I’m someone who operates in both modes on the receiving end, so I think I can answer some of this.
I’m going to come at it from a slightly different angle, but I think the spirit will get there.
Sometimes, I’ve been working on troubleshooting my PC for hours already. I’m tired. I’m angry because I’ve spent all that mental capital, etc., so I come to friends to rant a little bit.
And then they start offering solutions. Solutions I’ve definitely already tried. Solutions that don’t work for a multitude of reasons that I’m not expressing because, again, I already spent hours on this. But they keep blasting me with troubleshooting tips and “have you tried this yet?” and “what’s the text say in this folder?”
But I’m already at my wits end, and now they’re wanting me to keep pushing, to do more labor to solve the problem. A problem I don’t want solved. I just want someone to hear my struggle and go “that sucks man, let’s have a beer”.
For me, sometimes it’s “I’m out of spoons”, sometimes it’s “I just want someone to see *my* struggle, too”. Sometimes I want to be validated for my current plight.
And when I’m reached with solutions and/or explaining, at the wrong time, sometimes that can be very invalidating.
In circumstances like this, when I’m on the end where I want to be the fixer or the explainer, I’ll even ask, “do you want fixer me? Or just company?”
You don’t have to lie and say XYZ are bad for that; but you can instead say something like “oh yeah that sucks when you’re already doing all this elsewhere”. Because it does suck. Even if it has a logical reason, it does suck.
Edit: Okay, I want to add a bit more. When someone is stressed or exhausted to a high enough degree, they literally cannot range in new information, no matter how well-meaning. So sometimes the commiseration and/or presence without offering solutions is just one of many steps to help them relax enough that they can even *hear* the new thought or suggestion. As well-meaning as advice or a reality check can be in those situations, until the stress is reduced, it’s literally falling on deaf ears.
When I find myself feeling like that, a good reframe I like using is to turn those comments into commiseration; “What about trying A?” — “Yeah it’s f*ked aye, I tried A, B and C and it STILL didn’t work!”.
I usually ask people straight at that point whether they want solutions for me or if they just want me to listen with empathically. Depends on the person how I bring this though, but it tends to work.
I mean, I understand what you're saying. I guess the main way I can explain it isn't in any idealized case, but in the transitional case.
I completely agree that people might not be looking for a solution in a discussion. My point is that transitioning from a place where there are plenty of people, having plenty of discussions, and ideas flow freely back and forth is normal and welcome. And then moving to a place where people have plenty of discussions, but more often than not, ideas flowing back and forth are treated with outright hostility...
I mean, for me, it was very obviously a completely jarring transition. It's not that there are times when solutions aren't welcome. It's that the vast majority of the time, with the vast majority of people, alternative paradigms aren't welcome.
I suppose I’ve found myself lucky when many* people are open to new and even contradictory ideas, one on one**, and when they feel respected and calm.
* but definitely not all
** because there’s no more ego, status nor hierarchy to defend.
Why can't it be the other way around, you don't know that I am out of spoons too and rather than talk about why I am out spoons I should not be expected to validate other people's vibes or spoonfeed them... And so forth.
As an exhausted person the issue is not being given advice. It is being given wrong, ignorant, or inappropriate advice.
How does someone know what is wrong, ignorant, inappropriate advice without first finding out from you, through communication, what kind of state you’re in and what you’ve already tried.
And if the “listener” / fixer is in a state where they can’t do the work of finding out what kind of help and/or fixing is needed, then maybe *they* need to step back and have a break, too.
In my experience, fixers tend to completely miss the cues of “please stop word-vomitting at me, you’re not helping” and continue offering unsolicited suggestions. And then it’s my job, as the person that was talked at, to make them feel better, *further* exhausting my current state.
The solution to both of our problems is to ask and listen and hear. And then move forward. It’s true, we both exist. (Though I would argue that sometimes “bad advice” is just “advice I already tried, or that doesn’t work, but you don’t know that because you didn’t ask”).
And the solution to both is setting ground rules about what each person in the conversation can give and is expected to give.
If a fixer can’t empathize for a bit, and that’s what the other person needs, they should be allowed to step out of the conversation, too.
Context, as always, is basically everything.
Well that's the basis of rationalism. Many important truths don't depend on the details of someone's state or someone's life history. To require it is to commit an ad hominem and destroys rationalism.
For example whether to drink alcohol is entirely unsafe at any level, according to the WHO. Expressing this as common knowledge is a counterexample of the popular heuristic to "listen to people's context".
Communicative empathy is still a heuristic, it is not an absolute rule. There are times when the message really is more important than how it is being conveyed. And actually people who run out of spoons know that all too well.