“We cannot rely on our native tongue if our spouse does not understand it.”
— The 5 Love Languages

.

“The speaking of language is part of an activity, or of a form of life.”

“I shall also call the whole, consisting of language and the activities into which it is woven, the ‘language-game.’”

“[What makes mutual linguistic practice possible is] agreement not in opinions, but rather in form of life.”

.

“We speak only in definite speech genres”

“We use them confidently and skillfully in practice, and it is quite possible for us not even to suspect their existence in theory.”

“when hearing others’ speech, we guess its genre from the very first words”

“from the very beginning we have a sense of the speech whole”

I have observed in my limited time on earth that not all minds seem to operate like mine. From day to day, my mind stops resembling its past. On the occasions I or others have been in distress, the patterns for meeting such distress differ, and where selecting the right pattern brought comfort and profit, selecting the wrong one, the anti-language, left them feeling more estranged than before.

The following are my notes on these curious patterns.

#1) Solutions.

You want to find solutions you feel good about.

When people try to just “listen,” it feels like they’re fixing the feeling instead of the problem, and it feels futile and impatient.

You want to feel equipped to solve your problem.

#2) Listening.

You just want someone to listen. To process your feelings this way. It feels cathartic, and helps the emotions get out.

Sometimes people just start suggesting solutions, and that feels frustrating. Are they even listening? You didn’t come to them for solutions. You just want to process right now.

It’s nice when the other person validates your reaction and normalises your emotions. That you’re not the only person to have felt this way. They might say “That’s a totally normal reaction, Sterling.” They might share an anecdote where they felt the same way.

Listening does NOT mean “taking your side.” It does not mean accusing the other party in your story of evil or blindly agreeing with you. That would feel untruthful and uncomfortable—you just need a neutral listener.

After talking through it, you'll start to feel better already.

#3) Allyship.

You like it when people agree with you. Acknowledge that wow, what just happened to you sucks.

It’s nice when they’re being pessimistic about your situation, because then, it lets you be the counter-voice of optimism and say “It’s not that bad!” or “The other person had a point too.”

You want to know the other person is on your side, your team. That kind of allyship makes you feel safer and more whole again when the world seems unfair.

You want them to acknowledge how sucky what happened was, and then you can let it go.

Allyship is easily confused with Listening, but the difference matters. Allyship is deeply partial; Listening is empathetic but neutral. Listening can be someone’s comfort language, while Allyship is their anti-language, in which case using Allyship can go awry.

#4) Reassurance.

You want optimism and reassurance that things will be okay.^[1]

You do NOT need other people to get upset. It also sucks when people seem unsure and uncertain about what to do with you. You need them in those moments to be confident and assertive, a voice you can believe in when they say that everything is going to be okay.

#5) Distraction.

Sure, you could talk about the problem more, but frankly, you love the people that can just make you laugh, make you feel light-hearted, perhaps suggest an alternative activity like a movie and pizza. You just feel better around them.

Trying to keep talking about the problem feels heavy, possibly uninteresting or unproductive. You just need some laughter, some lightness, and you’ll start feeling better again.

#6) Space.

You just need space.

You don’t particularly want to talk more about what made you upset. Nor do you want to do something else with the person trying to comfortingly distract you. You just need some time alone to do your thing, and you’ll come out feeling better.

You don’t want people feeling bad in addition to you. You don’t want them sitting by your cave, waiting for you to come out. You just need some space, for them to be their own, non-upset person, and to give you some time to be with yourself.

You might enjoy someone just spending time alongside you, but not particularly needing anything from you. You might come to want to do all the other languages then.

#7) Challenge.

You need them to call you out. To say, “Hey, you’re being a baby, stop wallowing in pity and get it done.”

It might feel harsh, but it’s strangely relieving. All that burden and heaviness you were carrying, it’s gone, and you’re unstuck from the little emotional loop you were running of how terrible your life was.

Being challenged isn’t invalidating, but rather someone meeting you in the context of your life and breaking you out of it.^[2] There is a message underneath the message that I am here for you, I am tracking your larger life, I think you are strong enough to be spoken to this way.^[3]

(This works better with close friends, family, and partners than with strangers.)

Becoming a master comforter

Each language can be used in a healthy or unhealthy way.

You might think, “Wow, Listening is such a mature and healthy way to respond to negative emotions. My partner taking Space seems so unhealthy in comparison; it’s like suppressing emotions and avoiding the problem.”

But this is not true. Each language can be used in a healthy or unhealthy way.

At its worst, Listening can enable someone to keep venting about a recurring problem rather than taking steps to solve it.

At its best, Space can be an efficient and natural way for someone who is feeling angry to let their limbic arousal subside before they re-engage in a more intentional way.

Do not assume some languages are intrinsically unhealthy and thus try to foist your own preferred language onto someone.

Be wary of enabling unhealthy behaviours.

Space can turn into non-communication. Allyship can turn into toxic judgement of other people. Reassurance can turn into ignoring real, recurring problems.

