How We Respond to Others' Pain
The mistakes most people make, and how we can do better for those we love.
David Brooks’ most recent book, How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen, recounts how his oldest and dearest friend, Peter Marks, struggled mightily with a debilitating depression. Prior to the onset of the depression, the friendship between Brooks and Marks had been about joyful connection and the gamification of all things.
Brooks knew he needed to adjust his views of his friend, as well as his approach to the friendship. And he did. He did his best to be there for Marks in all the ways he could think of. But Marks ultimately and tragically ended his life in 2022. Since that time, Brooks has dedicated himself to reflecting on how to respond to a loved one who is in pain. He has reflected on the mistakes so many people, including Brooks, himself, make.
Among Brooks’ many insights is that most people have a loving impulse to try to alleviate the pain of others. This is most particularly true in our closest relationships. Care inspires empathy. We see and even feel some piece of the pain and it hurts us, too. We long to reduce their—and our—pain any way we can. In response to Marks’ depression, Brooks attempted to “positively reframe” the pain, reminding his friend of his blessings and trying to cheer him up, and suggesting activities he knew had previously brought meaning and joy to his friend’s life.
Brooks now wishes he had handled it differently.
When people we love are hurting, we might find ourselves diminishing them when we intend to illuminate them.
The central framework of Brooks’ book is simple: there are two ways that people approach knowing others deeply: by being illuminators or by being diminishers.
As Brooks writes:
Diminishers make people feel small and unseen. They see other people as things to be used, not as persons to be befriended. They stereotype and ignore. They are so involved with themselves that other people are just not on their radar screen.
Illuminators do the opposite. According to Brooks:
They shine the brightness of their care on people and make them feel bigger, deeper, respected, lit up.
This tidy theoretical distinction is, of course, less tidy in the messiness of real life. In fact, most people don’t actually fall into a single, exclusive category. Instead, most of us have the capacity to be diminishers, and most have the potential to be illuminators. Troublingly, people are often at high risk for being diminishers when it matters most to be an illuminator.
Psychologists have a name for the impulse to alleviate other’s pain. It’s something psychologists call the “righting reflex.” This term comes from a treatment1 developed for patients struggling with substance use. Historically, treating people with substance use placed the provider in the role of telling the client what to do. But as vats of social science reveal—some of it rather funny2—someone telling you what to think, feel, or do tends to inspire resistance, not change.
As we try to alleviate others’ pain, we often fail to see how our efforts cause some assortment of our loved one feeling:
Controlled: Don’t tell me what to do!
Misunderstood: I’m not an idiot, if that would have worked for me I would have done it already.
Alone: You don’t get it, and now I feel more alone than before I tried to share what I’ve been going through.
Invalidated: You just discounted/dismissed my entire experience.
Our righting reflex, though coming from a sincere and well-intentioned place, diminishes rather than illuminates the people we love.
So what can we do instead? How do we position ourselves in deeply knowing other people and showing them how much we care?
Don’t attempt to solve the pain. Instead, connect inside it.
As Brooks writes, “Since Pete’s death, I’ve learned about the power of just staying present.” He goes on:
If I’m ever in a similar situation again, I’ll understand that you don’t have to try to coax somebody out of depression. It’s enough to show that you have some understanding of what they are enduring. It’s enough to create an atmosphere in which they can share their experience. It’s enough to offer them the comfort of being seen.
It can feel counterintuitive, but when those we love are in deep emotional pain, the best thing we might offer isn’t efforts to rid their pain. As the American journalist, H.L. Mencken said, “For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.” So don’t offer simple fixes or trite reframes. Instead, connect with your loved one. Acknowledge that a fix is hard to find and that is a painful thing to contend with. And then sit alongside them holding their hand, metaphorically or literally, through whatever they are going through.
Simple loving presence in the face of debilitating emotional or physical pain may seem paltry, maybe even insulting. Yet experimental research shows the power of presence during painful experiences—even if your support doesn’t do a darn thing to change the nature of the painful experience.
For instance, people perceive challenges as less challenging when they feel supported. As one study out of the University of Virginia showed, participants asked to estimate the steepness of a hill perceived the hill as steeper when alone than when accompanied by a friend. In a second phase of this study, participants who imagined a supportive friend saw that hill as less steep than those who imagined a neutral person, or a person they felt was a negative support.
Our pain literally feels less painful when we are connected to someone who cares about us. In one study, researchers tested the effect of verbal support, neutral support, or being alone during pain induction3. Those who received verbal support, even when that support didn’t functionally change the pain they were experiencing, showed lower blood pressure, heart rate, stress hormone reactivity, and reported less pain and difficulty doing the task compared to participants in the other conditions.
If your arm hurts, but you know someone you love is by your side, it changes the nature of your experience of the pain. Studies show that hand-holding during pain administration acts like an analgesic. Social support reduces our experience of pain, even when our actual conditions don’t change.
So refrain from trying to bright-side or problem-solve your family member, your friend, or your partner’s pain. Connect with them instead. Let them know that you care, that you have their back. Let them know you see them.
1 The treatment that first coined the phrase “the righting reflex” is called motivational interviewing and it has a huge scientific literature backing its effectiveness. Recently a colleague of mine, Michelle Drapkin, came out with a terrific self-help version of it that I highly recommend called The Motivational Interviewing Path to Personal Change.
2 This review of research about the tendency to not want to do what other people tell us to do has my favorite title of all time: A 50-year review of psy view of psychological reactance theory: Do not read this article.
3 Scientists have all sorts of evil ways to induce pain in laboratory settings. Sometimes they make people do public presentations in front of critical evaluators (called the Trier Social Stress Test), they shock people, and in the case of the study cited here, they have people submerge their hands in ice cold water. Who says scientists aren’t fun?
This is so true. My present circumstances have some big challenges, and I have noticed that I absolutely prefer the company of people who just listen to me and care about me, vs the people who constantly suggest ways to make it “better.”