Here it is if anyone wants to try it.

The set-up:

1) Assemble a group – we did it with 6 people, which I think is a good number for this. I recommend giving them a sense of what they are going to be getting themselves into before they agree to participate just to make sure the group is on board with the activities. It likely could still work well with 3 to 8 people.

It could also be done with more people divided into groups that compete with the other groups, with each group trying to be the first to achieve the goal. For instance, you could have 18 people divided into three teams of 6 people, with each group competing to be the first team to get the targeted number of points. Alternatively, you could have a fixed amount of time, and whichever group gets the most points in that amount of time wins.

2) Each participant will be working with their group (all members of that group are on the same team) to complete a series of challenges (here’s an example of a challenge sheet). There are a lot of challenges to choose from, and each challenge earns points for your team (based on the challenge’s difficulty).

3) Make sure everyone gets their own copy of the challenge sheet. I recommend printing copies of the sheet out (digital copies could work, but I don’t recommend using digital copies). If you’re using paper copies, be sure to give each person in the group a pen or pencil.

4) Make sure to also read the list of rules (below) to everyone in the group and give them a chance to ask questions if they are confused about any of the rules.

5) As a group, set a time limit and a goal and fill those in at the top of the sheet. You’ll all be working together to achieve this goal as a team. We set the goal of 73 points, and we had 3 hours before one of our team members had to leave. In the end, this was perfect as we got 74 points in 2h50m. So I think 73 points in 3 hours is a pretty reasonable (but still pretty challenging) goal. You may want to set a small (silly) group punishment for failing and a small (fun) reward if you all succeed, which is agreed on in advance.

6) Create a shared group chat for participants (e.g., via WhatsApp) and encourage the group to take photos during the event and post them in the shared group at the end (once the event is over).

7) Everyone playing should follow these rules (be sure to read them aloud to the participants and give everyone a chance to ask questions). Also, be sure to explain the goal, e.g., “for the group to get ____ points by ____ O’clock,” or “to be the group with the most points within the next ____ hours,” or whatever you decide. And it’s also best if you print out one copy of these rules for each group (in case they forget any).

The rules:

i) The goal is for your group to get as many points as you can by working together to complete the items on the list. Every time your group completes an item, it should be circled (each item can only be completed once by your group).

ii) You can only get points from each stranger (or group of strangers) once. So if you get someone to interact in a way that gets points from one of the items on the list, that same stranger can’t get you points from any other item (with the exception of the item for someone joining your team, in which case they would then be just a normal team member).

iii) Similarly, you can’t use the same activity to get points twice. For instance, if you could take the same action twice to get points from two items on the sheet, it would only count for one. And, of course, each challenge can only be completed for points a single time.

iv) Always act kindly and respectfully toward strangers and prioritize not making other people uncomfortable.

v) Don’t break the law, and don’t put anyone in your group in physical danger.

vi) Don’t tell people you interact with that you are doing a scavenger hunt (unless the task specifically says to tell them). Telling them you’re doing a scavenger hunt makes it too easy.

vii) You can do the challenge items in any order, and you don’t need to get them all to win (your score will be the sum of the point values for the items that your group completed). When you complete an item, circle the number of points for that item in the “Points for completing” column to indicate you’ve completed it (and earned those points). The more difficult items award more points.

Here’s a link to the challenge sheet we used.

This piece was first written on July 28, 2024, and first appeared on my website on September 26, 2024.

Gaslighting, where someone causes another person to doubt their sanity or senses, can cause psychological damage.

There’s an opposite thing, though, that can also be damaging. As far as I know, it has no name. I call it “lightgassing” (or “light gassing”). Here, I explain how lightgassing works.

Lightgassing is when one person agrees with or validates another person’s false beliefs or misconceptions in order to be supportive. 

Unlike gaslighting, a tactic of jerks and abusers, lightgassing is an (unintentionally harmful) tactic of friends and supporters.

Here are common examples I’ve seen that are sometimes, but obviously not always, lightgassing:

• “Since they did X, they don’t deserve to be with you.”

• “It was reasonable for you to do Y because they made you feel bad.”

• “You did nothing wrong. It was 100% their fault.”

Ideally, when you’re upset, friends should validate your feelings and help you feel heard and understood, but they should do so without agreeing with statements they themselves know to be false.

We do a disservice to people when we encourage their false beliefs. Most people have a value of truth-telling (and knowing the truth), and by avoiding lightgassing, we stay truer to these values.

But how does one listen with openness and empathy to an upset friend and still validate *feelings*, without validating *false beliefs*? This can be a tricky maneuver, which I think is one reason people feel tempted to lightgas.

If you want to avoid lightgassing, the key is to validate those elements of a person’s *beliefs* that you know to be true while empathizing with them and validating that their *emotions* are understandable and okay to feel. But the key is to do this without reinforcing beliefs in false things.

I think it’s usually not helpful to challenge what another person believes is true right in the heat of emotion when that person is sad or upset. So avoiding lightgassing will often initially involve simply not validating/agreeing with what you believe is false. Later, when the person is feeling better, if they ask for your opinion on the facts (or you feel it’s important for them to hear your opinion), you can tell them what you believe to be true at that point.

A caveat that I think is worth mentioning is that sometimes, the only thing we know about a situation is what our upset friend or loved one has told us. In such cases, I think we should start with the assumption that what they have described is an accurate representation of what they experienced (unless any reason to doubt it emerges).

Lightgassing (or light gassing) typically happens in ordinary situations where someone feels hurt or upset. But it can also happen in more extreme situations, such as when you’re trying to help someone who is feeling upset due to severe delusions caused by psychosis. 

