How not to say the wrong thing (2013) | Hacker News Reader

How not to say the wrong thing (2013)

articles.latimes.com

171 pointslcuff47 comments

> stepped into the hall with Katie's husband, Pat. "I wasn't prepared for this," she told him. "I don't know if I can handle it."

Be suspicious of people who you don't know that well, but all of the sudden they pop up in a moment of crisis. Sometimes they want to be part of it and go around and brag to others how their friend / relative is suffering. It's just a source of gossip for them. Then they get the sympathy-by-proxy and they get others to pity them and so on.

As a general rule I find that people who want to celebrate with you when something good happens and are happy for you are more likely to be a better friend than the ones who show up when you're in trouble.

> "Can I bring you a pot roast?"

Also don't say "what can I do to help?". People as a rule will just say, "Sure, thank you" but the understanding is you're not serious and you just said it because you're expected to say. You might have meant it, but they don't know that. Like the article mentions, say something like "Would you like a pot roast?".

> Be suspicious of people who you don't know that well, but all of the sudden they pop up in a moment of crisis

On the other hand I have had a few experiences where people feel closer to you than you do to them, and their concern could be genuine, or perhaps they had some similar life experience you are unaware of that makes them feel connected to your cause. By all means keep whatever distance you feel appropriate, but it's often a good idea to be kind and keep an open mind with that kind of person within reason.

>As a general rule I find that people who want to celebrate with you when something good happens and are happy for you are more likely to be a better friend than the ones who show up when you're in trouble.

Yeah, I don't think sunshine friends are better...

> Be suspicious of people who you don't know that well, but all of the sudden they pop up in a moment of crisis.

This is a bit weird, because it seems to imply that if person x is casual friends with person y, then person x should keep their distance when person y encounters hardship. That seems counterproductive, especially in cases where person y may feel closer to person x than person x realizes.

I would think it's more common that person y's hardship makes people less likely to seek them out -- maybe not. But I think I have heard more stories along the lines of "during/after my hardship, I found out who my real friends were, and there weren't many of them".

The phrase "Assume positive intent" is frequently used to describe an approach to the business world, but trust me -- it has a much larger impact when used in your personal life.

Be wary of generalized advice. Most people suck, and for them that advice is probably sound. But there are diamonds in this world, and when you pass them by they are gone.

People are so different that general advice is always bad advice.

> As a general rule I find that people who want to celebrate with you when something good happens and are happy for you are more likely to be a better friend than the ones who show up when you're in trouble.

I agree with you that if a friend does not feel joy in your moments of happiness and accomplishments the friendship is probably not very deep or sincere. But there's the fair weather variety. I am not sure those are the only kind one would want.

I recently bookmarked a lovely quote on HN.

Life is mostly froth and bubble, Two things stand like stone. Kindness in another's trouble, Courage in your own. -- Adam Lindsay Gordon

Interesting. The advice here reminds me of the “complaints go up” dialogue from Saving Private Ryan. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dKbdE5LOGNQ

I think language coaching like this is misguided. It's just appealing to stereotypes. When I was out the last thing I wanted was more 'comfort'. I value sincerity as I think everybody does. If I just wanted stereotyped sympathy and compassion, I'd read a hallmark card.

People should say what they feel they should say. So many people seem determined to instead try to create some sort of kosher and clean model of behavior and speech that can be friendly with everybody, when in reality it more often just comes off as being insincere to everybody. And to take that a step further I think that is a major contributing factor the scourge of loneliness and weak 'real' social ties today. Two people saying what they think the other person wants to hear hardly makes for engaging conversation. The internet masks this artificiality by giving us that nice dopamine rush from seeing the points by our comments go up when we say 'the right thing', which this most certainly is not - yet it's an honest opinion, which I think is infinitely more valuable.

Totally agree.

When I'm having a tough time over something non-trivial, and someone looks pained and says something like "that must be hard for you" I'm just thinking that's nice but are we friends or are you my psychologist?

If someone said damn that sucks! I went through similar situation X and approach Y worked well for me, that's incredibly useful information! Sharing experiences is a huge part of friendship.

This writer seems to be suggesting that I should see someone's honesty and helpful information as a selfish insult.

Even if it's not advice, I'd much prefer the honest reaction. It's empathy. It doesn't diminish my pain.

> And don't worry. You'll get your turn in the center ring. You can count on that.

This line is jaw-dropping, and definitely true.

Any tips of this kind of material for a more professional setting? I have to give advice professionally and one of the harder parts for me is giving it in the context of office politics.

Can you explain your situation a bit more? Does your job description entail giving advice, or is that something that just arises?

