What type of support feels most enjoyable/meaningful to give?
Sometimes friends ask how to support us. Realistically, there are a lot of helpful things people could do, if they wanted to. And this is kind of a long-term Situation we're going through.
Our main goal is just maintaining fun, mutually supportive relationships with people, despite being in a strange and isolating situation. So I think I wanna tailor my "things you could do for us" suggestions to be enjoyable!
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kip
in reply to kip • •Some categories of support! (I don't want to prime people on the type of support that exists)
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1. Companionship!1a. Get our mind off Things
1b. Hold space for us to talk about Things
1c. Do healthy stuff alongside us, to reduce burnout (e.g. workout buddy for Sam)
2. Hands-on help (e.g. install a dark film on my TV)
3. Problem solving (e.g. research complex medical questions, do data analysis)
Ben Weinstein-Raun
in reply to kip • •I think I most like giving support when I'm most certain that it will be useful to the person.
But also, relatedly but possibly revealing a not-great personality trait, I also strongly prefer to help people when I predict that they'll appreciate it a lot - I tend to feel unhappy with helping people when I predict the help will be seen as something I owe them, or taken for granted, for example.
e.g. there are some things that I think people assume are just super easy / trivial to provide, and that maybe are super easy / trivial for most people, but that aren't that way for me (e.g., I dunno, taking out the trash every week, or cooking)
And there are other things that I basically enjoy doing for people / don't find as difficult (e.g. fixing stuff, or helping strategize about stuff), but that seem like they're more often deeply appreciated.
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kip
in reply to Ben Weinstein-Raun • •It's useful to hear that appreciation makes a big difference for you — I try to show a lot of appreciation for the help people give me, so, guess I'll keep doing that :)
I don't think it's just you. That's gotta be true of almost everyone, now that I think about it. I remember years ago when I offered to help a rationalist stranger online. They were really struggling in life and it sounded like I could help them in a specific way. I was expecting to receive appreciation for my offer, but they just added me to a Discord server full of people trying to help them. This made me feel totally uninterested in helping.
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Ben Millwood
in reply to kip • •kip likes this.
kip
in reply to Ben Weinstein-Raun • •I'm kind of curious how fulfilling it is to support people by just hanging out with them? (Like, imagine someone who is having a hard time and just wants their mind taken off of things, but no actual emotional labor is necessary)
Even if that IS the most helpful thing, I'm guessing it wouldn't feel any more fulfilling than hanging out with that person normally. It doesn't really look like a favor, so it doesn't really make sense for the other person to act very appreciative about it.
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Ben Weinstein-Raun
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Ben Millwood
in reply to kip • •I think hanging out with someone purely altruistically doesn't really work, because I can't really pretend to enjoy something that I'm not enjoying, but I do sometimes prioritise people to hang out with based partly on their needs, and if I felt that someone I liked needed me more than usual, I would definitely do at least something to meet that.
(Not quite sure to what extent I should be answering this abstractly vs. specifically about you?)
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Ben Millwood
in reply to kip • •for me generally the most satisfying support I have given people is when they've explained something to me and I've understood it and I've noticed something about it that they find helpful, that they didn't notice without me. This kind of thing: benkuhn.net/listen/
I guess generally I think of my most important virtues as compassion + intelligence and opportunities to use them both together feel good
to respond to your list of ideas, the idea of doing medical research for someone stresses me out somewhat as I think I would not be good at it, but feel very strongly that it is important to be good at it; this is not unrelated to some unsolved / unaddressed problems in my own life (which I can't fix Right, so I can't fix them at all)
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Satvik
in reply to kip • •My favorite way to support people is helping them figure something out, do research, make a plan, or work through internal blocks. These involve doing stuff that I'm good at.
My second-favorite category is support that involves doing things I'm not necessarily good at, like cooking, helping clean up, etc. When my own kids are a bit older I think babysitting will also fall into this category.
I'm mildly positive on support via hanging out. I don't really understand it (as in I don't experience support from something similar) but it feels like a fun, low effort way to help people.
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