In the case of someone with psychosis, the path of least resistance is to lightgas them by agreeing with their delusions, but this is not in their own interest. On the other hand, if you invalidate their emotions, you will likely make them more upset and may lose their trust. The tightrope to walk is to help them feel cared about, listened to, empathized with, and understood, without saying that their delusions are reality. In other words, to avoid lightgassing them while also not causing them to feel gaslit.

Does lightgassing really deserve its own term? Why not just call it “enabling”? Well, lightgassing can be a type of enabling, similar to how gaslighting is typically a form of manipulation. But lightgassing is much more specific than enabling, and enabling can include lots of things that are not lightgassing (e.g., buying an alcoholic some alcohol is a form of enabling but not lightgassing). Having a more specific term (lightgassing) makes it easier to spot and communicate about this specific pattern of behavior.

This piece was first written on October 1, 2023, and first appeared on my website on May 13, 2024.

Healthy vs. Unhealthy Emotional Validation 

I would say that the main difference between the healthy validation of emotions and the unhealthy version is that the healthy version is based on genuine compassion, caring, authenticity, honesty, and interest in the other person’s experience, whereas the unhealthy version involves a willingness to sacrifice those things in an attempt to make the other person immediately feel good.

At a more detailed level, I think the healthy way to validate other people’s feelings involves expressing the following ideas (but ONLY when these ideas are true).

Healthy Emotional Validation

1) Care: I care about you.

2) Willingness: I’m totally okay with you feeling this emotion right now in front of me.

3) Acceptance: I don’t think badly of you for feeling what you’re feeling.

4) Interest: I am interested in learning more about what you are feeling and why you are feeling it.

5) Compassion: I have compassion and/or empathy for your suffering and want you not to suffer (unless you want to suffer right now, in which case I want you to suffer only insofar and in the ways that seem appropriate to you, such as the suffering that most people feel is right to feel after the loss of a loved one).

6) Understanding of facts: I understand the facts of what happened in this situation (and if I don’t, I’m going to ask open-ended questions in an effort to understand it).

7) Understanding of feelings: I understand why you’re feeling this way (and if I don’t, I’m going to make an effort to understand it).

8) Legitimization of feelings: I think it is totally reasonable that this combination of your situation, your beliefs about this situation, your thoughts, and your past experiences causes you to feel this way right now (and if I don’t see how the combination of your situation, beliefs, etc., lead to your emotion, I’m going to make an effort to understand it).

While some of this is helpful to say aloud when a friend or loved one is upset, much of it will typically be expressed through body language, attention, attitude, presence, tone of voice, and so on. The main thing is that these ideas get expressed in a way that the other person receives them, whether that expression is verbal or non-verbal, explicit or implicit.

On the other hand, I think that it’s usually unhealthy to attempt to validate emotions when it’s done expressing the following ideas.

Unhealthy Emotional Validation 

1) Disingenuousness: you say things that you don’t really mean or believe, such as supporting their claims about what happened when you don’t believe those claims are true.

2) Emotional reasoning: you support the idea that whatever their emotional response is to the situation is a perfect guide to what actually occurred (e.g., if they feel angry at someone, that implies the other person must have done something objectively harmful, or if they feel they’ve lost someone they had a fight with, that means that person is gone forever).

3) Justification: you support or encourage harmful or self-destructive actions they took or are considering taking as a consequence of their negative feelings (e.g., normalizing them taking revenge on the person they are angry about or justifying why it is okay that they did so).

4) Absolving: you encourage the idea that they made no mistakes or behaved perfectly or that someone else is 100% to blame for the situation (unless, of course, you really believe this to be true). On this point, it is often the case that victims of crimes did nothing at all wrong, but this is much less commonly the case when it comes to, for instance, interpersonal conflict between romantic partners, which usually involves both parties having behaved imperfectly, though not necessarily to the same degree.

To recap, people often want emotional validation from their friends and loved ones when they are feeling upset. People are often confused, though, about what this means exactly. There are both healthy ways and unhealthy ways to do emotional validation. 

The healthy version is not always easy to do, but I think it is what we should aspire to when a friend or loved one wants emotional validation. 

To do the healthy version, aim to imbue your responses to their emotions with genuine compassion, caring, authenticity, honesty, and interest in their experiences. And avoid sacrificing those things just to make the other person feel good.

This piece was first written on October 1, 2023, and first appeared on this site on October 11, 2023.

It has been estimated that over 70% of adults in the world have experienced at least one traumatic event in their lifetime. Consequently, the majority of friendships and relationships will involve at least one person who has experienced trauma.

This article investigates how one person’s trauma can “clash” with another person’s trauma to cause relationship breakdown and what you can do to resolve conflicts like this if you experience them yourself. You might find it helpful to read if you…

• have some trauma in your past that sometimes gets triggered by other people’s behavior;
• find that your friends or romantic partners sometimes suddenly hurt you for inexplicable reasons;
• struggle to understand other people’s hostile reactions to actions you take;
• want a new model that might help you understand conflict with people close to you.

Let’s look at some specific examples of what we mean by Clashing Trauma: 

1. Trauma from anger and abuse 

Bob is sensitive to teasing because of a physically and emotionally abusive ex that used to tease him incessantly. Anne lightly teases him in what she thinks is a playful way, and he blows up in anger. Anne is sensitive to anger due to trauma in her childhood. She stops replying to Bob’s messages, which makes Bob even angrier. 

