I paused for a few seconds, not wanting to feed my friend a load of optimistic horseshit. I also wanted her to know that I could handle the news, no matter how bad it got, and that I didn’t need it to be sugarcoated. But how could I validate the gravity of Carla’s situation while showing her that I was a good friend and could handle really bad news?
I told Carla the story of a college friend who had MS. Her condition got so bad that she ended her life by starving herself to death.
PS: Thanks to Carla’s gracious understanding and forgiveness, our friendship remains incredibly close, and I went on to learn a bunch of better ways to support a friend.
In his memoir A Grief Observed, C. S. Lewis writes about the loss of his wife to cancer: “I see people as they approach me, trying to make up their minds whether they’ll say something about it or not. I hate if they do, and if they don’t.” We are mercurial creatures in times of loss and transition, so the reality is there is no silver bullet when it comes to being there for someone in her darkest hour. It’s important, however, to not make things worse.
OUR DEFENSES
CAN BE OFFENSIVE.
A lot of our screwups, in our attempts to be comforting, are the result of subliminal impulses that psychologists—and most laypeople—refer to as “defense mechanisms.” These are the ways that our mind protects us from psychological pain. Often, they are helpful features of our psyche, but sometimes, our efforts to shield us from pain can get in the way of our being supportive. We’ll describe a few of these defenses, and then you can see how they play out in some common “yikes, don’t say this” scenarios.
•DENIAL This is when we don’t accept reality or the facts because they’re too painful. We simply pretend that the bad thing is not happening.
•PROJECTION This is when we attribute our own thoughts and feelings to someone else who does not have those thoughts and feelings.
•DISPLACEMENT This is when a person’s new trauma brings up our old trauma from the past. It can even make us get more emotional now than when we first experienced the hardship. (One example would be getting really angry at your friend’s recent ex because you never got to express that anger at your own ex.)
•INTELLECTUALIZATION When we want to avoid feeling emotional pain, our intellect can take over. Instead of feeling for someone, we analyze them or their situation.
When you read a lot of the “don’t say this” examples in this chapter, you can rest assured that these impulses are completely natural. And yet, as natural as they may be, they should be restrained.
ME! ME! ME! PS: ME.
You know how it goes: You’re telling a story about an incredibly hard thing in your life, like the time you had back surgery and couldn’t walk for days. Your friend leans forward, and you think he’s going to say something supportive. Instead, he says:
Or you could be describing the heartbreak of yet another failed infertility treatment, and your friend pipes up with: “You guys should just go on vacation and relax. Worked great for me!” At the heart of many mistakes we make when trying to support someone is what we call “All About Me Syndrome.” According to our research (and our own personal experience), AAMS happens a lot.
It makes sense, and we’ve all done it. Grasping for the right words, we try to relate, or pontificate, or do something to help us connect to the issue. If there’s anything we feel comfortable talking about, it’s our own lives, so when we’re faced with someone else’s unknown, uncomfortable scenario, it’s natural to want to bring the conversation back to the familiar territory of our own personal experience.
COMPARISONS ARE ALWAYS ANNOYING.
When we’re trying to relate to someone in their difficult time, our most common instinct is to compare it to our own situation. Like we describe on this page in chapter 4, when doing so, it may seem altruistic to help someone not feel alone. But in fact, comments such as “I know how you feel” or “That’s so much like what happened to me” can close off opportunities to learn what the person in crisis is feeling. As one divorced person said: “My mother believed that my divorce would be just like hers. She didn’t want to, or couldn’t, see that my divorce was different, that I am different!” As someone who lost both parents said: “In general, I’m surprised by how folks are quick to start telling their own story but not really care about yours.”
That doesn’t mean you can’t say that something similar happened to you, but if you do, be very mindful to say little more than that, and keep the conversation focused on the other person.
SEEING IT IN ACTION:
Theresa learns that her colleague, Richard, just lost his mother.
I’m sorry about your mother.
Thank you. She struggled with cancer for two years. It finally got the best of her.
My father died of a sudden heart attack five years ago. We didn’t even have a chance to say good-bye.
Wow, Theresa, I’m sorry to hear that.
You must feel relieved you could at least be there when she died.
In response to Theresa’s comments about feeling relieved, Richard has a few unappealing options if he wants to continue the conversation:
1.“Yeah, I guess I am relieved.”
2.“Not really relieved, no. It was terrible to watch her waste away in so much pain.”
3.“Perhaps I should feel grateful I was with her at the end.”
BREAKDOWN: Theresa’s conversational tactics include two common pitfalls. First, by comparing her experience to Richard’s, she changes the point of the conversation, which was empathy for Richard, to empathy for her, thus obligating Richard to address her feelings. Second, she is assuming, based on her own experience of disappointment at not being present when her father died, that Richard should experience relief at being present when his mother died.
Richard’s first response is to agree he is relieved, but with ambivalence, and so he doesn’t get to authentically express how he feels. Richard’s second response is very authentic, but defensive, meaning the conversation no longer feels supportive. Richard’s third response suggests he is avoiding Theresa’s judgment and unconvincingly acquiesces to “feeling grateful.” But mostly he’s probably just feeling annoyed by Theresa.
