How to soothe others.

Here are some tips for comforting someone who is having a breakdown/crisis.

If having them actively do something is a possibility, you can encourage them to:

• Identify and express how they're feeling.
  
• Cry. Reassure them that it's okay and that it helps.
  
• Breathe deeply: Big diaphragm breaths (using the belly).
  
• Use grounding techniques such as 5-4-3-2-1. Examples here.
  
• Sing.
  
• Exercise.

Things that you can do directly include:

• Help them escape an upsetting scene. (Turning off a TV or other source of overstimulation would also count.)
  
• Validate their feelings. (e.g., "That sounds really frustrating." Or, "It's okay to feel upset by that. It's an upsetting thing to have happen.")
  
• Distract them. Talk about a subject that really engages them (not you).
  
• Use humor. (As long as it doesn't look like you're making light of them or their suffering.)
  
• Use active listening: Show that you hear. Use just a few words in response. Repeat their language back to them. (Don't repeat everything they say, though.)
  
• Tell them it's going to be okay.
  
• Praise them for the steps they take to regain control.
  
• Ask them what they need, unless that might be too hard a question. In which case guess and make some offers. (e.g., a person grieving might accept a hug, or an offer to drop off a frozen meal.)

The first three steps should be: Escape (if needed), identify/express feelings, validate feelings.

Do not minimize their troubles. If it seems like they're reacting disproportionately, the incident could have triggered an old trauma. Or it could be the straw that broke the camel's back. They are carrying burdens that you can't see.

If they are delusional/hallucinating, do not oppose, nor affirm, their delusions right now. Merely commiserate with how they feel about it.

(Sources: My professional training, my personal experience, and advice from wise and trustworthy people.)

I know why good people are doing wrong. (Covid-19)

I did it! I've just had the key insight that reconciles "everyone we believe to be good people" with "everyone exacerbating a deadly pandemic by behaving incautiously".

It requires some background info, but I'm going to lead with it anyway, so as to not keep you waiting.

The way people make social choices varies in the degree to which those choices are automatic versus considered. This is analogous to how people's immune systems vary in the degree to which they are sensitive to a potential threat.

There is no single "right" place to be on either of these spectra. Advantages can be found in both directions. Automatic social decisions have served most people well, but have failed them at a time when critical thought would have done the job correctly.

On the assumption that you don't study immunology, and/or haven't read Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow, here's the full explanation.

If your immune system is calibrated to respond to just about anything, then it will often get "false positives" when evaluating threats, and wind up attacking your own tissues, creating an autoimmune disorder... But it may also be robust enough to fight off an HIV infection without the help of medication! A less responsive immune system gives a much more relaxed life, without the chronic pain and exhaustion of an autoimmune disorder... Until it fails to fight off a deadly disease. Or, ironically, until you get a disease that gives you an autoimmune disorder. *cough*Covid*cough*

The level of sensitivity of your immune system is a balancing act between making wrong calls in two different directions. Either type of wrong call might be bad, so there's no single "correct" level of sensitivity that works under all circumstances.

Let's move on. Decision making falls into two broad categories: System 1 and System 2, to use Kahneman's terms. System 1 is automatic, effortless decision that comes from instinct or experience. System 2 is deliberate, conscious consideration. Both of these are extremely useful. In a social context, System 1 guides most people in how to make eye contact with a stranger in a park and say, "Good morning". People employ System 2 to face challenges, such as how to deal with a coworker spreading lies.

Sometimes, System 1 is the superior choice. You can use System 2 when saying "Good morning" to a stranger. Some people do. It is exhausting! Engaging System 2 for every social situation uses up a person's mental energy. Doing it all the time can lead to burnout. And in some situations, going with your gut feeling (System 1) will get you the right answer, when your System 2 just cannot fathom how you could know such a thing.

Sometimes, System 2 is the superior choice. System 1 makes people assume that nine-tenths of 110 is 100, until they think about it. System 1 might have you instinctively speak against your coworker and their lies. But then your other coworkers might just see you as getting defensive, and the managers may feel that because you're the one making a scene, you are the problem that they have to deal with. System 2 can help you plan to (depending on your knowledge and skills) win the good graces of your lying coworker, have their lies revealed unambiguously, or talk to Human Resources with the phrase "toxic work environment" to get their attention.

People vary greatly in the degrees to which they employ each of these systems, and even that varies across contexts. An experienced knitter can knit without thinking about it (using System 1), just to keep their hands busy while they watch a university lecture. But that knitter's social anxiety might have them using System 2 to try to read meaning into every social interaction, to figure out where they stand and what they should do.

People who have a great deal of social experience, and who do not have social anxiety, use System 1 for almost every social decision. This is a self-reinforcing pattern: Their willingness to do social stuff without worrying about it leads them to get a great deal of social experience, which in turn makes it easier to do social stuff without worrying about it. Their System 1 gets very good at usually making the correct decisions.

