What NOT to Say to Someone Who’s Grieving
Photo by Marco Bianchetti on Unsplash.
There are many common phrases that we naturally reach for when we learn that someone has died. However, more often than not these statements—meant with sincere intentions—often minimize someone’s experience and can make them feel worse. Below are several things you should stop saying to grieving people.
"At least..."
"You can still..."
"I know exactly how you feel."
"Be strong."
"Give it time."
"Don't feel...."
"Get over it."
"At least..." "You can still..." "I know exactly how you feel." "Be strong." "Give it time." "Don't feel...." "Get over it."
To better understand what you should or shouldn’t say to a grieving person, here are some general guidelines to follow:
DON’T try to fix it or rush to find the bright side.
Sometimes bad things happen and some things suck. It’s okay/good to acknowledge that it sucks. You can’t help someone skip over the pain or rush quickly through it. You need to give them time to feel it.
DON’T try to make sense of their suffering.
It is not your job to try to find a silver lining for them, especially since there may not be one. Meaning making is for the person who is grieving. Their faith might bring them incredible comfort, and it might be helpful for them to believe that their person is in heaven or that someone’s suffering has ended etc. It is not your place to find that meaning for them because it can be dismissive and incredibly hurtful if offered up too quickly.
DON’T tell them how they should feel.
Grief is much more than sadness. Feelings of anger, guilt, shame, regret, and fear are all common elements of grief. So is joy. People can be mourning the death of their person and still laugh at a joke. There is an entire range of emotions that grieving people will feel at different times and to different degrees. It is not our place to tell them how they should or should not feel.
DON’T tell someone how long they should grieve.
The one exception I make to this point is when it comes to normalizing and de-stigmatizing grief. If someone expresses to you that they “should be” over the grief at a specific time time, it can be helpful to let them know that grief has no timeline and that it won’t simply go away in six months. Instead of forcing them into a box, you’re helping to break them out of one.
DON’T try to one-up them.
Your loss is your loss. Their pain is their pain. The greatest loss is the loss that someone is going through right now. There are no winners when one compares grief experiences. The temptation to let them know that someone else had it worse usually comes from a compassionate desire to make them feel as if their current experience isn’t that bad. However, it rarely brings comfort. Rather, it minimizes their experience and removes you as a support. Also, you don’t know what they are going through. Every relationship, individual, and grief experience is different. You may have been through a similar type of loss and can relate, but you do not know exactly what they are feeling, so it’s best not to claim that you do.
So, what can you do?
DO be present.
Grief is incredibly isolating. People don’t know what to say or how to react, so many simply disappear. People don’t need you to say the perfect words (there are none) or to make them feel better (you can’t). They need you just to show up and love them through it.
DO cry with them.
Just remember that this isn’t about you, and you should never put a grieving person in the position of having to take care of you.
DO say the name of the person who died.
A major fear that grievers have is that their person will be forgotten. Use their name to honour them, remember them, and acknowledge their ongoing place in your lives.
DO use words like “dead” and “died.”
Instead of expressing sympathy for someone’s “loss,” call it what it is. “I was sorry to hear that Catherine died” lets them know that you understand the gravity of the situation. It also sends a message that you are someone who isn’t scared of the tough words and might be safe to talk to about the tough feelings.
DO offer concrete and specific ways to be helpful/supportive.
This one can be tricky because many people do not want to be intrusive or impose themselves on a grieving person. However, there are a number of ways in which we can be of practical use—mow their lawn, drive their kids to school, drop off dinner, make phone calls for them—anything that makes their life easier is a blessing.
One of the best examples I’ve heard of was a friend who paid for a laundry service to pick up, clean, fold, and return laundry to a grieving friend. They simply let the friend know that the service was coming, it was paid for, and what time to have a bag of clothes sitting outside. Brilliant.
DO recognize your strengths.
Identify what you are and are not good at and determine the best way to support someone you love. We are all different types of friends, and we can show up in different ways for people. If you are aware of what you are best at, lean into that, and make yourself available in that way.
Are you the person who can provide a listening ear, a hug, a shoulder to cry on, or a partner to sit in silence with? Are you patient enough to listen to the same thoughts and feeling over and over again as the griever processes them?
Are you the person who will answer a call in the middle of the night or at two in the afternoon because the griever was caught off guard by a sudden grief burst?
Are you the person who is good at distractions? The friend who can take the grieving person out for an adventure to (briefly) get their mind off their grief?
Are the person who can do practical tasks like shovelling snow, picking up the kids from school, batch cooking freezer meals, etc?