Let’s try this again:
I hear you just lost your mother.
Thank you. She struggled with cancer for two years. It finally got the best of her.
To offer better support, Theresa has a few alternative responses:
1.“I’m so sorry.” [Here, she ignores her own experience.]
2.“I’m sorry to hear that. I lost my father a few years ago. How are you doing?” [Here, she acknowledges going through something similar but keeps the focus on Richard’s feelings.]
3.“How was it seeing her go at the end of her life?” [Here, if Theresa wants to avail herself to hear more about Richard’s experience at the end of his mother’s life, she can ask about it. In so doing, she uses her own experience to infer its importance, but not to assume Richard’s feelings.]
This one’s important, so let’s see another example.
SEEING IT IN ACTION:
Take a look at a conversation that happened with one of our interviewees, Kelly, when she told her friend Jen over the phone about her recent diagnosis of cancer:
I have breast cancer.
Wow. Well, at least they know a lot about your kind. Because, you know I have cancer too. And they don’t know anything about my kind of cancer.
Yeah, I guess it’s good. Right. Um . . . except this kind of breast cancer is unique. Only 15 percent of breast cancers are “triple negative,” and they don’t have a lot of research on how to treat it other than with intense chemotherapy.
Well, I have to take a chemo pill every day to handle my cancer. And the effects are awful.
Well, um. My cancer is so aggressive, they’re giving me the maximum dose, which will be awful for like six months. Is your chemo pill the maximum dose?
No, but it still makes me tired. And
I will have to take it for life. Yours will be over in six months.
(approaching tears) Right, but at least you know that by taking your chemo pill you’ll survive. Right? I don’t know that!
You’ll probably survive.
(click)
Now, this is an extreme case of AAMS. However, it really did happen. And we can see how it could: Kelly’s friend was stressed about her own situation. Rightly so! However, maybe Jen wasn’t quite ready to speak to Kelly yet about her cancer diagnosis, because it was bringing up feelings about her own health. She couldn’t get out of her own problems long enough to be supportive in that conversation. This phenomenon is something that support groups are well aware of, and it’s why a common ground rule is about no one person’s situation being any worse or better than another’s. If you show up at a support group because you’re scared or feeling alone, then it doesn’t matter if you’re stage 1 or stage 3, because what matters is that you feel, well, scared and alone. As one woman we interviewed said, on people with healthy children who compare them to her child, who has special health needs: “No matter the intention, comparisons just don’t help.” End of story.
YOU’RE NOT AN EXPERT
As it turns out, if you’ve got the Internet, you can be an expert and create a theory on anything. Wine causes cancer. Miscarriages can be a result of too much coffee—or not enough coffee. Getting a divorce? There was an article just this past Sunday about how everyone else is too. That’s right, your marriage crumbling is just a generational thing! You’re not special; we’ll send you the link.
When it comes to being supportive, being smart matters way less than being kind (and well mannered). It’s fine if you have a theory about why your uncle has lung cancer, but he doesn’t need to hear your opinions now. As one woman explained to Kelsey regarding her mother’s oral cancer diagnosis:
“It was annoying that everyone asked if she was a smoker. Yes, she had smoked when she was younger, in the 1970s. But does that mean she deserved to get cancer? The question implied she ‘asked for it,’ and it felt totally unsympathetic.”
UNLESS YOU ACTUALLY ARE AN EXPERT, WHOSE EXPERTISE IS BEING ASKED FOR, HEARING NEWS OF SOMEONE’S CRISIS IS NOT THE TIME TO OFFER UP CASUAL THEORIES ABOUT THEIR MISFORTUNE.
Doing this leads to two hurtful implications: (1) the event was preventable and/or deserved, because if this person had only done X or Y instead they would be fine, and (2) your fact-finding mission is less about providing comfort than about “weeding out” the source of a problem—to make sure it doesn’t happen to you. A woman Kelsey interviewed was diagnosed with cancer and said about people asking her questions: “It feels like people are trying to use my situation to calculate their own risks.”
When you want to reach out to a person going through something that you’ve also experienced yourself, you can now see why it’s a good idea to restrain your normal, but incredibly unhelpful impulse to compare your situations. If you don’t feel prepared to handle someone else’s difficulty because of the intense feelings it brings up about your own, take a look at the Empathy Menu on this page and explore other ways of being there for your friend that don’t involve much talking about it. And if you want to talk about the feelings that are coming up for you as a result of a friend’s difficult time, talk to others about what’s going on—not your suffering friend.
PLEASE STOP WITH THE WORST-CASE SCENARIOS.
Whether it’s a comment on how much sleep deprivation a new parent should expect, or a listing of the statistics surrounding death rates and lung cancer, people do not feel comforted by worst-case scenarios. Even if they’re a pessimist, hearing someone else echo their worst fears is pretty much the opposite of comforting. Kelsey was surprised by her reaction to worst-case-scenario stories, as she’s generally someone most likely to see the glass half empty with a microbe of some infectious disease in the water. But when people would commonly mention a relative or friend who died of breast cancer, she found herself nearly heading to the toilet to throw up because she was so freaked out.
