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Emotional Support
Dec. 6th, 2016 10:08 amI have my strengths and my weaknesses, in friendship as in everything else, and my greatest strength in that arena is in supporting my friends who are going through big changes. I see opportunities in difficult times and find them exciting, and with my life experiences I like to think that I'm good in easing people through abrupt trauma. Job changes and divorces are my specialties, in light of my own past.
What I am not good at is offering emotional support in coping with longstanding but unchangeable hardship. I'm not good at coping, in general, preferring to effect big changes in response, but not everyone has such freedom. Kids, finances, and strong senses of commitment, in particular, hold a lot of people in a course they hope and expect to get eventually better but will be unpleasant in the meantime.
This is not my forte. I'm great with a late-night call that says "I left him" or "he left me" but I'm terrible with cocktails over "I'm miserable but can't do anything about it". I'm not good with "I need to suffer through this job another year", but solid with "I just quit/was fired". I am sad to say that I have offered insufficient support to friends who needed it because I can't hear those stories for long before being the voice for radical change.
What I am not good at is offering emotional support in coping with longstanding but unchangeable hardship. I'm not good at coping, in general, preferring to effect big changes in response, but not everyone has such freedom. Kids, finances, and strong senses of commitment, in particular, hold a lot of people in a course they hope and expect to get eventually better but will be unpleasant in the meantime.
This is not my forte. I'm great with a late-night call that says "I left him" or "he left me" but I'm terrible with cocktails over "I'm miserable but can't do anything about it". I'm not good with "I need to suffer through this job another year", but solid with "I just quit/was fired". I am sad to say that I have offered insufficient support to friends who needed it because I can't hear those stories for long before being the voice for radical change.
