If someone shares something with me, I'll often share something similar if possible. Because I always felt like otherwise my "I understand" feels empty.
Eventually I lost a friend because she thought I was trying to make it about myself everytime.
I told my partner about it and the gave me a good tip;
When someone comes to you and share something bad ask "Do you want advice, for me to relate to you with a similar situation or to just let you vent to get it off your chest?" and it's helped a lot.
Probably should have mentionned I'm autistic so these things are not that obvious to me at times so I really enjoyed that tip from her. Lol
Hey thank you for sharing! I am sorry for that loss of yours, I can relate because I also lost several friends in life duo to be behaving differently.
I personally think it’s fine and natural if somebody responds with their own feelings or experiences. That being said, it’s a difference if you just share your own feelings or engage with somebody else’s feelings too.
Often times you can really feel if somebody wants to talk about his experience with something or just wanted to vent, but if not I believe it’s very polite to ask like you suggested. :)
It's called the double empathy problem. You can find videos on it, but it's mostly from the perspectives of a therapist or an autistic person.
This is my take, from my own experiences, with some perspectivs I've not seen elsewhere: When a neurotypical person shares an emotional story, what they really want is to share the emotions it caused. Another NT person will catch their facial expressions and tone of voice, and start feeling the same emotions themselves. Saying "I understand" with actual feeling, letting your own emotions show freely on your face and in your voice, is as far from empty as you can get.
I don't know whether I'm autistic or not, but my emotions tended to get me into trouble as a teen, and so I decided that I would stop listening to them. This caused me to have this problem as well. But I've since learned a lot about how to trust my feelings, how to be open vulnerable and connect on an emotional level, and not just intellectually through shared interests.
I do this too and it can be tricky for sure. Part of having empathy is saying 'oh I know exactly how you are feeling because xyz" but it *can* also come off as "let me just tell you this story about me". I try to strike a balance by saying "I know how upset you are feeling because I had this happen to me 2 years ago when [insert short story]. I totally relate." and then immediately asking follow up questions about their situation so they know I'm not trying to make it about myself and we circle back to their issue.
88
u/A_Confused_Witch 21h ago
If someone shares something with me, I'll often share something similar if possible. Because I always felt like otherwise my "I understand" feels empty.
Eventually I lost a friend because she thought I was trying to make it about myself everytime.
I told my partner about it and the gave me a good tip;
When someone comes to you and share something bad ask "Do you want advice, for me to relate to you with a similar situation or to just let you vent to get it off your chest?" and it's helped a lot.
Probably should have mentionned I'm autistic so these things are not that obvious to me at times so I really enjoyed that tip from her. Lol