You don’t have to fix them, but be wary of being the person who repeatedly enables them in behaviour that feels less like comfort and more like a cruel, cheap substitute.

Know someone’s anti-language.

Comforting someone well means correctly perceiving what kind of interaction they are trying to have with you.

To comfort someone is to help them come closer to themselves. The wrong language might leave them where they were. But using their anti-language can leave them somewhere worse than where you met them, estranged and unmet.

Be particularly sensitive to what people’s anti-languages might be.

Examples of mismatches.

If you Reassure someone who wants Allyship, your “things will be okay” talk won’t land. Sometimes they want to hear allied, partisan talk like “this fucking sucks”/“you’ll never make it” so they can be the voice of reason.

If you only do Listening, because you heard on some podcast it was good to be impartial and neutral and not add your own point of view, and the person needs Allyship, they then miss out on an important and valuable mirror to their emotional state that lets them feel met and be the contrary voice of reason.

Conversely, when you play the Allyship role with someone who just wants Listening, they can feel uncomfortable that you’re not neutral but excessively allying with their side and distorting things. They might feel fully capable of arriving at their conclusions and just want a neutral person to talk things fully out with.

If you try to use Distraction with someone who just needs Listening . . . take them out for a nice walk or be physically intimate . . . they might feel you’re pressuring them into being light-hearted when they’re really stressed.

Conversely, if you try to use Listening with someone who just needs Distraction, they might feel overtherapised and estranged. Even Listening can be a way of not meeting people where they’re at. In their own ways, all the comfort languages are forms of listening. Some listen by looking away.

To know someone’s comfort language, ask. Or better yet, don’t.

🙅‍♀️ awkward,^[4] unsure, obligating: “So what would you like me to do?”

💁 gentle, chill, unbothered: “What do you want right now?”

“What form of emotional support would you like me to provide?” is a meta, heady question that can put the other person in a place of managing you and that asks for more certainty than the other person might have. It’s asking for their theory of how they should be comforted rather than what they concretely feel drawn toward right now.

“What do you think you might like?” is a more confidently unobtrusive question. It doesn’t put much pressure on the other person to get it right, and lets both of you co-orient to a situation while remaining present.

What someone wants minute-to-minute can vary wildly. Showing continued curiosity, and signalling you are taking them seriously, but not so seriously as to take it as ruling, can help them feel more comfortable and curious to track their own ebb-and-flow.

Asking is powerful, but just feeling comfortable trying things and tracking what’s happening matters a lot more than whether you explicitly ask or silently try.

Connect with your own emotions, not theirs.

When comforting someone, it can be easy to overfocus on them. But the single greatest instruction I could give, to myself or anyone else, is to almost entirely set aside that impulse, and instead just pay attention to yourself.

When you connect with your own emotions, there will naturally be a bit of you that feels for them too.

And that bit leads to a natural, differentiated empathy, one that lets you both care about them and retain connection to your inner intuition.

It lets you be a confident voice of reason when they need Reassurance and shake them out of a self-pitying state when they need Challenge. You stay a thoughtful, intelligent person in the room, instead of someone who has become fused.

In fact, you may find a deeper sense of empathetic grief connecting to your own body than to theirs. The deepest sense of our capacity for empathy is found in our own emotions, rather than in trying to leave our body.

You don’t need to be mirror maxxing to maximally help someone.

Becoming a master comfortee

Know what you want, and consider asking for it.

I never went to my mother for comfort, because she would give me Solutions, Allyship, Reassurance, Distraction… and all I wanted was Listening.

On some level, it felt wrong to ask her to change. She should just know.

It was also vulnerable to ask. I had this sense that if I did, she would become stiff and awkward, and then it would be my fault things were all stiff and awkward. I would become the project manager of my own distress.

At least if she kept comforting me, I could wallow in how unmet I was feeling, and that was something.

It’s not easy asking for what you want.

But there are non-awkward ways to do so. Had I just said, “I just want someone to listen,” non-accusatorially, it would have been fine. It’s holding that tone of non-accusation and connection that can be so hard.

I myself am coming to learn to do this with my family, and mostly, it’s been because of this sense that I would continue to love myself even after I asked.

Some people read an earlier version of this draft with their partners. One couple says:

“I need to spill the beans” when they want Listening

“I want to cook the beans” when they want more critical analysing and Solutions.

It’s okay to get comfortable.

Speaking of TikToks that permanently altered my psychology, there’s this video of a girl who makes herself more comfortable in the middle of her crying:

I had always thought of being distressed as also implying you didn’t have the wherewithal to make yourself more comfortable. People were coming to your aid precisely because you were dysfunctional, no?

But no, people come to your aid simply because they care.

So when I am sad or in pain, I think of that girl, and I make myself more physically comfortable and adjust things in my environment, including how people are snuggling or comforting me, before returning to being upset.

All in gaiety are gay alike.

All in need of comfort are in need in their own way.