2. Trauma from abandonment and unwanted sexual advances 

Bob is physically affectionate with his close friend Anne. It starts to freak Anne out – when male friends have acted this way in the past, they have usually tried to initiate a sexual relationship with her in a way that she found traumatic. To prevent this, Anne stops being warm to Bob. Bob, however, regards Anne as a dear and platonic friend. Because Bob had a traumatic experience of abandonment in the past, he finds Anne’s sudden coldness very upsetting. The fear of abandonment causes Bob to be more affectionate toward Anne as he tries harder to reconnect. This triggers Anne further, causing her to withdraw even more, leading to Bob feeling even more hurt and confused. 

3. Trauma from substance abuse 

Anne has a history of alcoholism that Bob doesn’t know about. Years ago, she resolved to stop drinking when she realized she was becoming like her parents, whose drinking would often lead to physical fights that she found distressing. Bob drinks around her and encourages her to drink, which makes her angry. Bob has protected himself from people’s anger in the past using humor, so he tries to downplay Anne’s reaction by joking around and making light of the situation. Anne finds herself even more triggered and upset by Bob’s behavior – she wants her anger to be taken seriously because alcoholism was a huge challenge in her past.

In all three examples above, one person’s reaction to their trauma being triggered in turn triggers the other person’s trauma response. Clashing Trauma is an example of a broader pattern of Clashing Reactions, where one person’s reaction to an action that upsets them triggers the other person to become upset or angry, which in turn intensifies the first person’s negative emotions, and so on. We’ve noticed that a surprisingly high proportion of fights between people who care a lot about each other fit this basic pattern. The cases of Clashing Reactions on which this essay is focused involve reactions that have their foundations in trauma, but be mindful that trauma doesn’t have to be at the root for similar patterns to occur.

What is trauma?

Trauma refers to enduring changes in your emotional reactions or self-protective behaviors that are the result of painful or frightening incidents in your past. Examples of trauma that people are usually familiar with include experiences with war, abuse, or sexual assault. For example:

• A soldier who was shot at in combat may find that loud noises that sound like gunshots cause her to panic, even in completely safe environments.
• A man who was sexually assaulted by someone with an English accent may feel anxious around people with those same accents.

But it is important to remember that trauma occurs on a spectrum; many people have emotional reactions to reminders of upsetting experiences in their past, even when those experiences were not life-threatening or severely upsetting. For instance:

• Someone who received bad news over the phone may experience a sense of dread and anxiety when they receive a call from an unknown number.
• Someone who was teased by a school teacher for stuttering during a class presentation may find that they get nervous when asked to speak in front of people.

Trauma is the result of a mechanism your brain uses to protect you. This mechanism is often helpful – by sensitizing you to patterns that are similar to ones where you were hurt or frightened in the past, your brain tries to protect you from getting hurt again. Unfortunately, this protective mechanism sometimes goes too far, leading to reactions that can seriously impact people’s welfare (at which point we call it “trauma”).

The soldier, who is now in essentially no danger of getting shot, may have recurring panic attacks that reduce her quality of life and avoid places she used to love just because there are loud noises there. Trauma can manifest in relationships, too; many people are hurt by those close to them (unintentionally or not), and this can make us extra vigilant about avoiding similar painful experiences in the future.

What is going on when people’s trauma clashes?

Here is what we think is going on in situations where friendships or relationships break down due to Clashing Trauma:

1. Anne takes an action that seems normal and reasonable to her. Anne doesn’t know it, but her close friend (or partner) Bob is sensitive to this kind of action due to trauma in his past. Consequently, Bob experiences intense negative emotions as a result of her action.

2. Bob instinctively tries to protect himself from this negative emotion using whatever approaches seemed to help him during past traumatic events (e.g., by avoiding Anne, yelling at her, getting very distraught, or trying to control her behavior). But he doesn’t explain clearly to Anne what is happening. Anne is caught off guard by Bob’s reaction—she doesn’t understand why he’s behaving this way. Even worse, due to trauma in her own past, she gets triggered by Bob’s reaction and starts experiencing intense negative emotions of her own.

3. Anne now acts instinctively to try to protect herself from the way that Bob is making her feel (e.g., by lashing back out at him, avoiding him, shutting down, or trying to control him). This reaction results in Bob feeling even more upset, causing him to intensify his self-protective behavior.

You can now see how Clashing Trauma works:

• From Bob’s perspective, Anne suddenly did something that triggered his trauma, and when he tried to protect himself, she doubled down and hurt him more.
• From Anne’s perspective, Bob suddenly started acting in a strange and hurtful manner, and when she acted to protect herself, he hurt her even further.
• From the outside view, it’s clear that neither person intended to hurt the other, yet both feel hurt, and the relationship suffers.

Incidentally, if you think that you might be Anne or Bob, you’re not alone. When we shared a draft of this article, one friend of the author reached out asking if Anne represented them, and another reached out asking if they were Bob. But the post wasn’t actually about either of them! We are trying to describe a general pattern that we’ve observed many times. Or, put another way: if you think you are Anne or Bob, then this post may well apply to you, but it’s also about lots of other people as well.

How can you prevent Clashing Trauma?

Strategy 1: Prevention

The best way to prevent this pattern of conflict is to discuss in advance with trusted friends and romantic partners what triggers you each have, how to avoid these triggers, and what the best actions to take are if you trigger each other by accident.

For instance, Bob could have told Anne in advance that he can feel very attacked when someone is critical of him and that he tends to lash out in anger as a defense mechanism. Then Bob and Anne can work together to plan how Anne can give Bob feedback in ways that won’t trigger him.

Strategy 2: Interception

Barring Prevention, upon being triggered the first time, Bob would ideally wait until he’s calm and then tell Anne (without blaming her) that her action triggered negative emotions for him, explaining what the trigger was and how to avoid it. (See our post on non-violent communication for advice on how to communicate this kind of thing without making the other person feel bad.)

