“On the relationship between the ‘comforter’ and the ‘comforted’”,
I kind of touched on this in “On relationships” when I said, wrote, actually, that:
All relationships...have either a) a transactional and/or obligatory aspect; or b) ARE inandof themselves transactional and/or obligatory.
But I didn’t expand on the emotional specifics, which is what I want to do now. And which you presumably aim to read.
When someone, hereinafter referred to as a “comforter”, sees someone they perceive as unwell or unhappy, hereinafter referred to as the “comforted”, they aim to go and comfort them. This is done in a variety of ways that you already know because you have almost certainly been in both positions. When the comforter acts they may fairly well believe that they act on empathy, and they likely are, but the root of their act is driven by the subconscious need to relieve cognitive dissonance, largely between:
“Everyone is okay”, the baseline assumption that we operate with daily, even if we know it to be untrue intellectually; and
“This person does not seem okay.”
When we were hunter-gatherers, living in nomadic tribes, wandering, without any guarantee of living if sustaining an injury or getting lost from the group-at-large, we developed the need to ensure the visible safety of others, since if they were at danger (tears developed as a stress response and danger signal), we certainly would be as well. Most of us have moved on from that hunter-gatherer, nomad way of life, but the psychology hasn’t evolved quickly enough to catch up with us yet, producing this dynamic.
The comforted, in contrast, has a more complicated role in this dynamic. Many people genuinely do benefit from it and appreciate the comforter. But many others see it as just another required time to perform socially, and prefer being left alone.
This is not related to my depression. ♦