Good Grief: How to Show Kindness in Conversations about Trauma or Grief

Content Warning: This post discusses grief and trauma. I mention anecdotes from my own personal experience, which include the death, severe injury, and hospitalization of loved ones.

Photo by St. Mattox from FreeImages.

We’ve all asked ourselves, “what if I say the wrong thing?”

The worry hits before a first date or a job interview, when consoling a friend who was laid off, or in any number of situations that feel like they have high interpersonal stakes. It’s in those awkward moments where we feel obligated to say something — to fill an awkward silence, to introduce ourselves, or to lift spirits — that we tend to flounder and say hurtful things. While the impulse to speak in such moments is understandable, if you find the conversation uncomfortable because you are talking to someone who is going through a difficult time, it’s important to take a moment to gather your thoughts and choose your words carefully, otherwise you risk causing them further pain.

During graduate school I went through multiple family emergencies, including the hospitalization and death of family members. Along the way, I learned that many people struggle to talk to someone who is grieving or going through trauma. What some very kind people in my life — who I know had the best intentions — chose to say to me in those awkward moments hurt me more than silence would have.

I’m going to share two stories from that time period to illustrate some common exchanges that were painful for me, explain why those conversations were hurtful, and suggest ways to avoid potentially harmful words when the intention is to show support. I hope the suggestions in this post can help others to navigate uncomfortable conversations around grief with sensitivity and care.

“I know how you feel”

CW: critical care, severe injury, hospitalization

When I was in my twenties, my then-spouse suffered severe injuries in an accident and nearly died. We were both relatively young to be in that position, and had been married less than a year when the accident took place. Because we were young and newlywed, it became apparent to me that others had great difficulty talking to me about what was going on. Only one of the nurses in the ICU had the courage to be honest with me about his medical status from the start, even though I was his health proxy and I needed the information to make informed decisions on his behalf. The others were uncomfortable telling me the medical reality of his situation because I was “so young”. From that context alone, I was painfully aware that my experience was not typical for someone of my age. I didn’t need my peers — or anyone else, for that matter — to relate to me. I knew they likely couldn’t, and I didn’t hope that they could, because I wouldn’t wish what I was going through on them. All I needed was kindness and support.

Unfortunately several people in my circle tried to relate to me anyway, because that is the only way many of us have learned to express empathy in a conversation. On my first day back at work I had a slew of awkward conversations, including one in which a woman told me that she knew how I felt because her husband had been sick a lot. While I recognized at the time that her intentions were good, what she said was both upsetting and infuriating.

Here’s why her choice of words hurt me:

1. Her experience was not at all the same as mine, in ways that should have been obvious to her. While it is always sad and scary if your partner requires medical care, it is a more common experience among partners who are nearing the retirement age or older (as was her situation) than it is for those in their mid twenties and early thirties, respectively, as was the case for me. On top of the age difference, my spouse was not being treated for an illness, he had incurred serious injuries in an accident. Both illness and injury are traumatic, but the sudden and unexpected nature of the accident is a different kind of trauma than an illness; not worse, better, harder, or easier — just different. In attempting to show that she could relate to me using an example from her life experience that was very different from mine, she made me feel even more alone in my experience than I felt already. It was alienating, because the experience she offered in an attempt to relate was so dissimilar from mine. It was invalidating, because she minimized my experience in the act of comparison.
2. Even if her experience had been more similar to mine, she assumed that telling me about her experience would help me. That was an assumption. Every traumatic experience is unique — that’s true across traumatic episodes an individual person experiences in a single lifetime, and is especially true across different people. It’s not clear exactly how her words were intended to help. I did not express a need for her to validate my experience, nor did I express that I felt alone in my experience and that I wished to hear anecdotes to help mitigate the feeling. Perhaps someone else would have felt reassured or validated or otherwise better in that situation, but not me. It is not supportive to assume that you know what someone needs, or to assume you are in a position to meet their needs.
3. In choosing to talk about her own experience, she centered herself in the conversation. She likely centered herself to avoid facing her own discomfort in the moment. Centering herself was dismissive because it redirected the conversation to a place where she felt more comfortable, and perhaps more in control, at the expense of my comfort. Putting her need for comfort over the needs of the person who she was ostensibly trying to support was inherently unsupportive. The conversation should not have been about her, but she made it about her.

I’m sure she intended to say something kind and reassuring, but I did not feel heard or supported in the interaction, I felt offended, and I could trace my outrage directly to the assumptions she made in the conversation.

“If only your mother were alive to see this”

CW: death of a parent, cancer, hospitalization

When I was 30, I experienced another trauma after my mother was diagnosed with cancer, and died in the months to follow. At the time, I connected with several of her friends on social media in order to keep them updated on her condition when she was no longer able to provide the information herself, and we stayed connected after she passed.

Several years after she died, I made a social media post to celebrate my professional accomplishments — none of which had to do with my mother directly, and sadly none of which she had lived to see. I did not mention my mother in the post, but I was, of course, acutely aware that she was not able to share those moments with me. One of her friends elected to comment on the post not to share in my celebration, but to express her sorrow that my mother didn’t live to witness the accomplishments in question.

Here’s why that interaction hurt me:

1. I had no reason to expect it would come up. I can brace myself emotionally for comments about my mother when I bring her up in conversation, but I don’t expect anyone to casually invoke my grief in response to an entirely different conversation. After that interaction, I felt more upset over my mother’s passing than I had in years, in no small part because I was unprepared for it.
2. It reminded me that she did not see me as a person independent from my mother, to the extent that — in her eyes — an update on my life is not about me, but about my mother. For me, the reminder was particularly hurtful in the context of celebrating what I had accomplished after I survived my mother’s loss. It took a lot of strength for me to pick myself up and keep going after she died, to meet the goals I had set and pursued with her support while she was alive. The comment her friend made invalidated the hard work I had spent healing in order to meet my goals when my mother was no longer there to help me.

While it’s understandable that she might think of my mother when she thinks of me, given that my mother is the only reason we knew one another, it was insensitive to bring up my grief without warning, particularly in a celebratory moment.

It’s important to reiterate that I’m certain her intentions were good, but the comment was re-traumatizing for me nonetheless, and impact is what matters, not intent. I told her that her comment was hurtful, and to her credit she then apologized and deleted the offending comment.

In the apology to me, she invoked her grieving process regarding her own mother’s death to explain why she didn’t see the comment as harmful. It was an apology that emphasized minimizing blame over minimizing harm. (Which… is a questionable apology, but that’s a topic for another day.) In doing so, she committed two other harms that I’ve encountered repeatedly in conversations around my trauma:

1. She assumed my grieving process is the same as hers, and
2. She equated the loss of her mother, who died at a much older age than my mother, to the loss of my mother at a younger age.

Both losses are tragic and I don’t want to minimize that, but the fact remains that we were different people, at different stages in life, mourning different losses. My sister and I, despite being close in age and at similar life stages when my mother passed, surely experienced the grief of our common loss in different ways. We are different people who do not necessarily deal with trauma in the same way, and we each had a different, unique relationship with our mother. It is perhaps more important and validating to acknowledge the differences across experiences than to try and collapse similar experiences to into one, erasing the uniqueness of each. In other interactions, I’ve found it much more validating when someone acknowledged that they couldn’t relate to my experience, and simply expressed sympathy.

I’ve given some examples of comments I’ve received about my traumatic experiences that were well-intentioned, but nevertheless hurt me. If you’re still reading, you probably want to know how you can better show sensitivity and support when talking to someone who is going through trauma.

It’s important to be realistic about what you can expect to accomplish. Your words only have so much power. Know that there are no special, magic words you are expected to utter to make the situation better. Nothing you say can fix what the grieving party is going through. Focus instead on being kind and supportive, because that’s likely what the person needs from you right now anyway.

A good deal of the harm I experienced in conversations came from the dismissive forms of listening (such as centering oneself in the conversation, or giving unsolicited advice) that we tend to engage in to avoid uncomfortable topics. When I talked about my grief or trauma, it was not a request for the other person to fix me — after all, that’s not how it works — or for them to explain how they can relate to me. I generally talked about it seeking kindness and support, or other times I sought nothing at all — in some cases, it was merely relevant to the conversation at hand, and I felt comfortable enough to mention it at the time. In better interactions around those same topics, empathetic listening styles helped me feel both heard in the conversation and safe around the person I was talking to.