I'm sure this is good and expedient in confronting difficult situations, but I'm not sure if it is helpful in building genuine connections. Of course, I don't have the definitive way to build genuine connections, but ... I wouldn't imagine this is the solution. Though, faced with a tough situation, I'll deploy this method for safety.

So does that mean no one should ever dump into the very center of the circle (even if you're the husband)?

Pretty much, yes.

Sorry, but life is not neatly packaged and compartmentalized like that.

People will say things that can insult or hurt someone, even if that someone is sick. And nobody is going to follow some article's idea of what is proper to say if common decency is not enough for them.

The article is clearly aimed at people who mean well but haven't thought through what to do or say in these situations.

I disagree. "Common decency" isn't innate, it relies on growing up in an environment that encourages it, and even then the rules are not obvious to everyone. Witness the examples in this article. Probably, those examples of misbehavior come from decent people who didn't think carefully enough about what they were saying. Such people would probably read this article and say some variant of "oh crap, I made a faux pas".

The article's advice and reasoning look useful to me.

If people want to get better at this sort of thing I recommend the book "The Art of Comforting" by Val Walker, it's filled with good actionable advice.

People who are suffering from trauma don't need advice. They need comfort and support.

Comfort in, dump out is a simple rule that makes sense in many situations. Breast cancer is given as an example in the article.

I think it breaks down in many of life's situations, though.

What if the trauma is self-inflicted? At what point do those outside the ring become enablers?

For example, a friend of yours refuses to learn how to manage resources. Every week is a new crisis due to running out of money or being late.

At what point do you sit down with your friend and explain how their lack of planning is hurting them?

Back to disease, what if the person is suffering negative health effects due to being overweight? And yet they refuse to change their junk food diet.

What then? Listen, offer to do dishes and make a pot roast?

Or something more likely to help the person make the connection that their health is in their own hands?

It's a reasonable position, although a counter-argument is that for many people, a self-inflicted problem such as being overweight isn't all that amenable to conscious control. So, giving the advice: "you're overweight, it causes many other problems, you should do something about that" isn't especially useful. An article in the Atlantic from 2015 summarized this: "Victims of childhood sexual abuse are far more likely to become obese adults. New research shows that early trauma is so damaging that it can disrupt a person’s entire psychology and metabolism." The depth of the problem is beyond the kind of repair possible with explanations and advice.

Both of your scenarios assume that the issue is due to some fixable personal failing, and both of those assumptions are unfounded. “Lack of planning” is how you might describe “poor executive functioning” if you were to attach a moral weight to it; in reality, poor executive functioning is itself often a symptom of trauma, particularly complex or developmental trauma. It is also a feature of autism, particularly in how it manifests differently among women. Similarly, there are many people for whom no known weight loss method has worked without intolerable costs. (Suicidal ideation, dramatic hair loss, debilitating fatigue or cognitive deficits.) This seems to be one of those things that people often refuse to believe, instead gas lighting the hell out of the people who suffer from this. I have known people who’s compulsive behavior absolutely contributed to their weight problems (and in those cases, trauma was also a factor), but I’ve also known people who have done and tried everything, and the way they suffer is not something I would wish on anyone. We don’t yet fully understand how trauma, particularly long term trauma, affects the body, let alone the metabolism, nervous system, endocrine system, or even GI tract, but everything we are learning seems to point to profound effects. It seems incredible to assume that there might not be purely physiological mechanisms at work beyond the control of self-directed behavior.

In general, trauma symptoms encompass many more dysfunctional behaviors than is often understood by lay people, and while self-destructive behaviors in response to trauma or persistent C/PTSD are no less self-destructive because of their origins, describing them in moralist terms is actively harmful. It is often more accurate, and compassionate, to describe those behaviors as adaptations to stress that have become maladaptive. They are not moral failings; they are the result of bad conditioning. Put another way: if the only tools you have for internal regulation are shitty tools, you learn to depend on shitty tools to survive.

This does not make traumatized people any easier to be around or to help. You still need to draw your own boundaries, as you noted. But if you’re able to approach such people within your own acceptable boundaries with an open mind, and the willingness to point them towards trauma treatment that might actually be helpful, those conversations you’re not sure how to have might have better outcomes.

For further reading on trauma I’d recommend Van der Kolk, Levine, and others.

You don't have to read moral judgement into apo's comment, and if you don't one problem comes into focus: it's well good to listen support a person unconditionally in their difficulties, but some the sufferers need to change their behavior and you can't effect that through nodding and bringing in comfort food. If you want a person to change you have to tell them something they don't want to her. At what point do switch from one to another?

