Reacting with action or feelings

It's not an either/or

I think there are mainly two ways of reacting to difficult or unexpected situations. You can react with a constructive, logic approach; “how do we solve this?”. Or you can react with unease, distress and panic; “this is a bad!”.

I usually react in the first way, seeking solutions off the bat. So when unexpected, negative stuff happens to me, I’m relatively quick to start looking for ways to get out of the unwanted situation. This works well for me.

But when there are others involved that react with feelings first, it’s not that straight forward. If you skip straight to solutions, they might not feel that they’re being heard.

I had a roommate that reacted with feelings. She was going to apply for a job that she just found. The deadline was in a few days, but she was also going abroad, had to pack her bags and found it hard to write the application. She was distressed.

I thought of this idea, that there are two ways of reacting to difficult situations. Rather than hearing her out, I was very direct; “OK, so do you want to tell me more about how much the situation sucks, or should we try to solve it?”. I even offered helping her write the application, but it wasn’t what she wanted. She wanted me to understand how difficult she found the difficult situation.

In settings like these, I’ve found that it’s important to find a middle ground. Hear people out, let them get stuff off of their chests, then find solutions. If you skip that part, you won’t be on the same page, and however good your solutions are, you won’t be heard. Resolving situations is not just a consulting framework, empathy is always part of the secret sauce.