Help Emotionally Troubled Loved Ones by Sitting with Them in Their Emotions

Life Skills, Mental Health
If you have someone you care about who is going through a difficult time and you don’t know how to get through to them, here’s how: Be present with them and spend time with them.  Don’t spend brain power solving their issues. Don’t spend energy telling them what they should do without them asking you for that.  Don’t take the initiative, the free will, the power to control their own life away from them.
What someone needs when they’re in an emotionally charged state is for someone else to absorb that emotional energy through active listening.
A friend recently showed me a South Park Episode about suicide (Season 21 Episode 2: Put It Down) and in it, near the end of the show, there’s two scenes that are really educational on how to help a friend.
A good friend doesn’t judge, doesn’t criticize, doesn’t problem solve. A good friend just sits with the person and listens and feels the emotions that the other person is feeling so that the person doesn’t feel alone and scared anymore because there’s someone else together with that person.  Sit in the emotions with the other person, ask them “how do you feel.” “How else do you feel?” “Wow, that sounds scary, how do you cope?” “That sounds hard, I can understand why you’re feeling this way.”  Let them express to you all that they are feeling, and listen. Sit and listen. Feel bad with them.  Keep feeling bad with them until they have said all they want to say about the topic (it may take a very long time) but only after they have been allowed to discharge all of their emotions will they be able to calm down, relax, and think clearly again.
The order of health priority in all situations is:
Emotional -> Mental/Logic -> Beliefs/Spiritual/Psychological -> THEN Physical Health -> Society (Finances/Career/Relationships).
First help your loved one with their emotions.
Then you can discuss the logical solutions and actions you can take to problem solve.
Then ensure that they can accept the logic you discussed, and have alignment between their Beliefs and the Logic. If they don’t, they may revert back to an Emotional state.
Only after all 3 Healths (Emotional, Mental, Beliefs) are healed can you then focus on Physical Health or Society Health.  This is why when you say “Go get some sleep” or “Go exercise” or “Take better care of yourself” to someone who is emotionally uncomfortable, they get mad at you. It’s because those statements do not help until you have discharged them emotionally for your loved one. .
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Career Learnings

Career

Here’s a list of things I’ve learned over the course of my career:

  • Timelines are affected by vacation and sick days. Anticipate that as well.
  • Say what you know instead of saying you know nothing. You always have some idea, communicate it so you can create a shared ground to start from together.
  • Do your own work well always.  Then involve yourself in further matters.  Otherwise if things go south you have nothing to stand on.
  • Never work for free, or in other words, always get buy in and approval before doing work. And make sure you get that buy in from the key stakeholders, not just anyone.

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Software Engineer Interview Tips

Thoughts On Life

Say you don’t know the answer when you don’t know the answer. (Footnote 1)

 

Footnote 1 From Reddit:

I hire quite a bit and my biggest red flag is people who profess to know the answer to every question and never admit to not knowing something. I have a couple of really-too-advanced-for-the-role technical questions that I keep in my back pocket and use almost entirely to see what people will say when they DON’T know the answer. Being able to tell me how you find out information you don’t know (and showing me that you don’t mind admitting not being perfect/asking questions) is WAY more valuable than “acing” an interview quiz.

(This is also one of the most valuable traits of an employee – if you don’t know something/screw up, admitting it will win you WAY more points than you trying to hide it/cover your tracks. Coming clean about a screwup – assuming it’s not a habit, obviously – shows me you are both honest and confident.)

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