Words That Do Not Help A Grieving Person
How many times has it happened to you that you try to vent to someone and end up comforting the other? Have you ever felt like you just needed to be listened to and not get advice ? Have you experienced in your own skin the lack of real attention when you have needed it? So, so that you are not the one who makes this mistake with others, in those moments when one does not know what to say and says words that do not help, we are going to help you with some strategies.
Listen, empathy and love for the other. These are the most important references when we want to help someone who is going through a grieving process. It can be a death, a loss or an abandonment, the main problem is that now there is a void where before another person filled it. How can we help someone in this situation?
Words. Words can be double-edged blades, they can hurt or they can heal. They can alleviate or they can put a burden on whoever uses or listens to them. Words liberate but also words can turn against the one who pronounces them or the one who listens to them. Words can create opportunities or condemn us; save or sink.
Words are not carried away by the wind
Just as there are words that help the other, there are words that leave a trace that poisons, that is, words that do not help. Alba Payás, an expert in situations of grief and loss, comments in her book The Message of Tears some of the phrases that do not help a person in grief, such as:
- Now you have to be strong.
- Try to distract yourself.
- You’ll see how time heals everything.
- Now he no longer suffers.
- Now you can help other parents, siblings, children etc.
- You are young! You will surely recover! You can get married again, have children …
- You have to remember the good things.
- That will make you a better person.
- Children are small, or they will remember nothing.
- I know how you feel… my… died ago…
- And that now your children are older; imagine if …
- Luckily you have more children, parents who only have one …
- Think of your other children …
- What has he died of?
- How old was he?
The person who suffers does not know about strength at this moment, he simply needs to gather himself up and heal the wound, integrating the loss. He cannot be distracted, his mind settles on the memories, but also on the absence itself. The impossibility of company, the goodbye, the farewell, the uncertainty,… in many cases also the fear, because whoever left was a great support. And now that?
How can the buses or the subway keep running when everything has stopped? The grieving person deals with a fracture in many cases in a world that is indifferent to it (or that simulates another attitude, but at the bottom there is also indifference). We do not know if the person who has left suffers or has suffered, but what we can see, feel, is the suffering of those who remain.
It’s funny, but perhaps what is most appreciated at that time is respect. Do not distort the silence that, in the form of emptiness, we feel when the other leaves. The company, I’m here for whenever you want. He is counting on me and really counting. Stopping like the other stops, beyond the wake and the funeral. Stay at the door when the indifferent have left. Because then the hard part begins: reconstruction.
The suffering of each one is personal, it is their path and they are their tears. Words that don’t help often draw you away from that person – there is little neutral communication on these occasions. Sometimes a gesture of affection or a welcoming silence is the most comforting thing.
The power of tears
Tears free us, they let us flow, they cleanse us inside. Allowing the other to cry is also a personal job, just as it is allowing sadness or silence; patience so that what has to come out comes out. Thus, if perhaps we do not have the power to comfort with speech, if we have it with listening. No matter how great the loss, there will come a time when the other, even for a moment, looks around, and it will do him a lot of good to see us.
