Managing the suffering of others

Expressing joy is easy. It's a positive emotion, one of the few that truly exist. However, when people feel sadness, discouragement, or grief, things get complicated. These difficult-to-manage emotions are often hidden or repressed ; the feeling that showing them is a sign of weakness persists in our society. This prejudice manifests itself in expressions like "don't expose yourself too much" or "don't cry, you have to be strong." All this does is make us continue to repress everything that emotionally disturbs us. In addition to this emotional repression, some people try to minimize the negative feeling by starting or increasing their consumption of alcohol, nicotine, caffeine, or drugs to alleviate pain or induce sleep.

Emotions are neither good nor bad, neither positive nor negative. They are all necessary for human beings and have an adaptive function; that is, they help us adapt to changes in our lives. The art lies in maintaining an emotional balance that does not disrupt our well-being.

Sometimes, people who are suffering seek help from those around them to manage these emotions. In general, for this process of social interaction with others to be healthy, the following is important:

• Practice active and conscious listening in order to connect emotionally with the other person.
• Show empathy.
• Avoid comments that minimize the person's suffering, such as: "cheer up", "calm down", "it's not that bad".
• Help the person express their discouragement so they can vent and find relief.
• Provide a physical space and adequate time for that person to be heard, without being judged.

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If you are a healthcare or social work professional, you have surely had to engage in conversations and listening sessions with people who are suffering. In these moments, it is crucial that, as a professional providing assistance, you possess the necessary communication, social, and emotional skills to avoid feeling overwhelmed by the suffering of others and to effectively support the person you are assisting.

These are general guidelines, since each situation and person is different and, therefore, each professional must adapt to the personal and situational demands.

Ten guidelines for effective communication when others are suffering

1. Know yourself well . Personal self-awareness will help you discover your best skills so you can use them in the listening process.
2. Accept your own vulnerability , and don't run away from the suffering of others. Seeing others suffer confronts us with our own vulnerability and can lead us to want to avoid looking at it directly.
3. Don't confuse empathy with feeling the same thing the other person is expressing. Empathy is an attitude that is learned through practice and includes cognitive, behavioral (verbal and nonverbal), and affective components. Messages that reflect the other person's emotional tone are helpful (eye contact, facial expressions congruent with their verbal message, nods, posture, distance, and illustrative hand gestures that accompany the verbal message).
4. When we hear about the suffering of others, we feel emotional discomfort. We must be clear that this discomfort is our own ; it is not caused by the person we are talking to.
   

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5. Reflect on what you feel . Perhaps putting these feelings into words will help you manage your own emotions.
6. Apply useful therapeutic communication in which you can use communicative strategies such as: probing, paraphrasing, summarizing, reflecting, giving instructions appropriately, providing step-by-step and useful information, etc.
7. Practice deep personal qualities (authenticity, concreteness, unconditional acceptance of the other, honesty) respecting the interlocutor at all times.
8. Provide effective support without promoting victimhood . It's important to break with excessive reinforcement that makes the person a prisoner of their situation.
9. Express your own feelings and ask for help if you feel overwhelmed by the situation.
10. Use effective individual coping mechanisms to manage stress, such as: rhythmic breathing, progressive muscle relaxation, regular physical exercise, and adopt a healthy lifestyle that includes a balanced diet and restful sleep. And don't forget to surround yourself with important people in your life.

Finally, remember that social skills are not only behaviors that are produced by trial and error, and that imitate what we observe; they are also thoughts and emotions that we put to use in a given social situation and that we repeat when we see that they are really effective in handling a specific interaction situation.