Why Are People Ill-Prepared to Help Us with Our Loss?

• They don’t know what to say.
  • Let’s be honest. We all struggle with what to say to someone who has lost a loved one. We definitely don’t want to say the wrong thing, or even the right thing in the wrong way.
• They are afraid of our feelings.
  • Unfortunately, people are afraid they might say something that may make you cry.
• They try to change the subject.
  • Not knowing what to say will often lead people to change the subject so they don’t have to talk about your loss.
• They intellectualize.
  • By intellectualizing the conversation, they prevent it from getting to the level of human emotions.
• The don’t hear us.
  • Often, some of our closest friends don’t hear us because they are not comfortable talking about their own inhibitions.
• They don’t want to talk about death.
  • We live in a grief avoidant society that does not want to talk about the reality of death, though we are exposed to it daily.
• They want us to keep our faith.
  • Unfortunately, people avoid talking about grief with those who are grieving because they are afraid that it will cause the grief sufferer to lose faith and fall further into depression.

It really is unfortunate that often people will not allow the grief sufferer to talk about their grief because it makes them uncomfortable. Why is it unfortunate? Often the greatest need of the grief sufferer is talk about their loss and have someone listen to them. James Miller once said, “There are three things you can do to help someone. The first is to listen, the second it to listen. The third is to listen more.” Victoria Alexander states from her work with grief sufferers that, “every griever has three essential needs: to find words to express the loss, to say the words aloud, and to know the words have been heard.”