How to manage emotionally weak people? Is Sympathy good or bad

Have you been in a relationship with an emotionally weak person. Was it emotionally draining you. You were the one who was giving your time, peace, energy but somewhere you were loosing your real self.

On the other hand we say that people who are successful generally abandon emotionally weak people who cannot control their feelings. They remove emotionally hampering distractions from their environment because they are able to focus better. In today’s world a practical person grows more than a sympathetic person. 

Harsh but the truth !

But we also have to think of this from a different point of view. The rule of karma and Time says that what you give , you get.  If a practical person will abandon people at their emotionally weak times, Those people will also not be there when one needs them the most.

Let us accept we all cannot be the one who can stay happy alone. We need people to discuss our problems, to hear us out when we are low. Rather than staying away or abandoning those people we need to find the techniques of managing them. 

There are 2 reasons – 

1. Because we can still abandon acquaintances or not so close friends, far relatives but we can never abandon our own kids, parents, life partner or the very close ones.
2. Everyone including us, land in that phase of our life when we are emotionally weak, have negative emotions  and we need people around us to help us overcome that downfall.

There will always be a dilemma in our mind. To leave those people behind and move on to a bright life. Or take them with along with and make our journey difficult.

We need to find a bridge between these two opposite emotions of “to do” or “not to do”. This can be done when we are able to understand the negative and positive emotions within us. Our capabilities to judge people and situations correctly. Finally by using some techniques we can walk the path to and fro. I.e. Between handling emotionally weak people and still maintain our calm and internal happiness.

Strategies to act with emotionally weak people?

Objective here is to save yourself from the emotional trauma and at the same time not abandoning the emotionally weak people.

1. Don’t sympathise, but empathise with them 

Sympathy is when you feel sorry for the other person’s misfortune. Empathy is when you understand their situation and feel their pain by putting yourself in their shoes. 

When we sympathize we are sucked into the same emotions which the other person is feeling. We are sharing those painful feelings with the other. 

For example if a person has lost his job and he is feeling very low. Sympathising is that we may start feeling low while listening to their story and staying with him. We may say “yes it’s sad to lose a job at this time” Empathizing on the other hand is when we use our brains, analyse the situation and feel it. We don’t just start feeling the way others are thinking. We may empathize and persuade them to feel that it was good to lose that job as that was taking away their peace of mind. Here we can say that if the same would have happened with us; we would have felt relieved.

2. Find your break even point 

Your break even point is the time when you start getting influenced by the sad person in some way. We all must have felt that when we meet an emotionally weak person we are able to give our helping hand ,we are energetic. As soon as 15 – 20 mins pass by we slowly start feeling low on energy, sad our self. If we are aware of ourselves we will realize that the feeling of the other has been transferred in us.

So your break even point can be a time limit you want to maintain with them. There can be few topics that you can listen to and few you don’t want to be a part of. You just need to provide an empathetic solution or support to the other person and then distant yourself the moment you feel your break even point is coming near.

3. Say “yes ! you are right” and move on

When a person is emotionally drained, it’s important to understand what they want at that particular time. Most of these people are so engrossed in their state of feeling that they don’t want to understand. They don’t even want a solution. They just want someone to listen to them and say they are right. This satisfy them for the moment to get calm. They may understand the situation themselves afterwards. But at that very moment you just need to say “yes you are right”. Give them the golden words to soothe their ego and move on to save yourself from beating the bush.

4. Differentiate between Attention seekers and sad people

There are some people who are not that sad because of their problem. They make a sad face in front of the givers or nice people ones because they need pampering or care. These are the people who make up their problems and exaggerate them just to get your attention. They are the most dangerous ones as they share mix emotions of manipulation, lie and sadness. It’s very important for you to analyse their situation and perceive that they are actually sad or not.

5. Make your belief system clear and strong

When you are aware of yourself; you are clear of what is right and wrong for you. You follow a path of strong belief system and show that personality to others. When an aware person is emotionally weak – he/she tries to find the answers within self.

Have you ever noticed that a weak or sad person is always looking for a person who is sympathetic, a good listener or similar to them. They will never come to a strong person and say I am sad due to this small problem. If you have a strong belief system which you portray in front of people, then –

• Those will not bother you who know they are just exaggerating. 
• Only those people with genuine concern will come to you who needs solution