Reply to S/O: Does talking about negative emotions help you?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Interesting. Reading about judgment, empathy, etc. -- You'll have to trust me when I tell you that I'm very non-judgmental about how people live their lives. If it brings you joy and doesn't harm others, have at it!

But, I think maybe I am judgmental about people's emotional reactions to things. If you spill milk; well, accidents happen. No worries. If you cry over spilled milk and you're older than 10 years old, I'm really going to struggle to regard the weeping as a valid emotional reaction. [/quote]

Then you are judgmental.

Also, you never know when someone has a big emotional reaction what it's actually about. If someone is crying over spilled milk, my initial reaction is "something else must be going on." So instead of openly judging them for crying, I help them clean up the milk and tell them it's okay, everyone has those days. Maybe their marriage is falling apart. Maybe their kid is struggling at school and they don't know how to help them. Maybe they were abused as a child and the spilled milk reminded them of times when their parents hit them for spilling milk. Maybe they have been trying to get pregnant for 5 years and just lost another pregnancy. Maybe they have chronic depression. Maybe they have very low self-esteem and spilling milk made them think "damn it I can't do anything right."

If your response to other people's negative emotions is "get over it," then yes, you are highly judgmental and should learn to be more accepting of other people's feelings. You don't have to share their feelings and you don't even have to get in there and empathize or validate. But the very least you could do is not respond to their emotions by acting like they shouldn't have them at all. You simply do not know enough about other people's lives to make that call, and it's not up to you to decide when people get to cry or not.[/quote]

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