Why is it so hard to know what to say?

I know I’m not the only one who often struggles with what to say to someone who is going through a hard time and needs support.

Why is it so hard to figure out the right thing to say?  Even with the best intentions we often only come up with platitudes or falsely positive statements. 

I’ve even googled what to say to people who are struggling because I wanted to make sure I was being supportive and not saying the “wrong thing”.  I read what other people have said before me on social media.  I want to get the balance right.

When positive things happen it’s easy, we say congratulations or mazel tov or some other positive variation.  But knowing what to say when we hear bad or troubling news is so much harder.

I think this even applies to our children.  It’s so important to get it right.

What is the wrong thing?

Most people’s first response is to say a variation of “I’m so sorry this happened” which is very likely true.   Sometimes this is enough, but often I want to say more.

Another thing people frequently say is that the person is in their thoughts and prayers.  This might give comfort if the person it was directed to believes it to be true.  Knowing people are thinking about you can sometimes give peace.

Many people take it a step further and add platitudes they think are helpful.  But if you are suffering is that really what you want to hear?

I know when my son was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes people said, “it could be worse” to me, basically implying we were lucky my son didn’t have a worse disease.  I even found myself saying this to people, which is craziness.  Of course, it could be worse, but that doesn’t make what I was feeling any less intense or overwhelming.  It is so important to allow people to feel what they are feeling without forcing positivity on them.

When I went through my divorce people didn’t know what to say to me.  This is another response, avoidance.  This one can makes things worse and leave people feeling isolated.

Other examples of unhelpful platitudes are:

                -Telling someone “Everything happens for a reason”

                -Or urging someone to find the positive in the situation

All of these statements, while usually well meaning, can have the effect of making the person struggling to feel as if their emotions are not valid.  This is a horrible thing to feel and most likely not the intention.  Our go-to is to try to see the positive, even when it’s not always appropriate.  It is so important for us to process our feelings, even negative ones, before we can move forward in a healthy way.

It is also so important for people going through a difficult time to feel supported and understood.

This is something we should be teaching our children.

I recently read the book Toxic Positivity by Whitney Goodman and she has quite a number of pages dedicated to this topic that I found so helpful.   I felt like she was talking to me when she discussed the “could be worse” phenomenon and how detrimental it was to us.

She provides some very helpful suggestions on how to be supportive without invalidating the other persons feelings or forcing them to be positive.  Including really listening to the person and catering your response to them and the situation they are going through.  Makes sense, right?

So why is it intuitively difficult for us to know what to say?

I think it’s because we want to appear sympathetic and helpful, but the way to do so eludes us because we also have an aversion to negative emotions.  No one wants to think bad things can happen to them too.

It is important to feel all of the emotions

No one likes to feel uncomfortable.  No one likes to feel sad or angry or embarrassed.  We fight these emotions and try to tamp them down and move on.  But these are all normal human emotions, and we need to learn how to feel them, process them and then move past them or grow from them.

Providing support to someone can be a valuable part of their personal process. 

One of the best pieces of advice I got when getting divorced was that I had to allow myself to feel what I was feeling, even if it was uncomfortable.  I tried to ignore this advice because it was so painful to feel such anger and hurt.   It was easier to just stay super busy and ignore what I was feeling.  But I am forever thankful I listened and that I sat with those horrible, uncomfortable emotions.  I talked about them with people willing to listen and wrote about them in a journal.  I felt all of them and came out the other side a happier, calmer person shedding the resentment and the anger.

We can help people we care about move through these feelings whether they are from divorce, the death of a loved one, a traumatic event or a painful diagnosis.  The feelings might be from a bad breakup or a huge disappointment.  The first step is showing we are open to help by our actions and what we say.

But how do we figure out what to say?

I believe part of the difficulty here is that figuring out what to say requires us to tap into emotions we may not want to feel ourselves.  It always requires patience. But it’s important to think about what you would want to hear; what message you would want from people.

If your child was diagnosed with a life-threatening disease would you really want to hear “it could be worse”?  Of course not.   You would want sympathy, an attempted understanding of what you are going through and a recognition that the diagnosis really, really sucks, because it really, really does.  You would also want an offer of help and support from a friend.  You would want someone to listen to you.

This also fits with your kids.  We can remember being teenagers and how every feeling was so big and everything that happened seemed like the whole world.  Try to sit with your child and let them talk to you, let them know you care about how they are feeling.  Let them talk and process their emotions.  Teach them by example to be empathetic.

I’ve tried some of the suggestions I read about and although it can be difficult, I do think it is worth working on.

I know some people consider themselves empaths and maybe this comes very easy to them, but I don’t think it is so easy for the rest of us.

So why don’t you try the next time to tell the person you are sorry and thinking about them because you are, but maybe go that step further.  Let the person know they don’t have to be alone.  Speak from the heart.  Tell them you think what’s going on sucks.  Tell them you really don’t know what to say.  Let them know you are there for them.  Then take that extra step and follow up.

It may not always be easy to know what to say but we are all well worth the effort to try.