You’re Right, He’s a Jerk — Now Why Do You Care?

How to Accept Complaining and also Challenge It

When someone complains, I’m generally very sympathetic. But I also don’t want to lead someone astray by enabling an unhealthy victim story.

Blaming someone else for not meeting a need of yours is confusing responsibility to and responsibility for.

So, while I want to listen and be supportive, I don’t want to make the problem worse. If a friend is headed towards a cliff, I’m not going to say, “Yeah, doing great! Keep going!!!”

To resolve this, I’ll typically say something like, “Yeah, it sounds like Jerry was a complete jerk during the meeting. I’d probably feel the same way…can I ask you something? Why do you care that Jerry was a jerk?”

I’ve found this question alone to be one of the best tools to cut through any of my own victim stories, and get right to the juicy stuff I can control.

By acknowledging the other person’s story (“You’re right — sounds like Jerry was a jerk”), I accept their reality as it is. I’m not resisting or challenging it. It’s probably true…but I don’t stop there.

“OK, so Jerry was selfish. I get it. Sounds frustrating. But there are lots of selfish people in the world — most of them don’t bother you. Why feel upset with Jerry in this instance? Do you have a sense of the need under your feeling?”

The reason I think it works so well, is because it avoids pathological dependence (i.e. assuming others are responsible for meeting my needs), and it avoid pathological independence (i.e. assuming others have zero impact on my ability to meet my needs).

Of course, after dependence and independence, comes interdependence — we are responsible for ourselves and responsible to others.

We all need someone to complain to. Complaining is a great way to figure out how we really feel. No filtering. No posturing. Just raw feeling and story. Great start.

But don’t stop there. Complaining about what others did to you, or how you are a victim misses allows us to easily miss the important lessons hidden within our experience. Something frustrating happened. It’s true. No point in denying it or pretending you can (or should) be impervious to the impact of others.

But complaining is just a signal. It points us towards something else trying to get our attention. Complaining just to get “something off my chest” is like ignoring the fire and just turning off the smoke alarm because it’s beeping too loudly.

So, don’t stop at complaining.

Just add, “Yeah, that sounds really frustrating. Why do you think that bothers you?” Even if you only ask yourself. It doesn’t ignore the reality that other people impact us. Nor does it neglect our responsibility by blaming others for our experience.