Internal vs. External Listeners
I’ve always leaned hard on the IF community for emotional support because… you get it. I don’t need to provide a big backstory or how something makes me feel or put a bunch of disclaimers in place. You get it. We have a shorthand. I can say that I still walk out of my way to avoid the baby department at Target, and I do not have to explain why.
But Carolyn Hax had an interesting column last week where she explains that people outside the experience are sometimes the best listeners. She writes:
I’m not sure you need empathy to be a good provider of sympathy. There’s a case to be made that not going through the emotions yourself enhances your ability to listen patiently and provide a shoulder. Some of the best caregivers are the ones who maintain enough detachment to keep their heads, and keep listening through what would be, for others, an exhausting level of duress.
In other words, my story brings up feelings about your story, and then we’re both feeling duress. Whereas in this other scenario, talking to someone who has never experienced infertility, they can hear and support me without it draining them.
Of course, you can have hyper-empathy without the experience, but it’s food for thought on why people outside the experience are sometimes the best listeners.
5 comments
I don’t need an objective opinion on why the flood of “National Daughter Day” posts on Facebook is triggering me. I just need someone to sit with me in my dark place and quietly understand.
Ha – that’s why my friends used to tell me all their social woes when we were young. They knew I didn’t care about the people involved, so I wouldn’t repeat their stories or use it against them.
Long story short, I think it depends on the situation you’re sharing.
I always wanted kids but was never certain I would ever have them… I think I could be a good listener because I can feel the complexity of IF. And yes, the “National Daughters’ Day” feed felt brutal as I always wanted a daughter and now I have a son instead… <3 Love to you all.
Hmmm. It was an interesting piece. I have had a blog post brewing for a long time about the advantages and disadvantages of support groups (like our ALI community). You may have provided the impetus to finally finish it!
Hmmmm, thinking on this. I’m not sure I’d agree, because some subjects are so misunderstood that you really need someone who gets it to listen. I had a therapist once who would listen to me talk about the infertility woes and then just keep saying “you’re so strong, so brave.” Well, that wasn’t helpful. My best friend has been a good listener and giver of sympathy, and she didn’t have infertility. However, when she had a miscarriage in the last year or so she felt guilty talking to me about it, so maybe there’s something in that. She didn’t want to cause me duress, but I wanted to be there for her, but it almost made it harder for her to talk to me because I had the experience from a different perspective. You’ve got me thinking!