This Christmas I came to a realization. The last few weeks, I've been thinking about that realization and evaluating things. And.

I, the queen of playing devil's advocate, have learned an important lesson: When your friend is sad. When your friend complains to you. When your friend is mad as hell and venting...

You need to:
a) empathize
b) agree
c) validate his feelings.
d) tell him you're sorry.
e) support him

You do NOT need to:
a) be rational
b) try to reason with him
c) show him the other side of the coin
d) tell him all the ways that other people are worse off.

"but Narcissa!" you say, "isn't the truth important? If my friend is being irrational, shouldn't i show him the light?"

and i say: "no! At the end of the day, your friend probably knows he's being irrational. You can have a reasonable discussion about it later."

The last few weeks have been hard, and i have been very angry and sad about a bunch of things. The very best listeners were the ones who:
-let me rant
-insulted the people who had hurt me (preferably using words like "jackass" and "evil bitch")
-helped me brainstorm revenge schemes
-tried to think of ways to resolve the situation.

The bad listeners were the ones who:
-downplayed my feelings
-tried to reason with me
-weren't interested
-tried to relate the situation to themselves
-didn't really listen

I'm not advocating allowing people to be delusional. I'm just saying that if I'm not going to be there for my friends, who is? And it's bad enough that they have to deal with the issue they're upset about without having to rationalize it to me.

I'm really trying to remember this for the next time a friend is upset about something.

6:14 p.m. - 2003-02-13