We All Need To Get Better At Asking About Feelings
I recently had dinner with a friend and, although we had a pleasant evening, I came away feeling dissatisfied and disconnected from her. After a few days of trying to unpick why this was, I realized it was because we had spent the evening catching up on each other’s lives, but we hadn’t asked anything about each other’s feelings. I had learnt the facts about what had happened in her life since I’d last seen her, but I had no idea how she felt about any of it. Equally, I hadn’t had the opportunity to share with her how I was feeling about events in my life.
As you may know if you’ve read my recent articles, the last 18 months have been full of very strong feelings for me. My baby girl, Rosa, was stillborn at 37 weeks in September 2021. I then went through an extremely anxious pregnancy before giving birth to my darling boy, Flynn, in August 2022. In the last year and a half, I have experienced grief, guilt, anger, anxiety, relief and elation, often in overwhelming waves. My feelings have been so all-consuming that now it is impossible for me to be close to someone if I haven’t shared those feelings with them. There are people who have lived and breathed my experience with me, who’ve listened endlessly to the raging feelings, and my connection to these people is deeper than ever. There are others who know nothing about how I’ve felt (other than perhaps by reading my articles!) and my relationship with them has become more distant.
This has made me think a lot about how we, as adults in a modern western society, interact with each other — how we talk to each other and support each other. Presumably we all want to have meaningful, supportive relationships, yet I don’t think we do a very good job of building them. I’m going to pass on a few of my observations in the hope that they will help us all do a better job of connecting with each other.
Ask About Feelings
In order to have a meaningful relationship with someone, we need to talk about feelings. Our feelings are everything. Even if we are not going through a loss or a life change, we still experience all sorts of feelings each day and we need to share those with people in order to feel close to them. If someone doesn’t know how you feel about things, they don’t really know you at all.
It’s actually quite simple — if you want to know how someone is feeling, you can just ask! However, we often don’t and I’m not totally sure why this is. I think partly we are afraid of upsetting someone by asking. I also think that the influence of our (British) society, the pressure to get on with things, make a joke and not make a fuss, means that many of us are still very uncomfortable with talking (or asking) about feelings.
When Rosa died, I was absolutely dumbfounded by the way that some of our friends and family reacted. There were so many times in the early days and weeks that we met up with people and they didn’t say a word about what happened. They didn’t offer condolences or ask how we were doing. They just pretended as if nothing had happened. I know that this was because they felt awkward, or were afraid of saying the wrong thing or upsetting us, but the result was that it made me feel terribly lonely. I was surrounded by people who I thought I was close to, and yet they weren’t even acknowledging the monumental event that had happened in my life and was consuming my every thought.
Having thought about It, I realized that I’ve done the same thing in the past. I’ve been so scared of saying the wrong thing, of upsetting someone, that I’ve said nothing. I’ve been the one making someone feel even more isolated and alone, at a time when they needed love and support more than ever.
My advice to anyone who is faced with a friend or family member who has experienced something very difficult is to acknowledge the situation and ask “how are you feeling at the moment?” And keep asking, even as the months and years go by. If the person doesn’t want to speak about it, they will make it very clear and the conversation can move on. Or if they do want to talk about it, this gives them the opportunity to say whatever they want. You might think that they wouldn’t want to talk to you about it, but shouldn’t that be their decision, not yours?
I have never once been upset or offended by someone asking me a question about Rosa, how she died or how I feel about it. In fact, the opposite is true — I generally sit in conversations wishing someone would ask me about her, about how I’m feeling. Or, if I say something about her, wishing that the other person would take the bait, rather than look panicked and dodge the subject. If people don’t ask me, the impression I take away is that they’ve forgotten, or that they don’t care, even if I know rationally that this probably isn’t the case.
Asking about feelings is very important in order to support someone through a difficult time, but it’s not something that should only be done when something tragic has happened. In order to develop deep, meaningful connections with people, we need to be asking about feelings all the time. This doesn’t mean that we all need to become psychotherapists overnight, but we can shift our conversations to be more meaningful. If someone tells us about something difficult or stressful happening in their life, we can say “oh, that must be hard. How are you feeling about it?” If someone mentions something they clearly want to talk about, take the bait and allow them to express their feelings, ideally without jumping in with your own thoughts and opinions (more on listening later).