1. ^{^}

   When a parent says to a frightened child, “Don’t worry, everything will be fine,” they can’t know it really will be fine. But they aren’t playing the Rational Predictions from Available Facts game. They’re playing another game. The Words as an Instrument of Comfort & Security game.

   Wittgenstein’s point is that all kinds of misunderstandings arise when we don’t see which kind of game someone is involved in. (source: School of Life’s video on Wittgenstein)

   Many of us grew up in childhoods where we didn’t feel particularly reassured by the adults around us. We didn’t think we could really trust them to know what was going on, and we came to rely more upon our world-model to keep us safe than their sense of reality.

   "I know it doesn't sound like much," Harry defended. "But it was just one of those critical life moments, you see? I mean, I knew that not thinking about something doesn't stop it from happening, I knew that, but I could see that Mum really thought that way." Harry stopped, struggling with the anger that was starting to rise up again when he thought about it. "She wouldn't listen. I tried to tell her, I begged her not to send me out, and she laughed it off. Everything I said, she treated like some sort of big joke..." Harry forced the black rage back down again. "That's when I realised that everyone who was supposed to protect me was actually crazy, and that they wouldn't listen to me no matter how much I begged them, and that I couldn't ever rely on them to get anything right." Sometimes good intentions weren't enough, sometimes you had to be sane...

   There was a long silence.

   Harry took the time to breathe deeply and calm himself down. There was no point in getting angry. There was no point in getting angry. All parents were like that, no adult would lower themselves far enough to place themselves on level ground with a child and listen, his genetic parents would have been no different. Sanity was a tiny spark in the night, an infinitesimally rare exception to the rule of madness, so there was no point in getting angry.

   . . .

   "I suppose I must confess that you are right," said Professor McGonagall. "But, young man -"

   "That sort of thing is the reason why I have trouble trusting adults." Somehow Harry kept his voice steady. "Because they get angry if you even try to reason with them. To them it's defiance and insolence and a challenge to their higher tribal status. If you try to talk to them they get angry. So if I had anything really important to do, I wouldn't be able to trust you. Even if you listened with deep concern to whatever I said - because that's also part of the role of someone playing a concerned adult - you'd never change your actions, you wouldn't actually behave differently, because of anything I said.(source: HPMOR Chapter 6)

   So when someone tries to simply… reassure us, it can feel an affront to the one thing that kept us safe more than empty words.

   But there’s a difference between false factual reassurance and being a stable reassuring presence. For someone to say, “I’m here” or “I’m here as long as you need” is a fact about social reality. “In my best estimation, I do think you will be fine” might be worth updating on. Someone who has helped you solve problems in your life before could credibly reassure you, and it’s worth building those relationships.

   Coming to be able to play the Words as an Instrument of Comfort & Security game has felt like a special rejoining of humanity in a way I was never part of, and it doesn’t appear to have hurt my grip on the universe, and I am grateful for that.

2. ^{^}

   “Demand excellence” is a phrase I’ve heard in men’s circles.

3. ^{^}

   In Gregory Bateson’s A Theory of Play and Fantasy, Bateson watches two monkeys play-fighting. He observes their individual actions look like combat, but somehow both monkeys understand that the sequence is not combat:

   “the unit actions or signals were similar to but not the same as those of combat.”

   “The sequence as a whole was not combat . . . [To both monkeys, it was evident they were not] in combat.

   “play could only occur if the participant organisms were capable of some degree of metacommunication”

   This is very applicable to Challenge.

   “Stop being a fucking baby and go do it” has surface content that looks like hostility, but between friends, the interaction carries a metacommunicative signal like:

   this is affectionate challenge; I am not abandoning you; I think you're strong enough to be spoken to this way.

   Without that meta-message, the same sentence becomes cruel. Because Challenge is a form of layered play.

4. ^{^}

   An interaction is non-awkward when there is safety (common knowledge) about the ability to stay in connection. An awkward situation is one where neither party really feels sure of what to say or do that will let both people stay in connection.

   One way to reduce the awkwardness of a situation is being very matter-of-fact about something. It reduces the salience that something bad is in fact going to happen from this interaction. Non-reactivity does the same thing.

   Another way is to make jokes or coat things in humour. It creates common knowledge that the interaction is going to be okay. In less intellectual terms, it creates enough of a source of connection that any awkwardness can well survive it. Naming the elephant in the room can also bring people back into connection about the awkward thing. So can signalling overfamiliarity (“surely I can use your house, right?”), that signals comfort making such an ask, acknowledges the non-entitlement in it, and makes it easier for the other person to say yes or no without feeling like their no leaves the conversation hanging.

   Awkwardness is about fear of losing connection.

   This is why warmth is such a gift for making all aspects of life less awkward. It’s also why very funny people can be extremely socially anxious on the inside, but have excellent relationships. Humour coats the awkward parts of life and builds connection.

5. ^{^}

   A different title for this post might well have been “comfort games we play.”