Emotional support
Jan. 17th, 2002 03:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
andrewduckerI still find it odd, even after all this time, to be emotionally supporting someone.
I'm pretty much defined by my logicality and befuddlement at peoples emotions (even though I have them myself), and all the understanding I have is from hard work, observation and practice, it almost never comes naturally. So to find myself, again, being the person that provides the emotional support for someone in need is puzzling to me.
Surely there are people out there that are better at this kind of thing and have more intuitive understanding of what's necessary?
Surely it's obvious that I'm not ideal for this kind of 'work'.
So why does it keep happening to me?
I'm pretty much defined by my logicality and befuddlement at peoples emotions (even though I have them myself), and all the understanding I have is from hard work, observation and practice, it almost never comes naturally. So to find myself, again, being the person that provides the emotional support for someone in need is puzzling to me.
Surely there are people out there that are better at this kind of thing and have more intuitive understanding of what's necessary?
Surely it's obvious that I'm not ideal for this kind of 'work'.
So why does it keep happening to me?
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Re: Are you sure?
Date: 2002-01-17 08:09 am (UTC)I just don't have any sympathy for people who just want pity without working on getting out of the situation that makes them need pity. Because dammit, I crawled out of a lot of bad situations in my time, completely on my own, you should be able to do it too.
Which means that 'emotional support' for me consists of a lot of nodding, a lot of smiling, a lot of physical or metaphorical patting on the hand, and after about 20 minutes, the zinger of the question that just puts it all into perspective. At least that's what I aim for. And no, people don't want the answers, but they by God get them anyway.