Then, Anne, caring about Bob, would ideally apologize for inadvertently hurting him and commit to trying to avoid those triggering actions in the future. But behaviors can take time to alter—Anne should set realistic expectations about how quickly she can make that change.

Interception is hard, but appreciating the negative consequences of unresolved Clashing Trauma might help motivate you to implement this strategy.

Strategy 3: Repair

If it’s too late for Interception, try Repair: once Anne is hurt by Bob’s response to her behavior, Anne could wait until she feels calm and then initiate a conversation with Bob.

During the conversation, she could explain how Bob’s behavior seemed (to her) to suddenly and mysteriously change and how this had hurt her, while expressing interest in hearing Bob’s experience of the situation. She would try to genuinely understand Bob’s experience (non-violent communication could also be a helpful way to employ this strategy).

Bob could then explain what he experienced in the situation and what made him react that way towards Anne. They could each commit to new behaviors to reduce the chance they trigger each other in the future.

Understanding trauma

Each of the Prevention, Interception, and Repair strategies involve Anne or Bob explaining their triggers (and/or the trauma that underlies them) to each other. These strategies will therefore be harder to implement if you don’t understand your own trauma or what can trigger it. One way to build an understanding of your trauma and triggers is to discuss it with a trained therapist or trusted friend (or partner). Conveniently, this is a great segue into setting up Prevention strategies with a trusted friend or partner so that you can avoid triggering each other!

Did you find this model of relationship breakdown helpful?

The next time you feel suddenly and unexpectedly hurt by a close friend or romantic partner, it may be worth asking yourself – could this be an instance of Clashing Trauma? Or, more generally, could it be a case of Clashing Reactions? In either case, consider the strategies of (1) Prevention, (2) Interception, and (3) Repair. A lot of great friendships and romantic relationships end for preventable reasons. We hope you can use these strategies to stay close to the people that you love.

This essay was first written on April 17, 2022, was turned into an article on Clearer Thinking (coauthored with Holly Muir) on May 5, 2022, and first appeared on this site on May 6, 2022.

Since punishment reduces certain behaviors, it’s important to consider whether we actually want to reduce the behavior we’re punishing. It’s critical that we not punish behaviors that we actually want others to do or that are generally healthy or good for others to be doing.

The micro-punishments we mete out shape the behavior of those around us and can have a substantial impact on other people and our relationships with them long term.

Punishing the important people in your life can be even worse than I’ve made it sound, though, because while it usually punishes some specific behavior (which may or may not be desirable), it almost always also punishes them for being around you, at least to a small extent. In other words, if you punish a lot, you are training people to avoid you.

One important detail regarding reward and punishment is that, typically, what’s most strongly rewarded/punished is what’s happening at the present moment. So, if when your roommate comes into your room to say “hi,” you annoyedly ask them to do chores that they’d forgotten, the primary thing you are punishing is them coming in to say “hi.” You’re only secondarily punishing their failure to do the chores.

Consider these common sources of punishment that may have unintended negative consequences:

1. Aggressively pointing out flaws or logical leaps in other people’s comments. Others may become less likely to make logical leaps around you, but they may also become less inclined to bring up ideas with you in general.

2. Becoming non-responsive each time your partner brings up an important problem in your relationship. Your partner may learn to stop trying to fix the problem.

3. good-naturedly teasing a friend about something embarrassing or personal they just told you. You might be training them not to tell you personal things.

4. Nagging your child when she calls. She might learn to call you less.

5. Giving only critical feedback when a colleague shows you their work. They may eventually stop showing you their work.

6. Giving a disgusted facial reaction when friends express opinions you don’t agree with. Your friends learn not to express opinions around you.

7. Sounding angry when discussing politics. You may be training people to avoid the subject.

8. Sounding defensive when you’re given constructive criticism that’s intended to help you. You might be teaching the people around you not to try to help you improve.

The flip side of punishment is the reward. What are you rewarding the people in your life for? Are you rewarding them enough when they do behaviors that you appreciate? You are also shaping behavior with each micro-reward you give.

Consider these ways you can reward the people around you to increase positive behaviors:

1. Noticing when friends make interesting or well-reasoned points and giving compliments accordingly. Your friends may become increasingly enthusiastic about discussing ideas with you.

2. Being highly receptive and responsive when your partner brings up a problem in your relationship. They may be more motivated to fix problems that come up rather than letting the problems fester.

3. Listening to your friend with interest, kindness, and understanding when they tell you a personal thing. They might learn to open up to you more often.

4. Responding with great enthusiasm when your child calls. Your child might start calling more often.

5. Pointing out what’s right and well done about the work your colleagues have done. They may increase the rate at which they do these things the right way.

6. Channeling and really experiencing your warm feelings for a person while you’re talking to them. They find themselves wanting to spend more time with you because they feel liked around you.

7. Being excited and engaged when someone brings up a political topic that you really enjoy discussing. People may learn to bring that topic up with you more in the future.

8. Being grateful when you’re given constructive criticism that’s intended to help you. You’ll be teaching people that you want their help to become better.

—

The excellent book “Don’t Shoot the Dog” (http://amzn.to/2fKCup7) by Karen Pryor got me thinking about this topic of interpersonal reward and punishment for the first time (when I read it many years ago). It’s about how Operant Conditioning (basically, the scientific theory of reward and punishment, as typically used in animal training) works and how to apply it in your life.

