Stop telling me that you care - the tricky trickster that is sympathy.
You may well remember a few missives ago that I wrote about the benefit of a pity pause, but not a pity party and last week we mused over empathy:
'Empathy isn’t just understanding what someone is going through. It is having the capacity to be able to reflect back to that person exactly what they are going through, without filters of fixing or suggestions of supposing.
And NOW, now, it's time to share the bridge - a bridge of sighs, if you will - between these two, which is this week's feeling of the week - sympathy.
Gosh, that was a complicated sentence that could be improved. Don't tell my English teacher.
Sympathy is a tricky trickster - go too far and you are in the territory of throwing a surprise pity party; not enough and well, you know, it's just not a good look.
When sympathy goes wrong, it can feel like this:
Stop telling me that, ‘You know’.
Stop telling me that, ‘You care’.
Just give me some peace as I work it out -
Please hide your puzzled stare!
I don’t know the why or the how or the who,
But I’ll work it out, I’ll work it through.
Stop telling me, 'It will pass'.
Stop telling me I’m 'So strong'.
Just give me some space as I stumble through,
As I pick apart what went wrong.
There may be some positive, that might be true,
But I’m not there yet, I’ve got to work it through…
You can't get in someone's face when you are trying to show empathy.
In fact, you could say it's a fine balance of: not too much space, but 'NOT IN MY FACE'.
Haha, I just made that up.
Seriously, I'll find a rhyme in a bucketful of oranges (think about it...!).
Which brings me to the secret sauce to sympathy, and that is humour.
Why?
Because humour is imbued with authenticity and we need to feel that the sympathy is an authentic offer of a pity pause.
I wrote this next poem for a dear friend of mine when she was in isolation during Covid, receiving chemotherapy for leukaemia. She had been moved into a room by herself which, by the look of the mop in the corner, would have gone by the name 'cupboard' at any other time.
On the phone to me soooooo miserable, she was lamenting that just when she felt she had hit her rock bottom of misery, she'd crashed into the basement.
Ouch.
I got off the phone and wrote her this. By the way, it was November, hence the reference to fireworks...
What misery is this?
The fireworks are damp.
Butterflies have lost their lustre.
I’ve no joy that I can muster.
And now my mouth is chock to the brim of bloody painful ulcers.
What misery is this?
In the human race I’m losing.
Don’t ask me to write a gratitude list,
It’s a sure fire way to encourage me to give you a proper bruising...
What misery is this?
Ooh I’m really getting going!
The world has gone to shit...
And on top of that:
I have no hair that’s growing.
What misery this is!
Sympathy is a bitter pill.
It just reminds me I’m fucking ill.
Oh! I know it’s meant through your good will.
It’s just, I’m crawling up this hill
With a rock sack on my back.
What misery is this?
Talking of rocks, I’ve hit the bottom.
My rock bottom is a shit storm flotsam
Where no comfort’s to be had.
What misery is this?
Oh! When you ask I’ll no doubt smile,
Tell you, ‘I’ll feel better in a while’!
Reassure your tears with ‘it’s not that bad’.
The misery that’s this.
‘YES!’ She said, ‘That's exactly what it's like’, and then cracked up laughing.
That is sympathy!