A parent talks through their son's impulse to buy a $30,000 car after a breakup. The conversation shows how to respond with empathy first, ask questions that expose the real problem, and help him sit with pain instead of buying his way out of it.
My son just broke up with his girlfriend, and one of his responses was, he wants to go buy a $30,000 car. He thinks that's going to take him away from the feelings. I told him, why don't you go buy something for $500? Because we know it's not going to last too long. The relief just won't last. And I thought it was pretty. It wasn't a great idea. Pretty dumb idea for him to go buy a $30,000 car. I see around me so many people finding other things to focus on when they feel bad. It just seems to be pervasive. And sure, did he avoid acting out some. But the implications for his life of avoiding what's going on, how do you guide that person to get to it?
It's so hard to enter into a person's world and to really help them see the benefit of tolerating difficult emotions. The intolerance of difficult emotions is a pandemic in our culture. I mean, it is just such a aversive experience. And so the first thing is recognizing that when you're attempting to do that with your sons or anyone, you're doing heart surgery. And it's not as simple as, well, why don't you just feel this for a little while and see if you can handle it? It's much more. It requires incredible gentleness, incredible empathy to be even able to suggest something like, oh, the. This must be really difficult for you to tolerate. Must be really hard for you to experience the rejection or the emptiness, the void of not being in a relationship. Do you think there's any chance that you can tolerate it? Is there any chance that that's okay? So you're sort of starting at square one, recognizing that there's a very good chance they can't.
No doubt that's exactly okay. So he says, I can't. No, I don't want to be there. No, I want to go buy something. In this case, it'll help me feel better.
So then you recognize the first reaction is no. So we try another strategy, which is a form of inquiry, which is, do you really believe that's going to make you feel better for very long?
Do you actually believe that maybe it's worth a chance? I feel miserable. I feel a lot of suffering. And, yeah, maybe it will help.
And have you ever tried that before and did it work before and for how long?
Yeah, I just. Sometimes I. I feel like I'm impotent sometimes. To address these things kind of through even a illogical, let alone a logical. I Mean, part of what I guess I'm asking is, does it make sense to say, okay, here's what I believe is going on. Here's my advice. If you have to learn the hard way, then you're going to have to learn the hard way. I don't believe this will last more than. Maybe it'll last a few weeks, maybe it won't, but there's still you to contend with. There's still the you that's underneath that you haven't addressed. So I get torn between letting life lessons be taught by the experience he wants to have and trying to intervene more assertively. I don't know where to draw that line.
Well, I think what you're saying is really true. I mean, if he can narrow it down to a $500 lesson rather than a $30,000 lesson, obviously it's a benefit. But when it's something that's going to have enormous impact on his life, it's going to be the major purchase for the next two years, then you need to make much more of an effort to try to persevere. If it's a $500 mistake and he can afford it, not such a big deal. My inclination is to operate at two levels. One is perpetual inquiry. One is perpetual kindness and acceptance, where you're trying to reapproach and reapproach with questions to draw on his life experience with qualities that are tender or warm or empathic. And you're really maybe humor, playfulness. And if none of that works, then you're really working with your own helplessness. You're working with your own possible frustration. And the main thing is that your own tone, the own quality of your own heart doesn't move into the more aggressive states of frustration, impatience, agitation, irritability, incredulousness, judgment.
That's exactly right. And that is hard. That is really hard. Because I didn't. In my life, part of the issue is I didn't funnel my defenses that way. So it's very hard for me to identify with buying stuff as a solution. So it is. I do judge it, and I'm ineffective. I'm pushed away. I'm obviously a person that he believes can't understand him, and it becomes very hard for him to even tolerate me commenting on his situation.
So the question is, how much are you really doing? How much am I really doing? How much are you really doing? To look at our own state of being while we're trying to supposedly help someone else, how much are we actually in a state of being where our heart is open. How much are we really, when we're inquiring into common sense for them or good sense for them, how much is the attitude friendly and warm, and how much are we justifying? Well, of course I'm frustrated or agitated because you're doing something stupid. And to the degree that we can keep ourselves in an equilibrium and in a calm state, and to the degree that we're ready to be honest that we feel helpless and we might move a little bit more towards that aggressive attitude if we don't stay alert. And if we reel it back in and we say, you know what? It's natural in every human relationship to feel helpless and to need to be honest about our need to find our heart. And it's that key to recognizing when we start to leave our own heart. And by heart, I mean caring, warmth, empathy versus emotionally reactive. That becomes the key in every exchange. And the moment we start moving more towards the emotional reactivity, we become even more impotent. And in so many human exchanges, the best we can hope for is a mixture of being a bit helpless and finding some degree of what I've called, many have called the higher self or the essential nature, where it has qualities of warmth and tenderness and kindness and still the intelligence to inquire, how can we make the best of this situation?
