Being a Good Comforter

There's an article on Slate today that feels true and could help us be better comforters. There's no Stoicism in the article, but there is a Stoicism tie-in at the end of this post.  

The article distinguishes how people with high and low self-esteem respond to two different kinds of comforting: (1) "negative validation", e.g., 'Oh man. That is absolutely the worst.' and (2) 'positive reframing', e.g., 'Cheer up!', or, 'It's not that bad.' 

1. Comfortees with high self-esteem apparently responded well both to positive reframing and to negative validation.

2. Comfortees with low self-esteem apparently responded poorly to positive reframing. The poor response of comfortees to positive reframing made the comforters feel worse about themselves.

3. Comfortees with low self-esteem responded well to negative validation. 

4. Comforters who use positive reframing don't necessarily lack empathy. It's hard for people with high self-esteem always to adopt the correct "mode" toward someone with low self-esteem.

I would add from my own experience that comforters may hesitate to engage in negative validation because it may feel to them to be an endorsement or promotion of the comfortee's negative outlook. But this, counterintuitively, may not be how things work. As I've experienced in Vipissana meditation, the acknowledgement or or nonjudgmental recognition of an emotion reduces its power and strength.

Also, from the comfortee's perspective, the positive reframing probably doesn't spur any thoughts of reframing; they may just focus on the frustration they experience from what seems the comforter's flippant refusal to acknowledge what they're facing. So now they feel frustrated, isolated, and misunderstood, in addition to the primary negative feeling they were experiencing.

I would also say that there may be a time when acknowledgement does shift into endorsement of self-pity, and that this is the point where it might be best to let the comfortee discover that he or she has the ability to take responsibility for his or her feelings, and to choose how to think or feel, despite the circumstances. I use cautious language here because I imagine the timing would vary from hours to years, depending on the person and the gravity of the situation.