This Client Learned The Most Significant Lesson About Grief
And all it took was a statement.
As I mentioned in the article All The Training In The World Can’t Prepare You For This, grief assumes its own “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy: it doesn’t ask for permission to enter your life, and it never tells you before it does.
When someone is experiencing grief, the natural inclination is to want to help them, which we assume is accomplished by removing the grief—or at least lessening the effect of it. How we do this is through unhelpful platitudes of encouragement with their typical responses, such as:
“Well, they’re in a better place now.”
Response: Oh really? Have YOU been there? How the hell would you know?
“He/she is always with you.”
Response: Really, where? Do you see him? I don’t see him. If he’s here then why hasn’t he said hello? And if you can see and talk to him, then why don’t you ask him where Jimmy Hoffa is because THAT’S a puzzle I want to solve.
“I know how you feel.”
Response: Oh, do you? When did you learn to read hearts and minds? You can’t possibly know how I feel. You weren’t close to her, you barely knew her and you don’t know our connection. But since you think you know, why don’t you tell me how I feel so I can make sense of it. Enlighten me.
“It could always be worse.”
Response: Thanks, asshole.
“They wouldn’t want you to be [upset/angry/sad…].”
Response: How do YOU know what they want? So, let me get this straight. So-and-so doesn’t want anyone to miss them and instead, they just want to be dead and for us to go about our normal day? Does that even make sense to you?
Nobody wants to be told any of these things. They’re not helpful, they’re not encouraging, and they generally make the other person feel worse because now they feel disconnected from you, too.
Try This Instead
Recently I had a client who experienced significant loss within a short time period. She works long days as a police officer and when she comes home, she doesn’t want to cry because she wants to remain “strong” for her children.
“What makes you think holding back tears is ‘strong’?” I asked. She was taken aback. Up until this moment, she had always associated crying with weakness.
Do you want your kids to harbor their feelings and never tell you anything?
Would you tell your children to suppress their emotion or “deal with it later?”
Do you want to teach your children how to label like this?
These were all questions I asked, to which she responded with an emphatic no. She saw crying as weak, and by holding back her tears she thought she was being strong. But the truth is, she was behaving contrary to the strength she was capable of. She was demonstrating exactly what I talked about in the article The Warrior and the Warfighter: Metaphors For What It Means To Be A Man (yes, it applies to women, too). When I told her it’s not only natural to cry but healthy and therapeutic, her eyes opened up and her shoulders slouched as if I had just removed a 40lb pack off her shoulders. She wiped away tears. At the end of the session, she thanked me for learning that it was okay to cry, and all I did was validate how she felt with what she’s been wanting to do this whole time.
Validation is the single most important gift you can give anyone.
What is validation? To validate somebody is to acknowledge the other person’s feelings without judgment or criticism. It is accepting that how they feel, is how they feel. It’s not right, it’s not wrong. It just is. Invalidating someone’s feelings is to deny, ignore, or reject how they feel. Where this shows up most often is in parenting, and I shared how invalidating a child’s emotions creates insecure attachment in this article. Similarly, invalidating a partner’s feelings only creates disconnection in relationships.
When you invalidate, you disconnect and disengage from the relationship.
And yes, it’s easy to overcomplicate things when trying to decide what to say to people experiencing grief, anxiety, depression, sadness, or any other uncomfortable feeling. Oftentimes we want to solve other people’s problems, thinking that offering positivity will displace the negativity they’re experiencing. Don’t do that. Instead, just shut up. Stop thinking about what to say next and just listen. Then, validate them with something like:
✔️ “This must be such a hard time for you having to balance work and the grief of your friend/family member.”
✔️ “You must feel so alone with your best friend gone who you enjoyed so many good times with.”
✔️ “You miss them so much.”
That’s it. That’s all you have to do. If intuiting emotion is too difficult for you because you’re a dude and emotions are scary, keep it simple with, “This must be such a difficult time.” Then stop talking, and repeat. AND, if you’re a dude and emotions ARE scary for you, then ask yourself what it means to be a man, because if it means protecting others and doing hard things, then all the more reason to run toward your own fear.
Excellent essay Jeff! 👏 You are validating the work of the great Carl Rogers who defined the main ingredients that make therapy work (warmth, understanding, respect, genuineness etc) which apply to all human relationships as well.
Your fine example of talking to the woman who viewed her grief as a "weakness" reminds me of the great question: "Would you treat someone you love who was in your situation the way you're treating yourself?" That sometimes shocks people about their lack of self-empathy/kindness and puts them on a better path forward.