TIME

– Stay in touch: if one of your closest friends doesn’t live nearby, try to either plan visits or video calls or both; otherwise, a long time can go by without interacting

– Hangout in groups: when strapped for time, try to schedule group events to see more of your friends more often (i.e., when you don’t have enough time to schedule one on one hangouts with everyone); that way, you don’t have too much time elapse before seeing friends

– Hangout alone: hang out one on one with your close friends at least some of the time (don’t get in the habit of only hanging out in groups, as it doesn’t usually facilitate the same depth of connection)

– Plan retreats: plan trips with your friends where you spend a couple of days straight (or more) together

– Create a community: introduce your closest friends to each other on multiple occasions (e.g., by inviting them out together or by hosting dinners or events) so that some of them become friends too, and ideally, so that you all find yourselves hanging out together

– Befriend their partners: take the time to really get to know their long term romantic partners, and make an effort to forge connections with them too

THOUGHTFULNESS

– Share nice thoughts: if you happen to think something nice about your friend at a random moment, text the nice thing to them

– Give compliments: at least occasionally tell your friends what you think is awesome about them (in detail if you can); they’ll likely really appreciate hearing it

– Express caring: at least occasionally tell your closest friends that you really care about them, in whatever way they would be most receptive to hearing it

– Give surprise presents: if you see something small at a store that you think a friend would love, buy it for them and surprise them with it

– Send cool stuff: if you see a cool thing online that you think your friend would love, send it to them

– Remember occasions: remember your friends’ birthdays and other important life events (e.g., put it as an event in your calendar to help you remember) and call them or write them a note when these events occur

– Reschedule quickly: if you have to cancel plans with a friend, then immediately reschedule the plan (rather than leaving them hanging open) and try to let your friend know about the cancelation with as much notice as possible (also: try not to cancel frequently)

– Remember on trips: when you go traveling, send your friends photos during or after

– Apologize: if you are irritable with a friend when he or she didn’t deserve it, or you did something unfair to a friend, admit it immediately and apologize; accepting full responsibility

– Explain how you work: if you have personal quirks or triggers that people who are close to you can benefit from knowing about, tell your close friends so that they can better model you and so that they know how to make you happier

– Forgive one-off mistakes: if a friend makes a mistake that you think they are unlikely to ever make again, just forgive them immediately

– Explain desired behavior: if a friend makes a mistake or does a thing that bothers you, and you think they might end up doing the thing again, tell them how the thing made you feel and how you would prefer they act in future situations like that one, then forgive them

– Avoid excessive negativity: try not to be TOO negative TOO often when the same friend is around, as it can inadvertently be a form of punishment for spending time together, which is not good for either of you

– Explain what you need: don’t assume your friends can read your mind about what you need or want; tell them if you need or want something

SUPPORT

– Reach out when they need it: if you know a friend is going through a hard time, reach out to them periodically (so they know you are there for them) rather than assuming they will reach out to you if they want your help

– Reach out when you need help: contact your friends when you need help with a difficult problem or need emotional support from them, don’t assume they will automatically know when you need their help

– Varied Support: if you are in a period where you’re frequently needing emotional support, try to spread that needed support among multiple friends if you can arrange things so that one doesn’t end up bearing all the weight of it

– Support the way they want: if a friend is telling you about a problem they are having, try to figure out if they desire empathy, validation, optimism, or problem-solving, and give them whichever of these they actually came to you for (rather than what YOU would want to be given in that situation)

– Delay judgment: if your friend does something that you have a judgmental reaction to, try to delay that reaction and take the time to ask questions to understand WHY your friend did that thing (the more you can relate to their reasons, the less judgmental you are likely to be)

– Express concern: gently express concern when your friend tells you about something they are doing that seems like it could be harmful or self-destructive (since encouraging harmful behavior is a harmful form of support, and harsh judgment is usually not helpful and may cause your friend not to tell you about those sorts of things in the future)

Note: I highly recommend that you don’t just read this list of steps, but instead, that you actually do them! Reading these steps will not give you any benefit, but doing them might!

Step 1 – Think for a moment about the person who is the best influence on you, or the person in your life you don’t see that much that you most admire the traits or actions of.

Step 2 – Visualize something great this person did or said, or think of a trait of theirs you admire.

Step 3 – Ask yourself: are you sure you don’t want to make an effort to spend more time with this person than you do now? Consider sending them a message now to make plans to see them.

Step 4 – Think for a moment about the person who is the worst influence on you, or the person in your life that you see regularly whose actions or personality you least respect.

Step 5 – Visualize something distasteful this person did or said, or think of a trait of theirs that you don’t respect.

Step 6 – Ask yourself: are you sure you want to spend as much time with this person as you have been spending?

It’s as accurate as it is cliché: your choice of who to spend time with shapes what sort of person you become and what you value.

Usually, these involve assuming that someone did something that you don’t like on purpose when it would be more accurate to say they did the thing automatically (and they may need significant practice to change that automatic behavior). Of course, it’s still up to that person (with your help, ideally) to recognize the mistake and work on improving it.

What makes this all the more tricky is that just caring a lot or being motivated to be a better person/friend/partner, or deeply valuing the relationship at stake, often isn’t enough to cause the problem to go away on its own. What the offender really may need is to consciously start using specific strategies that are tuned to that particular kind of automatic cognitive mistake, so that they can successfully adjust a subconscious tendency or behavior.

It, of course, COULD be that the person doesn’t care about you, or doesn’t want to make an effort to improve for you, but the problem is that even if the person really does care and feels motivated to improve they may need explicit strategies to help them do so (and continuing to make certain classes of mistakes is not necessarily a strong indicator that they don’t care).

