A PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT

When a friend calls you, upset about something, there are two conversational gambits you can take:

• The Empathy Conversation -- "God, that sucks, I'm so sorry. I'd be freaking too."
  
• The Practical Conversation -- "Ok, calm down. Now here's what you should do ..."

I'm here to tell you, for the love of all that is holy, start with The Empathy Conversation. Because most of the time, I know what I need to do, I just need someone to tell me that being thrown for a loop by, say, having to fire someone or losing my job or getting in a car crash is perfectly normal. If you jump right into detailed solutions for my problems, it makes me feel like I'm an idiot for being upset, which makes me resent you for making me feel like an idiot, which makes me feel guilty for resenting you when you're just trying to help, which makes me resent you even more for making me feel guilty and stupid, which eventually spirals into a situation where I'm polishing off a bottle of rum and a couple of pints of Ben & Jerry's all by myself late at night. It's a bad scene, people.

If you open with The Empathy Conversation and your friend shrieks "Yeah, but what the hell am I supposed to do?", it's easy enough to switch to The Practical Conversation -- no harm, no foul. But if you jump straight to The Practical Conversation, you can't go back to The Empathy Conversation without sounding patronizing -- it comes off as "Now, now, a normal person would be able to deal with this, but I now realize you're a freak and therefore will pat your head and tell you everything will be all right." And that leads to the scenario above, except this time, it's all your fault when I wake up hung over and bloated.

So: Empathy, then Practical. General reassurance, then specific solutions. I swear to god, it's not that difficult.

HERE ENDS THE PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT