THERE IS NOTHING I WOULD NOT DO FOR THOSE WHO ARE REALLY MY FRIENDS. I HAVE NO NOTION OF LOVING PEOPLE BY HALVES; IT IS NOT MY NATURE.
–JANE AUSTEN–
NORTHANCER ABBEY
UHH . . . WOW. LET ME KNOW IF THERE’S ANYTHING I CAN DO?
–MOST OF US–
MOST OF THE TIME
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Introduction Life Spoiler Alert: Bad Things Happen
PART ONE: LAYING SOME GROUNDWORK Chapter 1 Put Your Own Oxygen Mask on First
Chapter 2 Standing in Their Shoes
PART TWO: THE THREE TOUCHSTONES OF SHOWING UP Chapter 3 Your Kindness Is Your Credential
Chapter 4 Listening Speaks Volumes
Chapter 5 Small Gestures Make a Big Difference
PART THREE: JUST HELP ME NOT BE A DISASTER Chapter 6 Please Never Say This (Thanks!)
Chapter 7 Empathy Directory: Dos and Don’ts Cheat Sheets
Conclusion You Got This!
References
About the Research
Acknowledgments
About the Authors
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
INTRODUCTION
LIFE SPOILER ALERT:
BAD THINGS HAPPEN
To begin, we present to you a true story about trying to console a friend in a tough situation, which shows how our best intentions can go off the rails fast.
Monique and Amy were out for a run one morning. As the two friends ran slowly up a hill, Monique chatted idly about herself: “What should I do this weekend? Maybe a movie . . . though I need a haircut. Something short? Should I get bangs again?”
Then Amy slowed to a stop.
“Monique,” Amy said, “I was diagnosed with breast cancer yesterday.”
Monique’s mouth went dry. What do I say? “I’m so sorry,” she said. “That must be so horrible for you.” Monique hugged her and quickly pulled away. Monique asked for more details, and as they talked, the initial shock wore off a bit. And then Monique said:
The two friends were at the bottom of the hill now. They stopped again, and Amy, as if catching her breath, stared at her incredulously.
“The movie?”
“Yeah,” Monique said. “With Debra Winger.”
“Right. And she’s a . . . young mother? Who dies of breast cancer?”
“Oh.” Monique’s mind tumbled and turned. She was talking about that movie, but she’d meant to reference another part—a funny part. Humor was always Monique’s first resort for everything, including being scared.
BUT MONIQUE HAD FORGOTTEN A KIND OF IMPORTANT DETAIL:
DEBRA WINGER DIED AT THE END OF THE MOVIE.
“Never mind!” Monique said. “Just kidding.”
“Wait. I just told you that I have cancer, and now you want me to watch the saddest movie of all time about someone who dies of cancer?”
“I’m a dumbass,” Monique said.
“Yes,” Amy said. “Yes, you are.”
We’ve all been there, haven’t we?
The phone rings, and someone you love is sobbing. Your gut tightens, your pulse quickens. A coworker’s child has been born with a serious heart condition, or someone’s husband has been in a car accident, or a friend has been diagnosed with a terminal illness.
WHATEVER IT IS,
A PERSON’S LIFE HAS JUST FALLEN APART, AND YOU FEEL AWFUL, AND YOU ALSO HAVE NO FREAKING CLUE WHAT TO SAY,
LET ALONE DO.
Well, there’s a reason you don’t know what to say. In some situations, there are absolutely no words that will make things better. There’s nobody on earth who can make everything okay for a mother who has lost her child, or for a man whose wife was diagnosed with cancer. That’s one reason many of us say nothing at all.
The bad news is that you’re right—you probably aren’t going to fix anyone’s pain with your words. But the good news is that no human being can, so there’s nothing wrong with you if you can’t come up with the Perfect Thing to Say.
“I genuinely think that anything anyone said to me, whenever they said it, was okay. Some things helped more than others, but anyone who had the courage to reach out and speak to me made me feel better.”
—Anne, who lost her mother
And doing something to help? Well, that’s even better. Figuring out what to do may sound harder than knowing what to say, but by the end of this book you will know how to do both. And it won’t be hard. You’ll simply learn all the ways in which you’re already good at being a friend, and we’ll help you with the rest.
WHISKEY FOR THE WOUNDED
This book is not chicken soup for the soul; it’s whiskey for the wounded. So don’t expect a self-help, miracle-making volume on how to “transform” you into the world’s most empathetic person. We will also assume that because you graduated from kindergarten, you already know that empathy and compassion are important, and that being a helpful friend is a good way to be. Another assumption we’ll take the liberty of stating right now: you are not perfect, and we don’t expect you to become perfect at this, because there’s no such thing anyway. We are not trying to make you a Textbook Gold Star Helper, creating yet another (impossible) goal.
NOPE.
The first time something unimaginably terrible happens to a friend—and it will happen at some point—you may get a pass for awkward behavior. Yet as time goes on, if you want to be a responsible grown-up, you’ve got to do a little better than that. When someone in your life is hurting, there are real, concrete ways to help. And that’s what we’re here for.