Some examples:

(1) Forgetting Important Things
e.g., Your friend forgot that you are vegetarian and tried to serve you meat.
e.g., Your friend forgot that important story you told them about a critical moment in your childhood.
e.g., Your partner forgot that today is your anniversary.

If a person forgets something that was important to you, it’s easy to jump to the conclusion that they didn’t really care about that thing or don’t really value you. But the human brain is such that we forget nearly everything. It can take purposeful work to get something to stay in memory; otherwise, it’s a crapshoot. To make matters worse, people’s natural tendency to remember different types of information varies a lot, so people who naturally have better memories around a particular type of information may think that those with worse memories just don’t care, and those with worse memories can feel like they are unfairly being held responsible for transgressions that they don’t remember ever occurring (or that they don’t know how to get themselves to remember).

strategies: To improve memory it can really help to start using conscious encoding strategies (e.g., repeating something to yourself multiple times on purpose, writing the thing down so you can look it up when needed, putting it in your calendar to remind you of it when you will need it, using visualization techniques to leverage the strong visual memory system in even non-visual memory tasks, using spaced repetition systems, etc.)

(2) Annoying Routine Behaviors
e.g., Your friend talks too much when you’re together instead of asking you questions.
e.g., Your friend laughs sometimes when you say something that is meant to be serious.
e.g., Your partner keeps leaving their pants on the floor instead of in the hamper.

If you know that a person knows you don’t like it when they do a certain behavior, yet they keep doing the behavior, it can be very natural to assume the other person has made a choice to annoy or hurt you. But grooves in the mind really occur in a meaningful sense, and when someone has done a certain set of behaviors in reaction to a certain set of stimuli for a long time, it can take a lot of work to stop. Even if they manage to suppress the behavior some of the time, it can then reoccur as soon as they have less willpower or are distracted.

strategies: To improve undesirable habits it helps to have regular, fast and accurate feedback whenever we slip up (e.g., the other person nicely reminding us each time we do the thing wrong) and to practice replacing these negative habits with more positive behaviors (whenever the stimulus that typically precedes the negative habit occurs, we consciously do some different thing instead; that we’ve chosen in advance).

(3) Avoiding Important Topics or Situations
e.g., Your friend seems anxious about something, but they say it’s nothing when you ask.
e.g., Your partner doesn’t want to go out dancing together.
e.g., Your partner doesn’t proactively bring it up when they are upset about something in your relationship.
If a person avoids a situation that is meaningful (e.g., attending a certain event or being proactive about having a certain difficult conversation), it’s again easy to assume they don’t value that thing or don’t value you. On the other hand, if the other person has high levels of anxiety, it’s worth noting that avoidance is a very common symptom of anxiety and in fact the more the person cares about that thing, the more anxious they may feel about it (hence valuing the thing a lot may make them feel less capable of being able to handle doing it).

strategies: To improve anxious avoidance it can really help to undergo Cognitive Behavioral Therapy with a therapist, or to use self-guided exposure therapy with a “fear hierarchy” where we practice facing fears of increasing intensity, or to use self-administered rejection therapy, or to learn coping techniques like progressive muscle relaxation and diaphragmatic breathing, or to take anti-depressants which help some people who have high anxiety.

(4) Not Preempting Your Needs
e.g., You want your friend to validate how you feel when you’re upset, but instead, they tell you not to worry about what’s bothering you.
e.g., You want your partner to make more time for you on the weekend.
e.g., You want your friend to ask you about the important things going on in your life.
If a person doesn’t preempt your needs when you really want them to, or when think they should be able to, it is easy to feel frustrated or angry or at least let down due to them not being more “thoughtful.” But people’s minds (and needs) can be very different from each other, and the more different two minds are, the harder it is for one to predict or preempt the needs of another. For instance, if when you are sad, you really like it if people do X, but when your friend is sad, they hate it when people do X, you are very likely to keep making the error of doing X when your friend is sad. And even if the friend tells you they don’t like X and want Y, you may struggle to do Y, or be very bad at it at first, because it feels to your brain like the wrong thing to do in the situation (and your brain’s simulation of their brain, in fact, still says that it is bad).

strategies: To improve it can help a lot to ask others to spell out their needs for you as explicitly as they are able and willing to do (ideally not just what they desire from you, but also why they desire it), since if your needs are different from theirs, or your brain works differently from theirs, you may do a bad job of guessing their needs. And without knowing the “why” behind the needs they do express, you may have trouble generalizing specific instances of what they want to other new cases that you haven’t seen before.

(5) Not Reacting To Your Emotions
e.g., Your are angry at your friend and are showing it blatantly, but they don’t address it or apologize.
e.g., You feel sad, but your partner doesn’t seem to notice.
e.g., You tell your friend you had a terrible day, and they only minimally respond.

If a person doesn’t respond to the emotions we feel, it can be frustrating or saddening or make us think they don’t care about us. The trouble is that people differ in (a) how good they are at reading the emotions of others (e.g., they may literally not have noticed your emotion because they are bad at reading emotions generally, or noticed that something was off but not been able to pinpoint what emotion you were experiencing), (b) how savvy they are at giving the right response to the emotions of other people (e.g., they may have noticed we were experiencing a certain emotion but not known the right way to respond and so didn’t react at all) and (c) how much they assume others want them to respond to their emotions (e.g., they may have noticed your emotion but assumed you wouldn’t want them to do something that would call attention to it or make it obvious that they identified it).

strategies: We can improve by practicing reading emotions generally (e.g., emotion recognition training online that Ekman offers), and by asking people how they’d prefer we respond when they’re feeling different emotions (e.g., some people want a hug when they are sad without talking about it too much, others want us to be upbeat; still others want us to ask why they are sad and validate their explanation).

