While I agree with you, I also know that sometimes, people just want to talk and they just want you to listen to them. They don't want your advice and they don't want you to 'fix' their problems. Just listen to them.
More than that, sometimes looking for a fix becomes the act of perpetuating a problem. If can act as a stop point away from searching for deeper understanding of the problem and thus proper response.
But that’s probably just for simpler or longer term problems than falling off a cliff or an oncoming train.
There’s a lot of suffering in the world - especially right now. The universe itself can be especially cruel, for that matter. So personally I try to be kind and generous when I can.
Understanding this point has significantly improved my relationship with my wife, but honestly - I cannot comprehend the mindset. It feels like a fundamental difference in world processing.
For me, the quickest and surest way to reduce anxiety about some problem is to find candidate solutions. I don't even have to act on them, just knowing that there's a possible path out is enough for me to stop worrying (and sometimes do nothing, and then the problem solves itself, because it was never that big in the first place). But then it seems that a good chunk of the population just wants to have their anxiety validated (and their "catastrophizing", per the other comment in the thread). Which I guess would be fine, if it made their anxiety go away. But it doesn't.
I used to think like you but then ran into problems at work where all the obvious solutions were things I already thought of and wouldn't work for different reasons. So when my partner at the time or my dad would try to help with solutions to a problem she couldn't completely grok that wouldn't actually help it just made me more frustrated. I just needed my partner to validate my frustration, be there for me to rant with the understanding that this wouldn't last forever but was a shitty moment to deal with...
Huh, I think you're right. I've definitely experienced the things that you're describing. It's frustrating to hear an advice that you've considered, rejected for good reasons, and with those reasons being too complicated to explain to the other party in the scope of a conversation.
I think you're in a really great situation in life and mental state where "having candidate solutions" was enough to deal with the majority of anxious situations. I think a lot of people are in situations where they can see that their candidate solutions may not have the best chance of success, or that they don't fully resolve the issues, or that there's great residual uncertainty remaining.
Furthermore (my GF pointed this out to me once) - do you ever tell stories about dumb shit you had to do, AFTER you resolved the situation? For example, talk about dumb hoops you had to jump through at work (after you've jumped through them), or some work around in some recipe (because you screwed up at the market)? Think about the motivating factors in telling those stories, and how telling those stories makes you feel, and what you expect in the form of feedback when telling those stories. It's not identical, but it can be similar to what's going on people tell these stories BEFORE resolving the issue.
Sometimes people engage in these situations for multiple reasons. They're looking for their anxiety to be validated, not because they want it to be go away (they're often perfectly understanding of the actual concrete actions they need or can take), but because they want to bond and share and be human. Does it make it all go away? No. But that's not what they're looking for - they're looking to discharge some bad mental state. They're not looking for the "real fix", they're trying to clear their heads of their immediate pain.
No one wants to be interrupted in the middle of a tirade about how stupid Verizon is to be told to switch to Comcast. No one wants to be interrupted while raging against ${politician} with "just vote against ${politician}".
Both approaches (identifying and following up on courses of actions to resolve situations, and short-term venting to keep the mind clear) should work hand in hand - they are complementary, not opposite. While it's tempting to say that clearly the actually resolving strategy is superior, because it could theoretically work in isolation (while venting will clearly not work in isolation in most cases), I don't think it's really realistic.
Anyhow, I hope your strategy keeps working that well for you.
> Sometimes people engage in these situations for multiple reasons. They're looking for their anxiety to be validated
In these situations I do everything to not validate the anxiety, but still be understanding of their feelings.
As somebody who had OCD, and sometimes sought out validations from others, I know it is was not beneficial for me to have somebody validate it. For example you wouldn't tell me it is valid that I cannot sleep because I didn't close the door just right (and yes, OCD anxieties are this frivolous); you would tell me I'm wasting my time and energy thinking about that (and yes, that is the advice that worked for me).
My solution to anxiety is to throw the anxious thought out. Like meditation techniques where you try to ignore all your thoughts, here you would just ignore the anxiety inducing ones. You just set your mind on more productive thoughts.
I read somewhere -- it's probably a huge oversimplification -- but that when men talk about their problems, they want to solve those problems. when women talk about their problems, they just want to discuss the problems, or their significance.
This has helped me out a lot with my wife, and it's something i try to be mindful of whenever i talk to ANYONE now -- men or women. This idea was helpful because it raised in me the question: is the person talking to you for you to help solve their problems, or for you to just listen and help them get it off their chest?
Although i'm still in the problem-solving mindset, looking at it in this light helps me to at least think of the person's needs, instead of my own desires.
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