We know, however, that there are definitely times to not reach out, to not say anything—we can’t all show up at every bad turn in someone’s life. And equally true: not everyone wants you to be involved in their particular difficult situation. It’s not our intention to turn you into an overbearing do-gooder. Our goal is to help you get a basic foundation in giving comfort, assess the difference between being supportive and being a buttinsky, and ultimately, to help you move past just thinking about a suffering person, to actually doing something (even a small thing) if the situation calls for it, and doing it with confidence instead of fear of what could go wrong.
There are a few different ways to use this book. No doubt, many of you have a friend in crisis right now, and if that’s the case, you’re probably looking for some handy, practical things to say and do that will help today. You’ll find those in Parts 2 and 3. In fact, if you have only four minutes in which to figure out what to say to your grieving colleague, Part 3 has got you covered. For those who are ready, however, Part 1 gets at the hows and whys of our struggle to connect in times of suffering. It offers ways to reflect on (and put down) our own psychological baggage and fears, which are often what get in the way of reaching out at all.
Taking the time to work on your mind-set as well as the skills we offer in this book will make your life easier, not harder. That might seem counterintuitive, since reaching out means adding one more to-do item in your already busy schedule. But you’ll find that making the effort to connect is worth the peace of mind it brings—not to mention a better night’s sleep, because you aren’t lying awake at night feeling like a terrible person for not emailing so-and-so.
In addition to the feeling of well-being that comes with aligning your actions with your intentions, this empathy practice will result in more meaningful connections. Not just in terms of what you give, but in terms of what you receive. Your circle of care will widen, from your best friend to a colleague to a neighbor to a casual acquaintance to even a stranger. It sounds paradoxical, but it’s true: being there in moments of suffering can actually
lead to more joy.
WHY LISTEN TO US?
We are people. Like many of you, we’ve had our ups and downs in life, and as a result, we both ended up fascinated by this topic, but in completely different ways. It’s safe to say that our early twenties pretty much sucked, though for different reasons.
I had lost my mother to mental illness when I was twenty-one years old. She was my only parent. I had no siblings, aunts, or uncles, and my grandparents had long since passed away. Despite her illness, my mother and I were always incredibly close; and then, she decided to stop taking psychotropic medication. The result was paranoia and delusions that became all consuming. After I tried getting her into a hospital for help, she never spoke to me again; and a few years later, she died. When my mother rejected me, my tiny, but entire family was gone. It was a loss that comes with no ritual for mourning—where, save my closest friends, the “death” of the dearest person in my life was basically unmentioned.
When I was twenty-four years old, I was diagnosed with stage 3 Hodgkin’s lymphoma. After nine months of chemo and radiation, I went into remission and have been cancer free for fifteen years (knock on wood!). The most difficult part of my illness wasn’t losing my hair, or being erroneously called “sir” by Starbucks baristas, or sickness from chemo. It was the loneliness and isolation I felt when many of my close friends and family members disappeared because they didn’t know what to say or said the absolute wrong thing without realizing it.
And, for both of us, with age came more challenging stuff (as is normal for us humans). Cancer showed up again: Emily lost her college roommate and her father-in-law to it, and Kelsey was treated for breast cancer, twice. Our experiences alone didn’t make us empathy experts—they just made us understand how important it is, in difficult times, to have support from the people in our lives.
But without clear instructions about what to do or say, it can be easy to doubt your own capacity to provide support. And with an absence of social ritual or models about how to support someone in a really difficult time, we may not recognize that doing or saying something—anything—could be a really big deal for someone who is scared or grieving.
With all that in mind, we have both worked in our individual ways to make it a little easier for people to show up when life is hard.
EMILY USED HER PLATFORM AS A GREETING CARD WRITER AND ILLUSTRATOR, her experience as a cancer survivor, and the lessons she learned around the loss of her close college friend to launch her line of Empathy Cards, specifically designed to give us more authentic ways of connecting around illness and grief. KELSEY FOUNDED AN ORGANIZATION CALLED HELP EACH OTHER OUT, which provides Empathy Bootcamps, workshops on Being There for people we care about, developed with input from empathy experts and advisers from the fields of business, medicine, and grief counseling. To inform these workshops, and to write this book, she also did extensive online survey research with over nine hundred people, and interviewed fifty other people who had been through all kinds of difficult times, all to learn what support worked, and what didn’t.
What Kelsey learned from her research and from Empathy Bootcamps offered in university, hospital, and business settings, and what Emily found in the incredible response to her Empathy Cards, is this:
WHETHER YOU’RE A PROFESSIONAL SOCIAL WORKER OR A FREAKED-OUT BEST FRIEND, IF YOU’RE STRUGGLING WITH HOW TO SUPPORT SOMEONE WHO IS HURTING, YOU ARE NOT ALONE.
This is something virtually everyone wrestles with at some point. Both of us definitely have.
All our research and engagement around grief has enhanced, and considerably changed, our own previously held beliefs about what is and isn’t supportive. We want to spare you from making the same mistakes we’ve made and offer you what we’ve learned in a straightforward, we’ve-all-been-that-dumbass kind of way.
OUR APPROACH
Our approach boils down to one word: trust. When it comes to supporting the people you care about, trusting yourself—your ability to be kind and care, your values, and what you can authentically do—is the key to navigating life’s worst neighborhoods.