Ultimately it doesn't matter how much we want another person to change. Things will only affect change when people are ready and willing. When that happens, it will be pretty obvious, especially if you're someone they trust. At that point it does make sense to make the switch to being forthcoming and honest as you mentioned.

In the mean time? Don't enable, but don't be direct in telling them what they aren't ready to hear either. Of course, be empathetic and gentle, offer guidance and help along the way but provide no unsolicited advice. Unless you're a therapist, you should either change the topic or don't associate with them at all, or else you risk making matters worse and deepening the problem.

Disclaimer: I'm not professional in the matter, this has just been my personal approach in life that's worked well so far.

> either change the topic or don't associate with them at all [...] this has just been my personal approach in life that's worked well so far.

This may work out for you, but it’s hard to judge how well it works out for the people you decide to stop associating with (especially in comparison to some counterfactual other approach), since presumably you don’t get much follow-up information about the outcome.

> Things will only affect change when people are ready and willing

I find this unsatisfactory. There is a period in a persons life where they will not listen to advice, then when they might be suggestible, and finally when they will act even on their own accord. If we pretend that the second period is non-existent we can sleep well because nothing can be done and so nothing should be done. But the logical me rebels against this notion - there has to be a transitionary period. Perhaps by pushing someone over the edge during that time I will save them years of wallowing in the tar pit of indecision.

If you want a person to change you have to tell them something they don't want to [hear].

Instead of telling, try teaching.

Show by example, ideally not in heated moments when people will reject the advice, a better way to handle resources or stress or confrontations or whatever.

Couple that with lifting people up, showing them their worth, purpose, giving them meaning. Then real change happens. I was 300lbs and no advice under the sun could have brought me to and allowed me to maintain my current healthy weight, it was only through real love did that happen.

An astute observation.

Another thing I found that works is to show by several examples, by many people (preferably friends). The lizard brain is receptive to social proof.

>Both of your scenarios assume that the issue is due to some fixable personal failing, and both of those assumptions are unfounded. “Lack of planning” is how you might describe “poor executive functioning” if you were to attach a moral weight to it; in reality, poor executive functioning is itself often a symptom of trauma, particularly complex or developmental trauma.

It can also be a personal failure regardless. People do have to assume some responsibility for their lives in the end. Besides near everybody has some personal tragedy or another or will inevitably have in the course of life). That doesn't mean it's fair, just that it's how it is. Even with a medical condition or actual trauma, you got to carry on, it's not like anybody else is gonna pick up the pieces for you.

We had a few dictatorships and several wars (including genocide and civil war) in the span of a century in these here parts (plus the usual personal stories that happen everywhere), and people moved on with their lives without complaining. I's a little insulting hearing people from cushy cities where nothing has happened lamenting about their "traumas" and "issues".

This, unfortunately, is exactly the sort of attitude I’m talking about. This comment reflects a profound ignornance of what we currently understand about how trauma works — that there are protective elements that may be in place even in terrible circumstances, that a developing nervous system does not care if society is functioning if the people responsible for a child are not, that there are circumstances that can occur anywhere that quite literally change the brain during key developmental stages — and cloaks it in a moral judgment.

It is somewhat stunning to see someone make sweeping declarative statements about a field they know nothing about on this forum in particular. I would encourage you to read the relevant research.

Edit: I think I may have misread the tone/implications of your post, just as I think you may have misread the parent post. (I don't think that apo was implying bringing forward moral condemnation as a tactic.) I didn't see that you recommended pointing people to trauma treatment, that's a great suggestion. I'll leave the rest of the post up as a personal anecdote to support that.

There was a time in my life when I frequently made bad decisions that negatively impacted others. In retrospect, one of the things that kept me from recognizing the impact of my behavior was that nobody was willing to take me aside and have an honest, straightforward conversation about it. Not a "shaming" conversation -- that would have backfired and likely would have caused me to veer off into other destructive behavior -- but a practical, compassionate conversation explaining that people had noticed my behavior, and that it was affecting myself and others negatively.

Given my situation, I would have stopped immediately if I had been confronted in such a way. In fact, I often fantasized about a friend finally confronting me, because I knew that if other people actually recognized what I was doing then I'd have to quit immediately. I knew that the behavior was destructive. I just didn't have it in me to make a change on my own, and I wasn't willing to ask for help.

I eventually figured it out, but it was a long and lonely road.

The friend does not have trauma. Overweight does not have trauma either.

More importantly for overweight advice, it does matter whether you know and really are expert or whether you base advice on latest pop article or a random dude in gym theory.

