The specific details are probably gender-specific.
Men are supposed to be strong. If they express sadness, it’s like a splash of low status and everyone is like “ugh, get away from me, loser, I hope it’s not contagious”. On the other hand, if they express anger, people get scared. So men gradually learn to suppress these emotions. (They also learn that words “I would really want you to show me your true feelings” are usually a bait-and-switch. The actual meaning of that phrase is that the man is supposed to perform some nice emotion, probably because his partner feels insecure about the relationship and wants to be reassured.)
Women have other problems, such as being told to smile when something irritates them… but this would be more reliably described by a woman.
But in general, I suppose people simply do not want to empathize with bad feelings; they just want them to go away. “Get rid of your bad feeling, so that I am not in a dilemma to either empathize with you and feel bad, or ignore you and feel like a bad person.”
A good reaction would be something like: “I listen to your bad emotion, but I am not letting myself get consumed by it. It remains your emotion; I am merely an audience.” Perhaps it would be good to have some phrase to express that we want this kind of reaction, because from the other side, providing this reaction unprompted can lead to accusations of insensitivity. “You clearly don’t care!” (By feeling bad when other people feel bad we signal that we care about them. It is a costly signal, because it makes us feel bad, too. But in turn, the cost is why we provide all kinds of useless help just to make it go away.)
The specific details are probably gender-specific.
Men are supposed to be strong. If they express sadness, it’s like a splash of low status and everyone is like “ugh, get away from me, loser, I hope it’s not contagious”. On the other hand, if they express anger, people get scared. So men gradually learn to suppress these emotions. (They also learn that words “I would really want you to show me your true feelings” are usually a bait-and-switch. The actual meaning of that phrase is that the man is supposed to perform some nice emotion, probably because his partner feels insecure about the relationship and wants to be reassured.)
Women have other problems, such as being told to smile when something irritates them… but this would be more reliably described by a woman.
But in general, I suppose people simply do not want to empathize with bad feelings; they just want them to go away. “Get rid of your bad feeling, so that I am not in a dilemma to either empathize with you and feel bad, or ignore you and feel like a bad person.”
A good reaction would be something like: “I listen to your bad emotion, but I am not letting myself get consumed by it. It remains your emotion; I am merely an audience.” Perhaps it would be good to have some phrase to express that we want this kind of reaction, because from the other side, providing this reaction unprompted can lead to accusations of insensitivity. “You clearly don’t care!” (By feeling bad when other people feel bad we signal that we care about them. It is a costly signal, because it makes us feel bad, too. But in turn, the cost is why we provide all kinds of useless help just to make it go away.)