To help you learn to trust yourself in this arena, we dive into three credos in this book that we call:
THE THREE TOUCHSTONES OF SHOWING UP:
1)YOUR KINDNESS IS YOUR CREDENTIAL.
2)LISTENING SPEAKS VOLUMES.
3)SMALL GESTURES MAKE A BIG DIFFERENCE.
By exploring the meaning as well as the practical application of these touchstones in your life, you will feel more confident to give.
If you think an awkward response to a friend’s crisis will make them feel bad, then you should know that if you say nothing, they will likely feel worse. But don’t worry: you’re not on your own. This book will empower you with the confidence to reach out to others—friends, family, acquaintances, and even strangers—in their difficult times, fostering everlasting (or momentary) deep connections. We will help move you past the analysis paralysis of just thinking about a person who’s having a hard time to actually doing something for that person, and doing it with good judgment.
IF YOU TAKE ONE THING AWAY FROM THIS BOOK, IT SHOULD BE THIS:
IF YOU’RE CHOOSING BETWEEN
SAYING SOMETHING
AND SAYING NOTHING,
YOU’RE ALMOST ALWAYS BETTER OFF
SAYING SOMETHING.
And when someone in your life is hurting, there are real, concrete ways to help. CHANCES ARE, YOU’VE PROBABLY GOT A FRIEND IN NEED AT THIS VERY MOMENT.
PART ONE:
LAYING SOME
GROUNDWORK
CHAPTER 1:
PUT YOUR OWN OXYGEN MASK ON FIRST
“I think people don’t ask or say anything because it’s an uncomfortable topic. In the meantime, I’m going through a huge life transition and it’s like the elephant in the room that is not being addressed. I think that’s the main thing—that most people just don’t ask or don’t say anything.”
—Carla, divorced
It goes like this: A work colleague loses his spouse, and you, who have never experienced a loss like this, don’t know what to do to help. (Hell, you never even knew he had a spouse.) For his part, well, he’s always been supersupportive when you faced a tough deadline, and he’s always just the right amount of office-friendly. You’ve shared pictures of your cats doing weird things. You definitely care about each other, but you aren’t close friends.
SO YOU DO WHAT MANY OF US DO IN THIS KIND OF SITUATION:
YOU TOTALLY AVOID THE BEREAVED MAN’S GAZE AT EVERY TURN.
But it’s not as if you’re an uncaring person, so you wait patiently for the exact right words to come to you. And they will come, you tell yourself. Weeks go by, and they never do. And now, you’re skipping your coffee breaks to avoid running into your colleague at the vending machine, and every time you see him, you feel like a terrible person, and you also really miss coffee.
It happens to us all—a flash of goodwill when something bad happens to people fades into a deep-seated regret, and even shame. But it’s probably better this way, right? You don’t want to upset him—best to play it safe. But deep down, safe feels like a cop-out.
If you’re somebody who’d rather take the long way back to your desk to spare yourself an awkward encounter with the bereaved . . . take heart, because we have all been there. How do we move from uncomfortable avoidance to actually saying or doing something helpful?
We start by first trusting that we are capable of reaching out.
And that means looking at what makes us so insecure about reaching out in the first place. We have a few ideas, which we’re serving up as short exercises below. These exercises take just a little time and preparation to do, and they address some common hang-ups about reaching out that we develop over our lifetimes. Get out some stickies, a writing pad, or journal, and feel free to see if a friend or two are game to do this with you. Or just read along “as if,” giving yourself time to pause and reflect on the questions.
EMPATHY WARM-UP:
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WHAT’S YOUR ROADBLOCK?
Think about an instance when you shied away from someone in a difficult time—a good friend, colleague, neighbor, family member, anyone. We’re not talking about someone who pushed your boundaries and drained all your empathy fuel. We’re talking about the person you wanted to reach out to, but didn’t. And importantly, not because they thought you should, but because you thought you should.
Now, think about your reasons for not reaching out. If you’re alone, feel free to write them down on a piece of paper. If you’re with a friend, write them down, and then use a few minutes to each share your stories of shying away. (You may be surprised to discover just how long this conversation can be.)
When reflecting on your reasons for shying away and feeling like you let yourself and/or your loved ones down, here is something to remember: we all carry regrets. In her Empathy Bootcamps, Kelsey has collected hundreds of people’s regrets about shying away. Here are just a few:
THREE
EMPATHY ROADBLOCKS:
What makes us shy away? Meet the Empathy Roadblocks:
•FEAR OF DOING THE WRONG THING
“Oh God, what if I make it worse?” We feel pressure to cure the situation with the perfect gesture, and if we fail, we fear we’ll ruin a relationship, or just embarrass ourselves.
•FEAR OF SAYING THE WRONG THING
We don’t know if we are supposed to know certain things; we don’t want to make someone feel like the source of gossip; we don’t want to bring up negative feelings if someone wasn’t thinking about that awful thing that happened. If we’re not really close to the person (e.g., a coworker), we might feel like it’s not our “place” to help, and that when we do, we’ll say something that makes them feel worse.
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