I think that it depends. People have an idea of where they want the conversation to go ("I want to talk about my rough breakup") and you should not steer it too hard ("No let's talk about my funny breakup story").

Sometimes people want validation in numbers and it's fine to relate. "Ha! I've been there too. My kid did the same last week. Children am I right?"

Sometimes they want to process something by talking about it and you should let it happen. "Oh man that must suck. How did it play out?"

Besides, relating can feel like one-upping. For example someone tells you about their trip to Paris and you mention how you've stopped there on your unicycle trip around the world. Oh well guess their trip is nothing to celebrate then. Use your experience to relate to their feelings, not to diminish them.

Usually, you can relate while keeping your anecdote to yourself. "Oh it's a beautiful city isn't it? How did you like it?"

Just wanted to mention here, though it may not be the most subject-appropriate place, that i'm fascinated by your website (allaboutBerlin) and wanted to ask you a couple of questions about it.

The contact section on your site emphatically states that you're on vacation and not answering emails, so I have to ask, would you mind if I contact you briefly by some means that works for you, at a time/date that you find convenient? I promise to be brief and not to release a flood of correspondence verbiage. Also, in case I might be giving the impression, this is not a sales pitch of any kind. Thanks!

Go ahead. Just email me. I'll answer you next time I'm on my laptop. It's not problem at all.

Wonderful. Thanks. I'll email you via my protonmail address later today.

I question it quite often. I think relating can be very useful for both people involved. I do think that sometimes it may be useful for one and not the other, but I don't think it's as simple as saying to not "one-up" someone. The intention may not to be to one up and yet the other perceives it that way. Or the intention actually could be the one up and the other _doesn't_ perceive it that way.

Overall I think we talk way too much about getting better at listening and not nearly enough at getting better at talking.

EDIT: OK, I can get better at listening/reading lol, as the author said the following:

> One reason is this myth: that the good listener just listens. This egregious misunderstanding actually leads to a lot of bad listening, and I’ll tell you why: because a good listener is actually someone who is good at talking.

I agree that I disagree with this as a blanket statement, but as a baseline, I would agree. The real issue here is why/how you're relating A lot of people relate poorly. The common mistake is as the author points out: to compare experiences. This comparison is almost never useful. Either your experience was worse, which feels invalidating to a listeners feelings or your experience was not as bad, which feels like an inauthentic relation.

IMO relating does a lot better when it serves a purpose useful to the listener. A few that I have found:

    1. when you're validating how they've already expressed how they feel. sometimes people doubt their own feelings and so you can use your own related experience to show them that you felt a very similar way when you were in a similar situation. caveat: dont ever tell them how they should feel, only validate what they've already expressed. also, if theyre not doubting their emotions, dont do this either...its not useful at best

    2. when you're trying to understand how they're feeling (e.g. one time my dog died and I would just always expect to see her around the corner, but she was never there...is that like what you're feeling?)

    3. when you're helping out with things that need to be done: (e.g. my parents passed away too, do you want help with sending out funeral invitations / finding a cemetery / etc)

    4. if they dont know what to do / what options are and you relate different experiences about how you may have dealt with a similar situation.

Caveats:

    1. Relating without a purpose will come off as a comparison, dont do it.

    2. Not every purpose is valid for every person. A lot of these reasons require that the person trust you to an extent. E.g. offering to help a stranger with their funeral obligations will come off very poorly.

    3. You have to have actual relevant experience with something, trying to shoehorn something tangentially related comes off very poorly.

    4. You have to know how to deliver the related experience

    5. They have to be ready to hear it: if someone is talking, dont interrupt. dont change the topic. only use the solutions above if the person seems like they are looking for it.

    6. tons more.

In sum, there are reasons to relate, but there are lots of potholes here so its very easy to get wrong. So, as a general statement I would agree, but if you can do these above things well, it can really help people when they may need it.

This was the only point I also disagreed! And i also share the same sentiment you observed.

But thinking about it, it highly depends on the situation and the way someone phrases it. The example used in the article is exaggerated. Relation creates a sense of shared feelings only if you are trying to approximate the other person's feeling and thoughts and if you disengaged directly after you said "i also stubbed my toe once". Most of the time, people don't stop there and keep on telling THEIR story and how they felt, instead of just being an interjection. This is not the fault of people, but a normal way of most people doing conversation. I guess the author is thinking about these persons.

I guess this is advice specifically for if you're a therapist, or a not-really-a-therapist-but-acting-as-one such as a manager trying to support an upset employee. The distinguishing part of these conversations is they're not symmetrical - the focus is supposed to be on one person much more than the other.

(Maybe "if they're crying, don't relate" would be a more focused heuristic.)

In an everyday "you've met someone and want to get to know them better" situation, relating sounds like a good thing all round: they share something about themselves, you share back with something related about yourself.

