How To Handle Other People’s Bad Moods Like a Pro

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Photo: Dmitry Ulitin @Unsplash
Author:Nick Wignall

Here’s a question I get asked a lot as a therapist:

How do you sit there and listen to people’s problems all day? Don’t you get depressed?

To be honest, not really.

You might imagine that all the sadness, frustration, anxiety, and shame my clients tell me about would start to rub off on a guy after a while. But, if anything,I feel like I’m a little better at managing both my own emotions and other peoples’ because I get to practice all day long.

What follows are 5 specific skills I’ve learned that help me to effectively and respectfully handle other people’s difficult emotions.

If you can learn to cultivate them, these skills will help you keep your cool in every relationship in your life, especially the most important ones — like spouses, bosses, parents, partners, and children.

• ..., if any, ...
  (used to suggest tentatively that something may be the case (often the opposite of something previously implied))
  • I haven't made much of this—if anything, I've played it down

1. Treat Strong Emotion as a Puzzle, Not a Problem

When someone close to us is racked with anxiety, overwhelmed by sadness, or just incredibly frustrated, it’s natural to see their emotion as a problem — something to be taken care of and resolved quickly. This is why we so often turn to advice-giving when people we care about are upset.

But as I’m sure you’ve come to learn, giving advice to someone in the throes of a bad mood is typically unhelpful at best and often counterproductive.

Instead of viewing someone’s bad mood as a problem to be fixed, what if you shifted your perspective and saw it as a puzzle instead?**

Tryto catch and hold back on thoughts like:

• Don’t they see this isn’t doing them any good!
• If only they knew how much they impacted other people, they’d never be like this.

And instead, substitute more curiosity-driven questions:

• What could be going on in their mind that would lead to so many painful feelings?

• be racked with/overwhelmed by anxiety/sadness...
• have come to learn ... is typically unhelpful at best and often counterproductive.
  • at best: taking the most optimistic or favorable view
  • typically: in most cases; usually
  • counterproductive: 適得其反
• instead of doing A, do B instead
• to hold back on A, and instead do B
  • (to decide not to do or say something)
    He held back, remembering the mistake he had made before.
  • (to not show what you are thinking or feeling)
    Joe held back his anger.

2. Try Some Reverse Empathy

Empathy is the act of putting yourself in another person’s shoes and trying to imagine what it must be like to live in their skin — with their thoughts, feelings, experiences, and circumstances.

Reverse empathy: rather than putting yourself in someone else’s shoes, try to remember a time when you wore the same shoe.

For example, if they’re really frustrated and angry, think back on a time when you were so frustrated you couldn’t seem to think straight:

• What happened to get you that angry?
• What kinds of thoughts and emotions were racing around your mind?
• What did the people around you do?
• And maybe most importantly, what do you remember wanting, needing, or wishing for when you felt that way?

• put yourself in sb.'s shoes/live in sb.'s skin
  感同身受
• think straight
  (To think rationally or calmly). This phrase is often used in the negative to convey the opposite.
  Don't assign him anything else right now—he's so stressed about this case that he can't think straight.
• (thoughts/emotions) racing around your mind; stop your mind from racing

3. Be a Mirror, Not a Mechanic

Without a doubt, the number one mistake I see people (especially couples) make in their communication with each other is that they get stuck in “Fix-it Mode.”

But here’s the thing:

Most people struggling emotionally don’t want someone to fix their pain, they went to feel understood.

Bake that into your brain, because it’s one of the most counterintuitive but universally true laws of human psychology.

So, how do we get out of a Fix-it mindset and start helping people feel understood? The best way is to practice a technique called Reflective Listening.

Reflective Listening means that when someone tells you something, you simply reflect back to them what they said, either literally or with your own slight spin on it.

For example:

• Your boss: I can’t believe Teddy embarrassed me like that in front of the whole staff! You: Sounds like you were really embarrassed.
• Your husband: You never listen, you’re always just giving me advice. You: It seems like you feel as though I tend to just give advice without really listening to what you’re saying.

By mirroring another person’s experience you’re giving them something far more valuable than advice — you’re giving them a genuine connection.

• bake sth. into your brain
• counterintuitive but universally true laws 違反直覺但普遍適用的法則

4. Validate Your Own Emotions

One of the hardest things about other people’s bad moods is the emotions they tend to stir up in us.

• Our spouse is sad and melancholic, and we get frustrated.
• Our boss is anxious and overbearing, and which makes us feel anxious too.
• Our parent is angry and irritable, and we respond with annoyance and sarcasm.

The solution is to get better at noticing and managing our own emotional responses early so that they don’t balloon out of control. And the best way I know of to do that is through a process called validation.

Validation simply means acknowledging our own emotions and reminding ourselves that they’re okay and reasonable.

All You Need to Know

Bad moods and painful emotions are hard to handle — both in ourselves and also in the people we work and live with. While it’s not possible to “fix” another person’s emotional struggles, there are a handful of practical skills you can learn to help you be more genuinely supportive and helpful in the face of other people’s bad moods.