Hold People in Mind
My dearest friend introduced me to the concept of holding someone in mind. What it means is this: when you’re talking to someone, hold in your mind the impact that what you’re saying might have on them.
It can be very easy, when we’re in the middle of a conversation, to get so caught up in trying to express our own thoughts and feelings that we forget to consider the person (or people) we’re speaking to. We’re so busy telling stories or anecdotes that we lose sight of how our words might be affecting them.
I’m at an age and stage of life where there are lots of conversations about pregnancy, birth and babies going on all the time. Given that this is such a sensitive subject for me, there are times when I find these conversations quite difficult. There are also other times when I don’t find it difficult and I enjoy sharing my experiences with others. I’ve realized that the times I find it comfortable are when I feel confident that the person I’m speaking to is holding my experience in the forefront of their mind during the conversation. Everything they say is with the acute awareness that Rosa died, that my pregnancy with Flynn was deeply difficult, and therefore my feelings around pregnancy and birth are not straight- forward. The times when I feel uncomfortable or upset are when it is clear that whoever I am speaking to has forgotten what I’ve been through — or, if not forgotten, they are not holding it in their mind while we are talking.
Of course, we all get things wrong. We all say the wrong thing and then feel awful about it. And what we need to do then is apologise. This is something we are generally quite bad at doing. We usually say something, realise it’s an inappropriate or upsetting thing to say, and then panic and change the subject. This leaves us feeling awful and the person we’ve upset feeling awful and can be damaging to our relationship.
I still feel guilty about something I said to a friend many years ago, not too long after her dad had died. We were in a group of friends and someone said something about introducing their new boyfriend to their parents. I started going on about how nerve-wracking it was to introduce your boyfriend to your dad and it was only when I saw my poor friend’s face that I realized what I’d done. I didn’t apologise, I just changed the subject, and all these years later I still feel bad. I wish I’d apologised — it would have made us both feel better and hopefully my friend would have trusted me to try and be more sensitive in the future.
Learn How to Listen
Listening to someone is truly the greatest gift you can give, but it is oh so difficult. I am someone who absolutely loves to talk — my favourite thing is having a really great conversation with someone, where we share our feelings and gain a real sense of connection with each other. The problem is that each time the other person says something I agree with, or have a story about, I feel an irresistible urge to interrupt them and jump in with my own thoughts and opinions. A lot of people probably find themselves doing the same thing. Many of us will even spend the time that the other person is talking planning what we’re going to say when it’s our turn. This is not listening, this is just waiting to talk.
My dearest friend has been my lifeline over the last 18 months. The experience of losing Rosa would have been infinitely more isolating, scary and miserable if it hadn’t been for her. I hope that I have also been able to support her through some very difficult times. What has enabled us to be such a support for each other is none other than….Whatsapp voice notes. We send each other voice notes on an almost daily basis and my husband never ceases to be amazed by the length of them (our personal best is around 40 minutes). She and I have realized that, not only is this mode of communication the most convenient when we both have two children and live in different time zones, but it has helped us become much better listeners. When you are listening to a voice note, you can’t interrupt the other person with your own thoughts, or introduce a new topic and send the conversation off down a different route. Instead, you listen, then think a bit about what the other person has said, and respond thoughtfully.
The other thing that this voice-note relationship has taught me is that, more often than not, listening is enough. I think most of us are bad at listening because we don’t think it’s important — we think it’s much more important to impart our own wisdom and offer advice. Actually, most of the time when someone is talking to you about their feelings, they don’t want you to make suggestions or try and fix things for them. Some things simply can’t be fixed and, even if they can, the person has probably already thought of most of the things you suggest. What we all want is just to be listened to and sympathised with. We want someone to put down their phone, ask us how we’re feeling and listen when we tell them. We want them to say, “I understand, that must be difficult, I’m with you.”
We all need good relationships in order to be happy. These relationships are even more important when we go through something difficult (which, let’s face it, most of us will during our lives). To have good relationships, we need to share how we feel and we need to ask others how they feel. This shouldn’t change when something bad happens — we shouldn’t panic and withdraw from the person who is suffering. We should do the opposite and make it clear that we are willing to listen (properly listen) to their feelings any time they wish to share them.
Let’s stop being so scared of each other. Let’s stop being so British! Just ask.