I agree, I've read/heard this quite a few times, I'll continue to do it, apologies to whomever might suffer at my hands/words because of it.

I find it a lot easier to empathise with things that I've experienced, and it feels natural to me to share that. It would also console me better if someone "related to me", for example, sharing a few words about a common experience. Given that I don't think I'm too deviant, I'll assume enough other people would feel the same.

If I know someone else prefers a different approach I am probably able to deploy reason and correct course.

I too like the "sharing a few words about a common experience" approach (without hijacking the conversation). It's nice to know that the other person has better chances to actually understand for real :-)

Yeah I'm skeptical of that one, depending on the context. I think relating is a critical part of normal human relationship building. How could I ever get to know someone who only ever listens to me and never relates back to themselves? They would get to know me, but I would never get to know them.

However, I do think it seems like the right advice for the orthogonal goal of being supportive to someone, either in a professional support setting (therapy, mentoring, coaching, etc.) or just if you can notice in the context of personal relationships when that's what the other person needs or would benefit from in that particular setting.

Like, if I'm just out for a normal drink date with a friend or my spouse, just chatting and shooting the shit, it would be ridiculous to never relate back to them. But if they texted me and said "hey can we meet up? I'm really struggling with my dad's illness and want to talk", then yeah, keeping myself out of it is the way to go. (Which I don't often do a good job of though... so maybe doing that more often in more situations would be good as practice.)

Maybe relating is for certain contexts. If we are listening in a business meeting, there is a need to understand an idea or concept, not the person saying the thing. If we are listening in a personal relationship, the need may be to listen to how someone feels or what they are experiencing (which sometimes is work related).

If we feel something while listening to those types of conversation, experiencing a physiological emotionally-driven output, we can "relate" to the feeling through things that have happened to us personally. We may want to say, "I felt that before!" by explaining why, but it's likely enough to just say, "I feel" without changing the subject to our own personal experience.

Empathy, which is what many types of listening is about, is a whole other factor in good listening skills. If we simply note we understand the emotional output, that's not real empathy. It takes understanding it, feeling it in body, and then maybe taking a compassionate action to really hear and feel someone.

In my case, relating is what makes me felt listened and understood. I feel that by "relating" many people mean "comparing" - and this one is annoying.

At the same time, I cannot stand "it must be hard" or similar platitudes, which can be given without any context; these would not even need ChatGPT but can be generated by a simple Python script.

Sometimes. Usually people don't like "relaters".

Autistic people are usually great relaters, which gets them disliked as conversation partners when the other side tries to confess something or talk about some personal issue they have.

I think conversation is one of those things that can't be distilled down into an exact science. You just have to figure out what is and isn't a good thing to say based on the context and they other person's behavior and tone. Any list like this will always feel off because good listening is an intuitive process.

I hate it. It just feels like a one-up attempt. Keep your shit to yourself, this is not a competition.

>Does anyone else question this common piece of advice?

Absolutely. One thing I notice is that the people sharing this "advice" - while positioning themselves as amazing listeners - seem to have a disgust reaction to people sharing details about their own lives in a conversation.

Personally, if I have something I would like to speak about and feel heard about, I feel most heard when the other person is able to share some of their own thoughts and experiences. I absolutely do not feel heard when they completely remove themselves and their life from the conversation, and hit me with lifeless "open-ended questions" and "that sounds tough" platitudes that could have come from a blog post.

I commented this earlier as well. Relating brings a lot of energy to a conversation, but it's also trickier. I wish I had a better solution

When I was at Amaravati the head monk constantly brought up stories from his life, sometimes endlessly, and it was always nice to sit next to him since it was so energetic.

Here, I related something, and it brings a new thing to talk about, a few new edges.

I definitely do this a lot. I would say I’m somewhat self-centred, but not a sociopath!

I think I just make a connection with what they’re saying and then share my experience to commiserate, and to find wisdom/learnings from that experience to see if they apply.

That’s my conscious assessment anyway. But I feel like I shouldn’t do it.

Anyone have tips to avoid this? How do I prevent myself from relating their experience to my own?

I feel that being able to completely ignore your own experience (or even opinion) and adapt purely to what they need at this moment is true selflessness, and it’s something I’ve always struggled with.

(Ironic comment I know).

I'm not sure if there really is true selflessness. I think, for example, for me to even understand what's happening in this text exchange, I'm trying to imagine how you interpret the words while also recalling how I interpret the words and comparing the two. I'm trying to imagine how you're feeling, while also paying attention to how I'm feeling.

It just seems to be a pretty constant (if not always there) comparison and harmonization.

In other words, how are we supposed to understand the world without relating it to our experience?

Yeah calling anyone who tries to relate a sociopath? I'd replace that paragraph with "I'm hurt" but I think thats no less silly advice.