And even if you fail completely to help the other person — or have no interest in doing so — skills like self-validation and reflective listening will help you stay calm and effective instead of reactive and impulsive in the face of other people’s bad moods.

• calm and effective <--->reactive and impulsive

OK. 看到這里你應(yīng)該讀完了這篇文章, 如果沒有建議還是先自己理解, 不要直接看翻譯(況且我也不會在這里逐句翻譯的哈哈). 那這篇文章講了什么個東西呢, 我為什么要分享它.
Well....
開頭這只貓蠻可愛的, 哈哈.
OK, 簡單來說這篇文章講了當(dāng)有人跟你抱怨傳遞負能量的時候, 你要怎么接收處理這些信息和負面情緒.
還蠻實用的對吧, 我們都希望身邊圍繞著積極樂觀的人, 誰也不想每天聽到的全是抱怨, 但有時不可避免, 由其是當(dāng)對方是和你有親密關(guān)系的人的時候, 不想聽也不行啊是吧, 一不小心哄的不對還要吵架你說是不是, 做人太難了.
原文給出了5點建議, 我這里沒有放全文, 想看全文的直接點標題就可以了. 總之呢, 讀完以后我印象最深刻點建議就是,

1. 懷著一種探索的好奇心對待對方的煩惱. 當(dāng)有人跟你抱怨的時候你不要第一反應(yīng)逃避或者諷刺或者什么的, 你想象一下你是個心理咨詢師(或許你就是), 挑戰(zhàn)一下自己去分析對方的處境, 什么情況下, 發(fā)生了什么, 她/他為什么會有這樣的反應(yīng)和情緒, 等等.
2. 不要很直男的告訴對方你應(yīng)該這樣做, 應(yīng)該那樣做, 而是.... Be a mirror! 她說什么你就重復(fù)她的話, “就是就是”, “哎對對怎么會這樣真是的”,“啊我也覺得”....
   但是! 這是作者觀點, 我作為讀者并不是這么認為的. 這種做法不絕對, 要因人而異見機行事. 有一些人她/他就是想發(fā)泄, 那你也別費腦筋了, 聽聽就好, 附和一下, 你好心幫她找解決辦法人家也沒采用過兩天自己好了, 你說你受傷不受傷. 但是, 如果對方真的是遇到了什么困難而心情不好, 那我覺得合理的建議是有必要的, 這個時候你要是還在那無腦附和, 如果是我的話我會覺得你根本沒有在認真傾聽很敷衍.
3. 我們常說要設(shè)身處地想問題, 這個作者提出, 比起設(shè)身處地去想象自己處于對方的環(huán)境, 不如回想自己切身發(fā)生過的事情會更有體會. 這一點確實是比較有用, 但也會讓你想起自己的傷疤.
4. 最后一點就是放松心態(tài)啦, 不要太當(dāng)回事也不要不當(dāng)回事. 看過電影“三傻大鬧寶萊塢”嗎, 一句名言“All is well~” 凡事都會過去的, 船到橋頭自然直, 控制好自己的心態(tài), 不要沖動, 不要讓自己過快地去反應(yīng), 做事情之前深呼吸兩次, 停頓2-3秒, 心態(tài)會有些不同, 事情可能會往不同的方向發(fā)展~ Be calm and effective don't be reactive and impulsive.

寫在結(jié)尾:
很久很久...沒更了, 沒有定期更新蠻抱歉的. 這個系列以分享習(xí)語督促積累為初衷, 希望在學(xué)習(xí)英文表達的同時分享學(xué)習(xí)一些觀點, 了解一些別的領(lǐng)域的知識, 習(xí)得一些可能會對生活有幫助的tips. 其實草稿箱里有很多沒有發(fā)出來的文章, 大多是看到什么有意思的就note down, 但是要這樣分享出來還是需要花費一些時間整理編輯的, 雖然這個編輯看起來也比較隨意.
目前為止這類文章我分享學(xué)習(xí)的方式就是粗體highlight一些固定搭配或比較好的表達或習(xí)語, 紅色用來表示一些可以套用的語句結(jié)構(gòu). 這個平臺的markdown功能太不完善, 可以用來highlight的方式很有限, 這也是我沒怎么更的原因之一吧(maybe??)但whatever, 不給自己找借口了,以后盡量多多分享 (雖然我覺得這個平臺更適合文學(xué)創(chuàng)作). 文中的注釋盡量仍用英文但若漢語表達十分精煉會改用漢語代替. 這里不會像英語課一樣每一條詳細解釋還有很多例句什么的. 我的方式可能更多是提取和情景理解重要的是英文表達思維, 至于例句能把本文中所在的句子掌握應(yīng)用就很不錯了.
OK, 解釋說明到此結(jié)束, 算是這么長時間一個交代吧.希望看到我的分享的朋友可以看得開心有所收獲.?????????????