Two Ways to Unwittingly Make Your Loved One Feel Worse

It would seem that one of the key jobs for a good relationship partner is to contribute to that partner’s well-being. However, not everyone is equally skilled at performing this job. Nate’s partner Shelley tends to worry a great deal over little things, often staying up late at night nervously tossing and turning. Ordinarily, Nate can calm Shelley down pretty easily by making a joke or taking on a few more household chores. This time, though, Shelley is inconsolable. It was a bad week at work, and things only seem to be heading in a far worse direction, with possible job loss on the horizon. What can Nate do to help?

The Good and the Bad in Other-Focused Emotion Control

A new study by University of Toronto’s Yitong Zhao and colleagues (2026) adds to the growing body of research on other-focused emotion regulation, in which people try to help those they care about feel better. Shelley, the eternal worrywart, usually manages to figure out how to pull out of an emotional slump. But this time, nothing seems to be working. It would seem that this situation would be a good candidate for Nate to put these other-focused emotion regulation tools into action.

As Zhao et al. point out, the most common way that people try to regulate their own emotions is through cognitive reappraisal, the reframing of a situation so that it doesn’t seem quite so bad. If it was up to Nate and he was feeling this worried, he might tell himself that the job situation could have a silver lining, or that maybe he’s just taking things the wrong way and everything is fine. However, he’s learned that Shelley doesn’t respond to these mental gymnastics, which only seem to make her feel more stressed. What’s worse, Shelley shoots back from these attempts with complaints about Nate’s apparent lack of empathy.

The problem here is that, in the words of the authors, “managing a recipient’s emotions may introduce unique challenges, given that regulation may not match the recipients’ preferences and good intentions may get lost in translation” (p. 1508). Reappraisal runs the risk of invalidating the recipient’s emotions. This falls into the general category of backfiring when you try to change a loved one’s personality or behaviors. Rather than say that the person you love is wrong, flawed, or misinterpreting situations, what’s called “decommitment,” you instead should use “commitment” strategies in which you don’t question but instead support the other person’s interpretation. From there, you can suggest ways to manage the emotion in ways that don’t make the stressed-out person feel invalidated.

Testing Decommitment vs. Commitment in Other-Focused Emotion Control

Across three studies spanning different approaches, Zhao et al. compared commitment with decommitment strategies of other-focused emotion control on outcomes that included relationship quality of well-being of the partner. The samples included demographically diverse online and community samples.

The comparison of emotion control strategies included these two basic demarcations:

Decommitment tactics: Reducing severity (“It is not that bad”) and situational acceptance (“It’s out of your hands”)

Commitment tactics: Enhancing controllability (“you can handle it”) and findings benefits (“it will make you stronger”).

The findings consistently supported the benefits of commitment vs. decommitment tactics. Challenging a partner’s interpretations either made things worse or had no appreciable positive impact. Commitment strategies, in contrast, were associated with better outcomes. The key attribute of the commitment strategy, they conclude, is that it helps your partner “generate a novel framework” (p. 1523). It all comes down to helping a stressed love one switch goals rather than switch the way the situation is perceived.

Turning Decommitment into Commitment Strategies

It can be very tempting to use the tried-and-true cognitive reappraisal mantra that’s so generally accepted in the fields of stress, anxiety, and depression. Stress may be, as is often said, “in the mind of the beholder,” but if the mind is someone else’s, not yours, a challenging reappraisal can make that other person feel not only misunderstood, but inadequate.

The simplicity of the commitment strategies makes the findings from the U. Toronto study even more impressive. Reinforcing your loved one's psychological strength can be a matter of uttering just a few simple, if not obvious, words of encouragement. However, the authors do go on to suggest some deeper and perhaps less obvious reasons for why this all should work.

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One is that through this strategy, you communicate that you want to help, not judge. Second, you show that you are willing to do what's needed to ease the other person's stress. Does your loved one want you to be a sounding board? Or might you be needed to validate the fact that the situation actually is as bad as the other person thinks it is? In the example of Nate and Shelley, by letting Shelley know that the work thing actually is a problem would be more effective than if Nate dismissed Shelley’s response as usual over-the-top worrying over inconsequential problems.

Another benefit of commitment strategies is that they support the other person’s sense of competence. The stress literature is clear that one major source of stress is the belief that the challenge you face is greater than your ability to handle it. Bolster your sense of competence, and the challenge may fade in proportion.

To sum up, when stress reduction is a two-person process, it’s important to take the other person's perspective. Rather than hear your supposedly “logical” counter-position, the person you love will benefit more from hearing that the stress is real, and so is your loved one’s ability to handle it.