(6) Reacting Emotionally In Ways That Bother You
e.g., You are telling your partner about something they do that bothers you, and they have an angry response.
e.g., You tell your friend about something bad that happened to you that you want to talk to them about, but they become sad and redirect the conversation to a problem they are having instead.
e.g., You tell a friend that they did something you didn’t like and they suddenly become very upset.

If there is a situation where a friend or partner has an emotional response that seems to you to be unfair, unjustified, inappropriate or insulting, it’s only natural that you may feel bothered by it. But be careful about holding someone’s automatic emotional response against them too much, since there is a good chance they don’t have control of it, and couldn’t change it easily if they wanted to. Automatic emotional responses can be changed, but generally, it takes a lot of work, and not everyone knows how to do it. Furthermore, emotional responses often happen so fast that we don’t have time to stop them in real-time before the emotion is out there. What is fairer to hold a person responsible for, is how they respond once their initial emotional response has occurred (rather than for what that initial emotional response is). The other issue is that the fact that the person had an emotional response that caught you off guard means there is probably something you can learn about them (and perhaps that they can learn about themselves), and so rather than blaming them for having this reaction it can be a lot healthier to discuss it while trying to avoid judging them for it.

strategies: To change an emotional response you have that seems destructive, try to actively reframe that kind of situation in a manner that evokes the sort of emotional response that you think is ideal, or to increase your control over emotional responses that have just occurred, consider learning techniques from Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, or learning to excuse yourself momentarily when you feel an emotion coming on that would be destructive in the given context.

One remarkable benefit to such a state is that it allows for a level of optimal allocation of resources that can be otherwise difficult to achieve. If there is one cookie left on the cookie tray, the member of the pair who enjoys that type of cookie more will take it. The other will be pleased, knowing that more pleasure will be had by his partner than he would get if he ate it himself. And even if this last-cookie-on-a-tray situation occurs ten nights in a row, the same total happiness maximizing result will occur, with the member who benefits most eating the treat each time. No negotiation of “if I let you have this cookie, what will you do for me later?” need occur, and so the optimal result (from the point of view of maximizing total benefit) is achieved even when tit-for-tat exchanges aren’t possible.

A more striking example occurs when one member of a pair becomes needy for a long period of time. This could be due, for instance, to sickness or mental illness. With something approaching symbiogenesis, the non-sick member will be there to help the sick member, which likely maximizes the sum of the utility of both parties. This state may be hard to attain for selfish actors: the non-sick member of the pair could calculate that the cost of helping is not worth the benefits to himself, or that these benefits could be still achieved without making such a large sacrifice. He might choose to abandon the sick member altogether, or to only put in a minimal effort to maintain the relationship until the sickness passes and the relationship again becomes selfishly beneficial.

If you were given the choice to enter into symbiogenesis with another person, would you? It might seem problematic that you could end up sacrificing yourself for the other person (and, in fact, that you would want to do so, if such a sacrifice helped the other person enough). But, the other person would also sacrifice themselves for you. You would sit with them while they were sick, but you would also be taken care of when you are sick. You would miss out on the oatmeal raisin cookies, which are her favorites, but would get more chocolate chip cookies, which are yours.

Given the highly social nature of our species, and the fact that people have different skills and preferences, two people are usually better at achieving two people’s goals than one person is at achieving his own. Two people can provide each other with the basic human needs of love, companionship, physical contact and conversation that a person cannot provide himself. The member of the pair who is better at job interviews can help the other one prepare for them, and the member who is a great cook can share his meals. The member of the pair who is more socially skilled can help the second solve his social problems, while the one who is more financially savvy can help the first make better investment decisions. Plus, both parties can feel safe, and protected, knowing that the other member of their pair is looking out for them unselfishly.

For all its benefits, symbiogenesis can be dangerous when one side of it is faked or faulty. If another person’s happiness makes you happy, but yours does not do the same for him, you are in danger. You will probably start to sacrifice and give, while that person is likely to benefit from your generosity and take. The more the other person gets used to taking, the more natural it will seem to him to do so. You will be risking sitting by someone’s bedside for months when they are very sick, without simultaneously being assured of someone sitting by yours if you need it. Half-symbiogenesis can be extremely damaging. So when you notice the state of symbiogenesis forming, you need to be cautious, making sure that neither person’s feelings of aligned incentives are developing substantially faster than the other. If the feelings develop in near synchrony, the pair will remain protected, and the arrangement will have the best chance of being mutually beneficial.

Some people use a marriage contract as an attempt to force some of the benefits of symbiogenesis. Duty, and social pressure tell us that if our husband is sick we are supposed to take care of him, even if it has become unpleasant to do so. And that we are supposed to earn enough money to make our wife comfortable, even if we hate our job. Marriage contracts, like symbiogenesis, reduce people’s fear of being alone, unprotected, and unloved. Ideally, marriage actually contains symbiogenesis, so that the couple takes care of each other not because they feel like they must, but because it makes them happy to do so. So help is given happily, not begrudgingly.

To help maximize happiness and minimize risk, symbiogenesis should be a goal of ours in our romances, friendships, and familial relationships. We should try to cultivate genuine pleasure in the pleasure of those we like when they are willing to do so for us as well.