IT’S SAFE TO ASSUME THAT THEY’VE GOOGLED THEIR OWN SITUATION A LOT MORE THAN SOMEONE WHO ISN’T LIVING IT EVERY DAY.
What’s more, by offering up a worst-case scenario, you’re not sharing any information with the suffering person that they probably don’t already know. Someone who is about to be a new parent already knows their sleep is about to be permanently disrupted—got it, thanks!—and a person with lung cancer is probably all too aware of their own mortality. We get that your friend doesn’t want to hear a bunch of optimistic BS, but your friend doesn’t want to hear this incredibly depressing and scary version of the future, either. Who would? As much as this rule requires considerable restraint for some, it’s best to remember:
WORST-CASE SCENARIOS MAKE PEOPLE FEEL EVEN MORE AFRAID THAN THEY ALREADY DID.
SEEING IT IN ACTION:
Juan learns that his sister, Sue, is getting divorced.
Juan, I have some hard news to share. Carlos and I are getting divorced.
What? Oh, wow. That’s insane! How did this happen?
Well, it’s been coming for a while.
But you always seemed so happy!
There’s a lot to it.
But what about the house and kids? How the hell are you going to get by?
You know, this kind of thing happens to people all the time. The kids won’t even notice it happened. In fact, I am great! [Sue then hangs up and sobs, doubts her entire existence, and wants to punch Juan.]
BREAKDOWN: Juan’s panicked reaction to Sue’s news is rooted in concern, but his astonishment makes Sue feel judged, and his line of questioning makes her feel like he has zero faith in her ability to cope. Juan’s doomsday panic makes Sue want to:
1.Avoid his judgment; and
2.Reassure him. She does this by normalizing what she is going through: “It happens all the time,” and “It happens to lots of people.” Sue ends up having to both defend herself and comfort Juan, which is the opposite of how Juan probably intended for this to go down.
Why did Juan do this? It may be he is truly concerned about Sue, knowing, for example, that she and her husband just took on a major loan to buy their house. Or he is bringing his own fears into the situation, because he has contemplated these things against getting a divorce himself. One woman Kelsey spoke to described her father’s concern about her getting divorced. He asked that she try harder to save her marriage, but six months after she filed her divorce papers, her parents filed theirs. The point is: our own fears can come up when someone describes their difficult situation. Our job is to not act on those fears with a line of questioning or giving advice, but simply to find out how the person is doing.
Let’s try this again:
Juan, I have some hard news. Carlos and I are getting divorced.
Wow! That is surprising. How are you doing? [Here, Juan suggests surprise without panic. He doesn’t ask “What happened?,” assuming he will learn in time. He also shows interest in Sue’s feelings by immediately turning the conversation back to how she is doing.]
Here’s another option for Juan:
There are lots of things you must be thinking about right now. How are you doing? [Here, Juan is showing his concern by validating the hurdles that lie ahead of Sue without suggesting she is ignorant of them, and he makes it clear that he’s available to talk more about her feelings.]
It can be hard for the optimistically inclined among us to hear, but optimistic reactions, ones that people who are grieving might consider irrationally optimistic, can be even tougher to bear than pessimistic reactions. For people in crisis, ill-timed optimism just feels like a meaningless empty platitude, especially for a situation that really might not get better.
Research backs this up: unbridled positivity in an experience of failure or distress makes people feel worse, not better. What ours and the experience of many others also confirms is that putting a positive spin on something difficult usually winds up feeling like an e
ffort to get the griever to stop talking about it, making the griever shut down (and stop calling you).
YOU MAY VERY WELL BELIEVE THAT EVERYTHING HAPPENS FOR A REASON, OR THAT GOD HAS A PLAN. MANY PEOPLE DO. BUT THESE ARE YOUR BELIEFS, AND UNLESS YOU KNOW THAT THE SUFERING PERSON SHARES THEM, THEY LIKELY WON’T SERVE AS COMFORT THE WAY THEY MIGHT FOR YOU.
Eventually, with time and perspective, the person in crisis may be able to look back on this time in their lives and think, You know what, I can see how X good thing came out of that terrible event. Making meaning out of horrible situations does help people cope with them. But that kind of benefit is something we each arrive at (or not) on our own, in our own time. No amount of force-fed positivity will help, unless the suffering person is ready to go there. And in the immediate aftermath of a diagnosis, death, or loss, very few people are.
YOUR JOB IS TO HEAR, NOT REDUCE SOMEONE’S WORRY.
AN INCOMPLETE COLLECTION OF
UNHELPFUL STATEMENTS
•“EVERYTHING HAPPENS FOR A REASON.”
•“THIS IS GOD’S PLAN.”
•“WHAT DOESN’T KILL YOU MAKES YOU STRONGER.”
•“IT COULD BE WORSE.”
•“AT LEAST IT’S NOT CANCER.”
•“JUST THINK POSITIVE THOUGHTS.”
•“GOD DOESN’T GIVE YOU MORE THAN YOU CAN HANDLE.”
There Is No Good Card for This Page 10