You can comfort without being enabler. Don't give money to spender, but listen and be friend. (Or don't if it is harming you). Your impulsive friend will not magically become less impulsive just because you had lecture anyway. That is not how it works. He will need way more effort and support and will take long time to change - but only if he wants it.

Telling someone who is overweight that they are fat and need to cut down on the cheesey puffs, or someone who has difficulties managing resources that they need to learn to plan, is unlikely to help them in any way. They probably already know.

It might make you feel better, I suppose...

1. People don't take advice. People usually don't even take solicited advice, let alone unsolicited. So my advice is to never give it.

2. This is a discussion about emotional comforting. If someone has breast cancer, most people should follow this framework. The oncologist is not necessarily going to follow this exact framework, because his role is not merely that of the emotional comforter. If you have a role in someone's life that is more "problem solver" than "emotional comforter", this framework does not apply--but, per point #1, people don't usually take it well when people self-appoint themselves as problem solvers.

3. If someone is continually making self-destructive choices, you don't have to be their friend. It's very draining to care about a self-destructive person, and it's not going to do them or you any good to remain in that kind of relationship.

Point 1 is highly debatable. I've many times been given good advice I don't want to hear, and given good advice that others don't want to hear.

The pattern I've seen in myself and others is about 24 hours of grumpiness verging on sulking, then take the feedback on board and do things differently.

If anything, I've been surprised by how receptive others are to my advice, especially considering their pushback in the 5-10 minutes where it is being given. And the same in myself.

Also point 3 is actually somewhat dangerous, particularly if you try and apply it to your family. It is a divisive mindset.

The flip side of point 3, and probably the better way to go about things in most cases, is to accept the fact that other people have autonomy and just let them do whatever the hell they're gonna do in most cases. If you have family members who eat too much or smoke or gamble or drink a lot, it would be ridiculous to cut them out of your life over it. Just get over the fact that they're not running their lives in the perfect, ideal way that you would and love them anyway. But if someone is in one of the the deepest, darkest pits of fucked-upedness that you've seen in your entire life, well....

Point 1 is stated a bit too strongly, which I tried to temper a bit by jokingly contradicting it. I think a lot of interpersonal stuff is best handled with Postel's Law: be conservative with what you emit and liberal with what you accept. There is a time and a place to offer advice to people, just as there is a time and a place to offer rebuke, shame, or a punch to the face, but these are terrible default modes of interaction, and I think apo likely shares my personal flaw of defaulting to advice far too often.

By all means, especially if you're dealing with someone in a deep, dark pit of fucked-upedness and you seriously want to help guide them to salvation, give them advice. But do so very deliberately. The stereotypical example of this is an "intervention", and I'm not sure how effective that particular modality is, but the basic idea of treating it as a very serious move that must be done as carefully as possible, with plenty of forethought and love and good faith, seems like the right approach. And if they never make a good faith attempt to change things in response to that, well...at that point, it circles back to point 3, and if you follow through on point 3, you're definitely not enabling them anymore. Although even then, there's still a chance they'll break into the house and steal the TV.

This reminds me of the backhanded remark "do you understand or should I draw a diagram?". If someone needs a diagram on these matters, that's sad.

Your sadness about it doesn't eliminate the need for the diagram. So it's not really an argument against the diagram.

This diagram is nothing more than a psychologist's theoretical doodle.

The diagram is not needed. Pasting it to your fridge, as mentioned in the article, is not needed.

Obviously I'm not referring to "my sadness" when I use the expression "it's sad". It's pathetic that anyone would need to refer to such a diagram before interacting with other people on any level.

Just because a psychologist made the diagram and guidelines on sensitivity in communication, does not automatically disqualify arguments against such a diagram or guidelines. There's nothing to take away here except the reinforcement of common sense when it comes to social interaction in sensitive circumstances.

Both sadness and patheticism (real word?) can exist only in the eye of the beholder. If you're not the one sad about it, then who is? It sounds like you're saying "it" is just objectively and platonically sad. In my opinion, that is not a thing.

I don't understand why you feel like it's sad or pathetic that people would need a model to follow something you deem as common sense. I'm sure there are plenty of people smarter than you or I that think everything tech related is "common sense".

The whole point of a diagram for something like this is so that the people without 'common sense' can learn things that weren't instilled into them growing up. Is it really a pathetic situation for people to be teaching the unaware?

I get what you're saying in that it should be obvious, I think so myself! That is that anybody with my education and upbringing should understand easily. But if I look at somebody who grew up in a poor household and had the shit beaten out of them everyday by their parents and dropped out of high school, I wouldn't expect them to know the optimal way to behave socially.

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