How to Console Someone Whose Family Member Is Sick
En español l Anyone who has been seriously ill or had a loved one with a wellness crisis knows that friends and family unit tin say just the right thing — and merely the wrong 1, too.
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How do you console a friend who is ailing or grieving?
Later my female parent suddenly became ill and passed away terminal year, a woman she considered a close friend came up to my male parent right before the funeral service and said, "I've been having trouble downloading books on my Kindle. Practice y'all remember you could wait at it later and aid me?" (I am not making this upwardly.)
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And I notwithstanding retrieve the shock I felt several years ago after my eight-year-old daughter was diagnosed with leukemia and a friend actually said to me, "Well, everything happens for a reason." (Really? This is supposed to make me feel improve?)
My coworker has an fifty-fifty better one: On her female parent'southward second day in hospice, an acquaintance from church came to visit, plopped herself in a chair side by side to the bed and announced to her mother, "Well, you've had a not bad life. You've done wonderful things. Now it's time to permit become and be with God."
None of this surprises Letty Cottin Pogrebin, 73, author of How to Be a Friend to a Friend Who'due south Ill.
The veteran journalist and writer has heard it all, more often than not thanks to her own stint as a breast cancer patient in 2009. During the long stretches in the hospital waiting room, she began talking to other patients, swapping anecdotes and eventually soliciting their advice virtually what to say — and what not to say — to someone who'south seriously ill.
The don't-say-this examples in her book range from flinch-worthy reactions to a diagnosis — "Wow! A daughter in my part just died of that!" — to empty platitudes like "Maybe it happened for the best" and "God merely gives you what you lot tin can handle."
Pogrebin casts a wide net in her book, offering suggestions for a number of tough situations, including how to remember which friend has what health problem — an increasingly common occurrence for those in her seventysomething historic period group. She writes nearly how to prove compassion to someone with Alzheimer'due south, to those with a terminal illness, and — in a chapter titled "As Bad equally It Gets" — to parents who've lost a child to a disease.
She also offers some alternatives to that knee-jerk phrase, "Let me know if there'southward anything I can do," which puts the burden on the patient or the family to inquire for needed assistance, something they may exist embarrassed to do.
"It's OK to say, 'What tin can I do to help?' every bit long as you follow it with something similar, 'I'm non merely maxim information technology, I really mean it,'" Pogrebin says. "And then propose a few things you lot think might be helpful that y'all are actually willing to do."
So why do people find information technology so hard to know what to say to the sick or dying (or to their family)? Pogrebin says and then many of us are bad-mannered around those who are ailing "considering they arouse our own sense of vulnerability and mortality."
We fall dorsum on clichés like "I'thou sure you'll be fine," because they let us altitude ourselves from our discomfort. To the sick person, though, it merely sounds dismissive.
Illness and death are also reminders of how petty control we have over the things in life that are the about precious to u.s.a. — our wellness and the health of those nosotros love, says Phyllis Kosminsky, Ph.D., a clinical social worker who specializes in helping people deal with difficult issues similar life-threatening illness and grief.
Kosminsky, who counsels patients at the Centre for Hope in Darien, Conn., agrees with Pogrebin that often a simple, heartfelt "I'm so sorry" is the best way to express your sympathy without demeaning what the other person is going through.
The social worker as well acknowledges that, particularly as we age, "it can sometimes feel like life is a never-ending serial of losses and nosotros just can't confront one more."
If you experience as if you lot've reached your emotional limit, don't feel bad about taking some fourth dimension to recharge, she says. Offer to practice what y'all can "in ways that feel manageable to y'all," such as picking up groceries, taking the dog for a walk or stopping by just once a week to say hullo.
And if visiting a hospital or hospice makes you uncomfortable, discover other ways to express your concern. For my coworker, an offer to take her children to the movies or to dinner so she could stay with her female parent would have been much more meaningful than an bad-mannered sickroom visit.
We asked Pogrebin to tell united states of america five things to say — and 5 things never to say — to someone who'southward ailing.
What to say:
1. I'yard and so glad to see you.
2. I'thou so distressing you have to go through this.
iii. Tell me what's helpful and what's not.
4. Tell me when you want to be solitary, and when yous desire company.
5. Tell me what to bring and when to exit.
What non to say:
ane. Is it final?
ii. It could be worse.
iii. Mayhap information technology's in your head.
4. What do you think you did to cause it?
5. (To a mourner) God must have wanted him/her.
Candy Sagon is a senior associate editor for health for AARP.
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Source: https://www.aarp.org/health/healthy-living/info-06-2013/what-to-say-to-sick-friend.html
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