Graphic by Keeley Shaw

With the caveat that everyone is different and so what worked for me may not work for others, I’ve come up with several general guidelines based on my own experience that may help you navigate conversations about grief or trauma in a way that communicates sensitivity and support:

1. The first rule of trauma club is don’t talk about trauma club. Don’t bring up someone else’s trauma. Let them bring it up if they want to, and exercise empathetic listening. Pay attention for signs that they want to change the topic, and let them. Sometimes I feel fine talking about my trauma, until suddenly a switch flips and it becomes re-traumatizing. In some of those cases I told a story about trauma I’ve experienced and felt comfortable doing so in the moment, only to cry uncontrollably later. It is difficult even for me to know when would or would not be re-traumatizing to talk about an experience. It is therefore impossible for someone else to know. If someone brings up a traumatic experience of theirs in conversation, that is not a license for you to pry further. You do not know what aspects of the experience they feel comfortable talking about, where the boundaries are for them in general or in the moment. For that reason, it’s important to let them steer the conversation, and to listen. Don’t ask for more information than they volunteer, and never ask someone to perform their trauma for you. Chances are they have been required to talk about what happened in order to survive — to get documentation for missed work, to manage care for a loved one, to get legal assistance, to obtain mental health services — and each telling can be re-traumatizing. Your curiosity about what happened is not worth re-traumatizing anyone. That goes double for intellectual curiosity, which can feel like you’re prioritizing the details you want about a story over the humanity of the person whose story it is to tell. As a scientist, I can understand that you might have an intellectual interest in what has happened medically to me or my loved one, but it still feels gross when someone is a little too excited to hear the details about a painful experience.
2. Don’t try to relate, especially if you haven’t experienced a similar trauma. For example, when someone has lost a child, it is not helpful to bring up the death of a grandparent to relate, even if that is the only loss you have experienced. It might instead feel invalidating, minimizing, or self-interested to the person you are ostensibly trying to comfort. Even if your experience is more similar, relating to them may not be what they need from you. Instead, listen and offer your support. If you have difficulty in that arena, work on decentering yourself in conversations.
3. Only offer to help in ways that you feel comfortable helping, and that you intend to follow through on. Maybe others have offered to help, so you feel like you should, too. But, if your offer isn’t sincere, it will be yet another blow when they turn to you for help and don’t get it. If they do ask you for help, in the words of Judge John Hodgman, be sure to “help in the way that you are asked to help, not in the way you feel like helping”. I ended a friendship because a friend offered to help when my loved one was in the hospital, only to complain about what I asked her to do and help in ways that centered herself when I took her up on the offer. If you won’t be a good friend to someone during their hour of greatest need, when will you ever be? Along the same lines, don’t give unsolicited advice and assume you’ve helped. Getting advice when you’re instead seeking validation, support, or comfort can feel dismissive. If you aren’t sure what the other person is looking for in the conversation, just ask.
4. Encourage them to seek treatment if they aren’t already getting it and have the means to do so, especially if their behavior suddenly changes. Get urgent help if you suspect they have suicidal ideation. If they are in crisis, urge them to call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (1–800–273–8255) or to text the Crisis Text Line by texting TALK to 741741.

It’s important to recognize that we don’t all process trauma the same way. Some people are driven to talk about the trauma they have experienced with others, and many people need to not talk about it in order to cope. Respect the needs of others, whether those needs are the same as yours or not.

Perhaps the stories I described earlier, that I found to be re-traumatizing and infuriating experiences, would have registered differently for someone else — maybe even as positive experiences. Because different approaches work for different people, don’t assume you know what someone else needs. Offer to open a dialogue. Ask what you can do to support them, and listen to them. Let them know that they can set boundaries with you that you will respect, and then respect those boundaries once they do. Be honest about what you are able to do to support them. Don’t promise out of politeness what you can’t realistically deliver on, especially when someone else is in need.

Take a moment before you say something to ask yourself how what you’re planning to say supports the person you want to say it to. If you can’t answer that question, there’s a chance that your choice of words was informed by a different impulse — perhaps to make yourself more comfortable, or to solve a problem that you weren’t asked to fix. When in doubt, you can’t go wrong with kindness and empathetic listening.

Note: Elements of this post were adapted from several Twitter threads I’ve written over the years, especially a thread about my experience with PTSD.