Some people don't conform to that. A "weird kid" with a reclusive childhood may not get enough social experience to use System 1 reliably. Autistic people, people who feel unsafe, and any others who "overthink" have a strong tendency to prefer System 2 to System 1, at least until they are comfortable and experienced with a skill. This can exclude them from the positive feedback loop of just carelessly socializing until they get good at it.

Some circumstances tend to automatically invoke System 1. Those are the ones exploited by salespeople and pundits to keep people away from the conclusions that conscious thought would bring. (See Robert Cialdini's Influence: Science and Practice for more on this.) "Do whatever you see everyone else doing" is an extremely powerful System 1 motivator.

And so we reach the pandemic. The American right wing resisted quarantines, lockdowns, vaccinations, and masks at all opportunities. After the lockdowns and mask mandates ended, if you were a normal person, acting cautiously and just going out occasionally as needed, whom did you see? Right wingers happily wandering unmasked through all public spaces, dining indoors, watching films, and attending crowded concerts. There may have been just as many people who knew better, but we were all staying home! We could speak out online, but we couldn't provide examples of good behavior in public, because we weren't in public.

Two splits happened. First, everyone who relied primarily on System 1 for their social decisions witnessed the largely unmasked public. Without conscious consideration, they did what they saw everyone else doing, because that has always worked for them!

This leaves those who did consciously consider the decision, either because they habitually use their System 2, or because they had a powerful reason such as being immunocompromized or having a vulnerable household member.

That group also split. Lots of us kept our masks and our distance. Some didn't understand the continued risks of Covid and long Covid. Some couldn't or wouldn't bear the inconvenience and isolation, and perhaps lacked the knowledge or ability to get affordable, high quality masks. Some let their fear of looking different outweigh the chance of killing people.

A frustrating and disheartening problem, aside from the pandemic disabling and killing people, is that only the second split was obvious! People have been rightly seeing this as, "We disabled and vulnerable people have been betrayed by a society of abled people who have chosen to murder us rather than wear a mask." Or, "We Autistic people are choosing to do the right thing, at great cost to ourselves, while allistic people will betray humanity for a hamburger." Or, "We who follow the research understand that Covid commonly causes brain damage, organ failure, ME/CFS, and other disabling and deadly conditions, even if it just presents outwardly as a cold. We're spreading the word, and nobody is listening or changing their behavior. Why the hell is nobody listening?"

We all saw the second split: The one where people thought about it, and chose to kill. It wrecked our faith in most of humanity. But we didn't notice the first split. We didn't see people using the system that they had always used to save them the immense trouble of thinking about social decisions: The system that had reliably worked for them in the past, but which was not calibrated to this particular situation, when "do whatever you see everyone else doing" yields the wrong answer.

It's not so much that they made an awful moral choice. They didn't make a choice at all.

This sounds like damning criticism. But remember that it came from where they happen to fall on the sliding scale of "how much to rely on System 1 in social situations". That spot does not have a moral value, good or bad. It often — almost always — works out better than being toward the more deliberately thoughtful end of the scale would. Just like an immune system that isn't always ramped up and trying to kill you, a reliance on System 1 is a good tool; it just happened to be the wrong tool for this circumstance.

I love my friends. I still love my friends who are doing the wrong thing. I think I understand now that it's not so much them betraying us: It is their behavioral habits betraying them.

None of this is to say that we shouldn't feel enraged by those who have thought about it, and still chose to kill, or by those who willfully refuse to hear about the dangers. That is enraging, and ought to be.

Nor does today's insight lead to a solution. Once someone has made a decision, even thoughtlessly, they will defend it, making up retroactive justifications: Both for the sake of their self-image and in order to not appear inconsistent. So we can't change minds just by asking them to start thinking. It will take much more than that. Going with the majority feels viscerally safe to them in a way that masking against an invisible virus does not. Fear of the mob is a powerful weapon of the right wing against everyone, not just against their own. The thoughtless no doubt feel personally attacked after they do exactly what they infer society is instructing them to do, only to have others of us tell them that they have done wrong. If we are treating them so unfairly (they feel), why should they listen to us? I don't know how to help them understand that they should fear Covid more than they fear getting dirty looks from fascists. But we can at least continue setting a good example, including being out in public in an N95 or P100 mask. You never know who just needs a little nudge to help them find courage.

Finally, to my friends and all others who are making the right choice: I appreciate you so damn much. I cannot overstate this. You are why I still have faith.

(Oh yeah, that! Thank people for their caution. Also, to be clear: If you're reading this, we're probably on the same side, whether our levels of precaution are in the top 90th percentile or top 99th. There are lots of valid ways to be cautious. My disappointment is directed only at people who behave like there's no pandemic, like it doesn't matter, or like they want to spread it. None of it is for people who are working hard to not be part of the problem.)