Only the other day, a friend called because she was worried about a possible bad consequence of a mistake she’d made. I immediately agreed that the bad consequence could follow from the mistake. But I went on to point out that it could only happen if three conditions are met, and all three are unlikely, so the probability of the bad consequence is very low.
The result was that she was genuinely reassured. If I had just tried to say “Oh, don’t worry, I’m sure it will be fine”, or tried to argue that it was impossible that it would go wrong, she would have seen that it was not impossible and rejected my reassurance.
I’m trying to turn her onto this site; at the moment she’s pretty explicitly saying she isn’t sure she wouldn’t prefer to hang on to her illusions.
Only the other day, a friend called because she was worried about a possible bad consequence of a mistake she’d made. I immediately agreed that the bad consequence could follow from the mistake. But I went on to point out that it could only happen if three conditions are met, and all three are unlikely, so the probability of the bad consequence is very low.
The result was that she was genuinely reassured. If I had just tried to say “Oh, don’t worry, I’m sure it will be fine”, or tried to argue that it was impossible that it would go wrong, she would have seen that it was not impossible and rejected my reassurance.
I’m trying to turn her onto this site; at the moment she’s pretty explicitly saying she isn’t sure she wouldn’t prefer to hang on to her illusions.