Consider the complete opposite of expectation adaptation: you have a single set of expectations that you hold all of your friends to. If these expectations are very high, and require that the person has a large number of positive traits, then what is likely to happen is that your friends fail at least one of these expectations from time to time. One friend will be kind and sympathetic when you have problems, but then keep you waiting for 45 minutes at a restaurant. Another, while very punctual, will often be a bit of a boring conversationalist. A third, while a lot of fun, wasn’t there for you during your recent breakup. Since your conception of friendship requires that people meet all of your different requirements, when they fail to do so you are likely to end up feeling that the terms of your friendship have been violated. This may lead to regular arguments with your friends, or feelings of disappointed, frustration and anger. As a result it is possible that you will end up with a small friend group (only people who satisfy all of your criteria quite reliably), or end up feeling regularly annoyed at the behavior of your friends.

If, on the other hand, you set your expectations for friends quite low, then the opposite sort of trouble can occur. You are willing to befriend people who don’t add much (or perhaps any) value to your life. You are likely to end up with a wide group of friends, but this wide circle may not be benefiting you very much. Whereas excessively high expectations may make you feel disappointment, excessively low expectations can lead to you feeling used or bored. And both have a tendency to produce frustration and arguments.

The ideal case for a fixed set of expectations would be if you could set them quite high, and still find a good number of people who easily exceed them. While this can work well, for many people it is unrealistically difficult to achieve. Most people have at least one significant flaw that impacts their friends.

The alternative to having fixed expectations is to have adaptive ones. You try to expect from each person what your understanding of them predicts it is realistic to expect. You ask yourself, “given what I know about this person, what do I expect them to do in this situation?” and then you expect that. You think about past situations you and your friend have been in, and anticipate that if he has canceled 40% of the plans you have made with you in the past, there is probably something like a 40% chance that he will cancel the next hangout that you schedule. If he has been unhelpful every time you have called him when you are feeling down, you start calling someone else when you are feeling down. If you have consistently found that hanging out with him is a bit boring, you assume you will be a bit bored if you choose to hang out with him.

Adapting expectations has a handful of advantages to using fixed ones. For instance, this mindset:

• Tends to reduce feelings of disappointment and frustration. If you know that Bill spends most of his time talking about his car, then when you make plans with him you are expecting this to happen, so are mentally prepared (or better yet, willing to talk about his car).
• Broadens your potential friend group compared to what you could have with high fixed expectations. Diana may be unreliable, but she really is fun to talk to. So you don’t rely on her for things that are important, but you do get together every so often for great conversation. Sally often cancels plans, so when you have plans with her, you figure out in advance what you are going to do if she cancels (e.g. pickup a movie to watch or a book you are going to read). And if you’re just not in the mood to have her cancel on you this week, you don’t make plans until next week.
• Tends to produce a mindset of problem solving. Timmy tends to be late whenever you hang out, so now you assume that this will happen and always bring a book with you, and show up a little late yourself. You assume that you could be waiting up to 40 minutes for him, and so just count on getting some reading in while you wait.
• Makes it easier to think about friendship in terms of the value, comfort, happiness and fulfillment that a person adds to your life, rather than in terms of whether they satisfy a set of abstract criteria. It might be that Don has a very serious flaw in his personality, but that overall he still adds a lot to your life. Carrie’s biggest personality flaw, on the other hand, might be such that interacting with her just makes your life worse. You can keep Don as a friend, doing everything you can to make his big flaw more tolerable so that he adds even more to your life, and choose not to be friends with Carrie. Even if Don would not satisfy the requirements a friend should theoretically meet if you had to make such a list, it is still quite beneficial having him in your life.
• Produces a realization that not every person needs to give you all things. Sue may be the best person you know for providing emotional support, Danny may be your favorite person to go out to bars with, and Annie may give excellent advice. It would be extremely hard to find a single person who is simultaneously as supportive as Sue, as good company as Danny, and as great an advice giver as Annie. But this is also unnecessary, as these three people together can play these roles in your life.

While adapting expectations can be quite a happiness generating and fulfilling view of friendship, it is worth noting that there are still some pitfalls to watch out for. For instance:

• If you become used to predicting from people what they are likely to give, it can be easy to forget that you do have some ability to modify the behavior of your friends when they are not acting in an ideal fashion. So it is important to not just predict the behavior a friend who normally have, but also, predict how likely the friend is to respond well to feedback and implement behavioral changes that you suggest. In practice, it is very hard to change people’s long-standing personality traits, though occasionally you can get them to change specific frustrating behaviors (especially if they are reflective types, who are willing to accept criticism and are motivated to become a better person). So maybe you can get Timmy to show up 15 minutes late instead of 30, if you give feedback in the right way and help him figure out how to correct his bad habit. But then again, maybe you can’t correct this behavior even if you try hard, so you might have to predict it and then adapt to it in order to avoid frustration and maintain your otherwise valuable friendship with him.
• It is also important to remember that just because you can, by managing expectations, be friends with people with many negative traits, and still find that your interactions add value to your life, that doesn’t mean that you always should be friends with such people. If you find amazing people, who meet most or all of your criteria for ideal friends, you should probably prioritize them. More generally, those people who have more of the traits that you desire and value are probably ones that you should invest more of your time and trust in.

If you are the sort of person that tends to hold friends to a strict set of criteria that you feel they must meet, consider changing the way you view friendship. Try to expect from people what they are likely to give you. Remember that people who have repeatedly behaved like X in situation Y, will likely behave like X in situation Y in the future. Ask yourself, “Given how I can expect this person to behave in the future, is he likely to add value to my life?” If so he may be worth keeping as a friend, even if he has some non-ideal traits. Then ask, “How can I adapt to the way he is likely to behave so that his negative traits become less problematic and bother me less?” Adapting expectations for friendship can allow you to be friends with more people, while experiencing less frustration and disappointment.