Carolyn Hax: Go for one-on-one compassion and skip the group shame

By Carolyn Hax,

Dear Carolyn: I skipped my weekly Zoom with my fellow mom friends last night, again, because I can’t bear to hear them complain about their pandemic lifestyles. Their kids are all in in-person school, none of them has lost a job and none is in financial difficulty. I know there are other stressors and I’m sympathetic, to a point, and I guess I’ve hit that point. One just got home from vacation. (She was careful, but still).

My situation is the opposite, which they know, but I feel like when they ask how I’m doing, all I’m likely to do is complain, and I don’t want to be that person. Meanwhile my husband is floundering at his job because remote work is affecting his team. We have no bubble — friends’ kids are in a private, in-person school whereas ours are in public, remote school, and hating it — and no family anywhere close. I may drop out of my grad program to cope, and I’ve lost half my freelance work.

I just don’t know how to go on, how to ask for help without sounding like I’m whining, and even what kind of help anyone can give. Maybe I just need to cry to someone who listens. I’m sorry. I hate this and don’t know how to keep going.

— We Are Not Okay

We Are Not Okay: Please let’s give a collective, well-deserved beatdown to the idea that telling friends you’re in trouble is “whining.”

It’s appalling that we, collectively, have so pathologized struggle and marginalized compassion that people in need feel ashamed.

I don’t blame you for skipping the sisterhood Zoom, though. Group dynamics are a fickle thing, and if you don’t trust your fragile nerves to this one, then you’re right not to push it.

However, the support of an individual sister, or three, might bring relief, so please pick the most reliable one(s) and ask for help. For emergencies, you break the glass; it allows your friends to be your friends. (Use the Crisis Text Line, 741741, if it’s over their heads.)

Know, too, there’s no single code for “how to keep going.” There is only whatever works — and that can even mean just staggering from day to terrible day, food-work-sleep, until things change. Because things will change. They always do.

Obviously a daily stagger isn’t ideal, so install it as your minimum only, the I-CAN-do-this floor that you know you won’t fall through. That frees you to put better things on top.

The one-on-one friend, for starters. Reach out now, don’t stall.

Another is permission for small, even tiny, luxuries. At least one a day. A hot bath. A click through old photos. Tea. A TV show. A hug. It can be anything — except random. Schedule it. A trail of breadcrumb-size anticipations can get you through almost anything.

Another is the understanding that in even the roughest times, there are better and worse days within them. The better days — you’ll know them immediately — are when you tackle bigger things.

If you want to. Crisis mode’s entire to-do list: Keep going. It’s okay not to ask “how” and focus on the “what.”

On the worse days, remember these low points can pass by tomorrow. The situation itself doesn’t change from one day to the next, you just wake up feeling better able to face it. That’s the grab bar when you’re sinking — that our worst moments are still moments, which pass.

Dear Carolyn: While my husband and I agreed about not visiting his family this past Christmas, we’re revisiting a yearly conversation about seeing his family, which has made me realize we don’t have clear discussions.

For example, he thinks I don’t want to go to see them. It’s true I would prefer to go a different time of the year, which he knows. But I feel like he interprets my issues with our annual travel as just not wanting to visit his family, which isn’t true.

How do I make sure I’m providing him the full picture from my point of view and not just part of it?

— Anonymous

Anonymous: Communication is just as much about how he receives your information as about what information you provide.

We all have our own mental filters, made by our wiring and experiences and a few long-lost mates to our favorite socks.

To make sure your messages get through his filters as you intended, ask him to say back to you what he thinks you meant. It’s not perfect, and not terribly elegant — it can feel uncomfortably close to treating a fellow adult like a toddler — but it at least converts the problem into material you can work with.

You can also blunt the toddler effect a bit by volunteering yourself for the exercise first: “Let me see if I’ve got this. You’re saying _____.” That makes it easier for you to say, maybe, “Would you mind saying back to me what you think I said? I feel like we’re misfiring here.”

Write to Carolyn Hax at tellme@washpost.com. Get her column delivered to your inbox each morning at wapo.st/haxpost.