and navigate conversations with friends and family in a way that can conserve emotional resources (and, paradoxically, also perhaps even deepen those relationships in an unexpected way.)
Please note that these suggestions are specifically for situations that arise between peers in which there is already mutual care, trust, and respect. Very different rules apply when you are engaging with a child or elder who is in your care; or another asymmetrical power dynamic (not to mention dynamics with narcissistic or other unhealthy relational patterns.)
First a short preface about helping people with their problems:
My personal, knee-jerk reaction to receiving somebody's stress, worry, and fear (especially on a routine basis), is to offer a deep level of empathy and begin to suggest solutions. I suspect this is very common human behavior.
We care about our friends and family members. It’s so very hard to watch a loved one struggle! If we’re used to being the smart, creative, resourceful problem solver, it may seem imperative that we find a way to be there for those we care about. Especially so if they are clearly in pain, or if they’ve been under duress for multiple days, weeks, months, or possibly even years. After all, they’re turning to us and confiding in us because they want our help, right?
…right?
….Well, kind of.
People DO share their frustrations with the hope of relieving their stress. But unless they are explicitly asking for input and are in a place to receive it, offering advice can be both exhausting (requires cognitive and creative energy) and frustrating (that advice is seldom well received or respected.)
Also: there are some really really big things that people around us are struggling with right now that we may have no idea how to help them with. Zero. Their struggles are out of our scope of knowledge and available energy levels. That said, we may still want to honor the relationship and respect their trust in confiding in us, even if we don’t know how how to help or what to say.
Here are two ways that I've found to show up that allow me to stay emotionally present and connected without being drained:
STEP 1: Name, acknowledge and validate the other’s emotion as directly and simply as you can.
If you're an empathic sensitive person, this is probably already quite easy - you’re reflecting what is most obvious in the present moment. This can sound something like "I can see you're angry and frustrated at your work situation."
And pause. Take a breath. Listen. Let them reflect and respond to that, even if it takes a moment. Maybe you got it 100% right. Or maybe they’re actually angry and sad. The point isn’t to flawlessly name what’s happening, it’s to shift the energy and attention of the conversation.
Often just doing that will create some ease in the exchange, and reassure the other person that they are being seen and heard - that they aren't alone in what's going on for them. You can actually often see their body relax and their speech slow down a little bit once they have space to just be with their experience.
As an ESL speaker and visual learner, I've taken to studying these kinds of charts to help me find language for naming emotions with nuance, especially in the moment .
STEP 2: Identify and name the desire that you see them expressing.
Again, be as specific and simple as possible. This can sound something like "I can see that you really want to feel more respected and appreciated at work."
Again, pause. Let them take this in. Let them respond, when the time is right. Maybe you named their desire correctly. Or maybe there’s something else there. The point isn’t to be right - it’s to redirect their attention, and to signal to them that they aren’t alone.
If you pick up on others’ emotions quickly, you can generally observe what the person in front of you wants. This is something that gets easier and easier with practice. Inviting your conversationalist’s attention to focus on that instead of focusing on the obstacles and difficulties that are in the way reconnects them to their own value system and puts them in a place of agency around how they may want to move forward.
It is a beautiful gift to give somebody. It also moves you away from being the unconscious target of their frustration/anger/etc.
All of this redirects the exchange from a victimization/demonization dynamic to something more empowering, intimate and concrete.
From here, the conversation will likely shift in some way, and can be a good moment to check in with yourself and see what you're needing and where you may want the exchange to go.
Perhaps your conversationalist wants to move through another cycle of sharing their frustrations. Perhaps you decide that you want to gently disengage and go about your day. Perhaps you decide that you need space to share something about your life. Perhaps they invite you into a conversation about how their desire could be met and ask for advice. Perhaps you decide that you have a very valuable suggestion to give. Or perhaps you realize that you don’t have the energy to offer advice in the moment. Whichever way the conversation unfolds, you have some tools to move through it with grace and respect, as well as potentially some fresh insights into your loved one’s world.
To review, the two steps are:
Identify and validate the other person's emotional state - "I can see you're angry and frustrated at your work situation."
Identify and validate the other person's desire - "I sounds like you really want to feel more respected and appreciated at work."
And allow them some space to access their own reality and respond.
Now, all that creative, cognitive, emotional, relational energy that can often go into deep empathetic gestures, thinking of unsolicited solutions, trying to express those solutions in a thoughtful way, and dealing with the various frustrations and arguments that come up when your loving, smart advice is totally disregarded for the millionth time…
…All of that energy is yours to keep. And goodness knows, we could all use a bit more energy to go around these days.
It can take a little bit of practice to default to these two steps instead of other patterns, but I've found a lot of freedom and ease in learning how to use my empathy and sensitivity in this way and have seen my relationships deepen and improve as a result as well.
I hope that it may be helpful for you as well.
A very small, but important caveat:
These two steps will work well about 95% of the time. Occasionally, you may run into a massive wall of resistance or volatile negation when you try to reflect back the emotions/desires you’re seeing your conversationalist express.
In this case, I would say that it’s fair to assume that for whatever reason, the situation is particularly sensitive. Denial, after all, is a protective mechanism - it allows us to keep some experiences and emotions in the Shadows of our psyche in an effort to avoid pain that we may not be able to deal with in the moment. The greater the denial, the deeper the roots of whatever may be coming up. This kind of resistance and volatile negation is a sign that extra compassion, patience, space, and firmer boundaries may be needed, should you wish to proceed.