By Dr May Chi, Clinical Psychologist
I remember thinking, I hope I don’t have to attempt a resuscitation tonight. I’m not that kind of doctor. It looked like a typical renovation site. The front door of the townhouse was open. The radio was blaring. The tradie’s car was parked across the shared driveway, windows down.
Except it was 8pm, and there were no lights on inside. The air itself felt still. I remember thinking, I should probably grab my neighbour, Peter, before I go any further. If I’m going to find a dead body, I’d rather not do it alone.
Our perception of the world is never objective. It’s influenced by our estimate of how well resourced we are to navigate the situation we find ourselves in.
A social psychology experiment revealed that having a friend beside you literally changes your sense of the world and the challenges you face within it. Specifically, the series of studies showed that if a friend was standing beside you as you looked up a hill, you tended to see the slope as less steep than if you were alone. This is because psychosocial resources, such as friendship, reduce the level of energy you mentally outlay to tackle problems. We expect to expend less energy because someone is there to help us.
But not just anyone. Specifically, it is someone you perceive as a friend. The quality and shared history of this friend matters. The longer the acquaintance, the more psychosocial support they were perceived to provide. A friend for whom you had feelings of closeness, warmth, and happiness further improved your sense of resourcefulness.
In these studies, how you felt didn’t affect how steep the climb looked. Instead, having a friend mattered more than whether you were angry, sad, depressed, anxious, stressed, or happy.
I knocked on Peter’s door and explained the situation with a false sense of calm. He brought his torch. Good thinking, Peter. Together, we entered the dark house. I don’t watch horror films, so I didn’t have the script for how these things played out, but I imagined that I wouldn’t survive even the suspense.
Plastic sheets flapped in the non-existent breeze. The reedy thread of torchlight didn’t quite illuminate the shadowy corners. Peter was the one to find the body. The circumstances were suspicious, but not in the way I had feared. The tradie had set up a camp bed and was taking a nap.
“He’s just sleeping,” Peter said.
“Yes, but is he breathing?” I was too worked up to abandon my worst-case scenarios. We squinted at the prone body for long moments, seeing if we could catch signs of breathing. I couldn’t see it. I was barely breathing myself.
“Oi! Mate!” Peter bellowed, his booming voice startling the man from his slumber. I remember thinking, Ok, well, if you’re alive, then you can move your car so that it’s not blocking my driveway.
On the way back, I shared my relief with Peter. “I’m glad he wasn’t dead.”
And in that, I wasn’t alone.