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.

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• ..., 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

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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?

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• 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: 适得其反
• 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.

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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?

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• 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

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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.

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• bake sth. into your brain
• counterintuitive but universally true laws 违反直觉但普遍适用的法则

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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.

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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.

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

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OK. 看到这里你应该读完了这篇文章, 如果没有建议还是先自己理解, 不要直接看翻译(况且我也不会在这里逐句翻译的哈哈). 那这篇文章讲了什么个东西呢, 我为什么要分享它.
Well....
开头这只猫蛮可爱的, 哈哈.
OK, 简单来说这篇文章讲了当有人跟你抱怨传递负能量的时候, 你要怎么接收处理这些信息和负面情绪.
还蛮实用的对吧, 我们都希望身边围绕着积极乐观的人, 谁也不想每天听到的全是抱怨, 但有时不可避免, 由其是当对方是和你有亲密关系的人的时候, 不想听也不行啊是吧, 一不小心哄的不对还要吵架你说是不是, 做人太难了.
原文给出了5点建议, 我这里没有放全文, 想看全文的直接点标题就可以了. 总之呢, 读完以后我印象最深刻点建议就是,

1. 怀着一种探索的好奇心对待对方的烦恼. 当有人跟你抱怨的时候你不要第一反应逃避或者讽刺或者什么的, 你想象一下你是个心理咨询师(或许你就是), 挑战一下自己去分析对方的处境, 什么情况下, 发生了什么, 她/他为什么会有这样的反应和情绪, 等等.
2. 不要很直男的告诉对方你应该这样做, 应该那样做, 而是.... Be a mirror! 她说什么你就重复她的话, “就是就是”, “哎对对怎么会这样真是的”,“啊我也觉得”....
   但是! 这是作者观点, 我作为读者并不是这么认为的. 这种做法不绝对, 要因人而异见机行事. 有一些人她/他就是想发泄, 那你也别费脑筋了, 听听就好, 附和一下, 你好心帮她找解决办法人家也没采用过两天自己好了, 你说你受伤不受伤. 但是, 如果对方真的是遇到了什么困难而心情不好, 那我觉得合理的建议是有必要的, 这个时候你要是还在那无脑附和, 如果是我的话我会觉得你根本没有在认真倾听很敷衍.
3. 我们常说要设身处地想问题, 这个作者提出, 比起设身处地去想象自己处于对方的环境, 不如回想自己切身发生过的事情会更有体会. 这一点确实是比较有用, 但也会让你想起自己的伤疤.
4. 最后一点就是放松心态啦, 不要太当回事也不要不当回事. 看过电影“三傻大闹宝莱坞”吗, 一句名言“All is well~” 凡事都会过去的, 船到桥头自然直, 控制好自己的心态, 不要冲动, 不要让自己过快地去反应, 做事情之前深呼吸两次, 停顿2-3秒, 心态会有些不同, 事情可能会往不同的方向发展~ Be calm and effective don't be reactive and impulsive.

写在结尾:
很久很久...没更了, 没有定期更新蛮抱歉的. 这个系列以分享习语督促积累为初衷, 希望在学习英文表达的同时分享学习一些观点, 了解一些别的领域的知识, 习得一些可能会对生活有帮助的tips. 其实草稿箱里有很多没有发出来的文章, 大多是看到什么有意思的就note down, 但是要这样分享出来还是需要花费一些时间整理编辑的, 虽然这个编辑看起来也比较随意.
目前为止这类文章我分享学习的方式就是粗体highlight一些固定搭配或比较好的表达或习语, 红色用来表示一些可以套用的语句结构. 这个平台的markdown功能太不完善, 可以用来highlight的方式很有限, 这也是我没怎么更的原因之一吧(maybe😜)但whatever, 不给自己找借口了,以后尽量多多分享 (虽然我觉得这个平台更适合文学创作). 文中的注释尽量仍用英文但若汉语表达十分精炼会改用汉语代替. 这里不会像英语课一样每一条详细解释还有很多例句什么的. 我的方式可能更多是提取和情景理解重要的是英文表达思维, 至于例句能把本文中所在的句子掌握应用就很不错了.
OK, 解释说明到此结束, 算是这么长时间一个交代吧.希望看到我的分享的朋友可以看得开心有所收获.😎💫🌈⭐️✨🌓🌒