This past weekend I found myself considering the economics of emotions. I was listening to Esther Perell's podcast while on the bus. She was speaking with a man who felt overwhelmed by the way his friends confide in him.
He felt burdened by his friends dumping their emotional pain and anxiety on him. He wanted to be able to hand it back to them and then stop accepting it in the first place. Ideally in a way where he could protect his peace without giving up the intimacy that their candor fosters.
I wondered if his friends truly felt unburdened. Are emotions like a sweater, where I have to take it off before someone else can take it on? Can emotions passed within a group of friends balance like a checkbook?
I can think of times when I've taken on other people's emotional burdens without them seeming to have any lighter of a load. I can recall times when people have taken on my emotional burdens in ways that felt like they were making things about themselves, adding to my load. My inner turmoil was hurting them, while their attempts at support didn’t necessarily feel supportive.
In the podcast, it didn't seem like the main issue was that it was hard for the caller to be there with his friends as they went through difficult times. The bigger issue seemed like it might be that he wanted to fix his friends. He wanted them to stop talking about how they felt and make changes to stop feeling that way. I wondered if he belives he knows what his friends should do in order to be happy. It’s so frustrating to see someone struggling when we know the answer to the puzzle. Or at least think we do.
One of the nice things about being a friend, rather than a parent or a caregiver, is that it's not my place to solve other people's problems. This is particularly wonderful in situations where there is no right answer. I don't need to play the role of arbiter, deciding who is at fault and what they need to do in order to make amends. My role is simply to listen, to try to understand what they're sharing with me at that moment.
Sometimes I've felt unburdened when a friend has stepped in to solve my problem. This happens most often when there's something relatively simple for them to do that is either impossible or far more challenging for me to do on my own. Someone offers me a ride to an important appointment. They help with an errand. They lend me a tool.
Mostly, though, having people devise strategies for my life or take charge of things doesn't feel like the support it's meant to be. Maybe it’s my own insecurities, but it often comes off as them not believing I’m capable of making my own choices. Kvetching is not the same as assigning tasks to someone else’s to-do list and absolving myself of responsibility for my own life.
Emotions can be contagious, certainly. I often find myself tearing up when a friend is sharing troubles. This sometimes results in the awkward situation of them wanting to comfort me! As much as I'm moved by someone's situation, it's not my challenge to face. My tears are an expression of my feeling connected to their emotional experience, empathy rather than distress.
Emotions aren't always contagious. Just as often as we mirror people's emotions, we sometimes react in opposition to emotions. We roll our eyes at someone's braggy social media post. We get annoyed at someone's melodramatic way of phrasing things. We get jealous instead of sharing in a moment of joy. Or we simply maintain our own emotional state, regardless of what's going on around us.
In the economics of emotions, we’re rarely exchanging them. Just as we don't imagine sharing in someone's joy takes it away from them, we can unburden someone from difficult emotions without taking those burdens on for ourselves.
Adrienne, founder of The Caregiver Space and an all-around incredible person, is going to be starting a newsletter on journaling. She used to share a lot of things about journaling on The Caregiver Space website. You can take a look at some of my favorite of her old posts (which I imported to Substack) and sign up for the newsletter.
Thanks to those of you who replied with suggestions of who I should talk to about care work in Portugal!
A totally out of context quote from Ragen Chastain I think we all need to hear occasionally:
“As a reminder, health is an amorphous concept, it is not an obligation, barometer of worthiness, or entirely within our control.”
McKnights Home Care has a report on unpaid family members providing hospital level care at home. They're hardly an unbiased source, but the stories they tell will be familiar to many of us:
“Our data show that most caregivers initially want to opt for hospital-at-home, but some changed their minds when asked more questions about the care requirement they would assume. After surveying New Yorkers, our research shows that 56% of caregivers would agree to take a loved one home who had a serious illness instead of admitting them to a skilled nursing facility. But when asked a follow-up question about whether the caregiver was comfortable with managing medications, helping with mobility or other care requirements, 20% of caregivers changed their answer. This “change of heart” does not make caregivers bad people; it makes them honest.”
They recommend a checklist for medical providers to ensure the caregiver is willing and able to provide hospital level care at home before the patient is discharged into their care. It says a lot about a healthcare system when this is a revolutionary new idea!