How to cope with a friend who has experienced a death.
One of the question that comes up quite regularly is how to talk to a friend who has just experienced a death.
Death as you all know is an extremely sensitive issue, it may be a natural human condition, but it can completely rip apart peoples lives.
People are often extremely cautious when talking to a friend who has experienced death. And in some extremes they will stop talking to them, just because they would have no idea what to say. The problem is, there is no rule book about this. I cannot tell you what you should say or what you shouldn’t. But I can tell you what I might suggest in certain situations.
I am going to list some common mistakes that people make, and perhaps some solutions.
- They are so afraid of hurting the other persons feelings that they completely avoid the subject or even a related subject to death. They can spend entire conversations thinking about ways not to mention death.
People who have experienced death will likely not want you to avoid the subject like the plague, obviously judge the situation yourself, you know the person. But Stop trying to avoid the subject of death but try and accept it. People don’t want you to constantly obsess over what you should say, they want it to be normal. People want their lives to be as if nothing has changed, this is a step in coping.
- Persisting at them telling them over and over again that if they want to talk your there.
This can absolutely infuriate and upset the person who has experienced the death. Offer your help and assistance once, maybe twice. But if they want to talk to you about it, then they will. Persisting that they should talk about it, that they need to talk about it will likely not help them at all.
- Taking them out and getting them drunk. Friends will often do this, as they believe that when they are drunk people forget about it, which quite true but that does not help them
I’m not saying that someone who has experienced death should not go out and have fun. But remember that this is by no means a permanent solution, they will have to face their problems sooner or later. All they are doing by postponing it is just inevitably hurting themselves.
Conclusion. With most people the best advice is to act normally. Have a sense of humility about you, but for the most part try to just be there. When people experience a loss, they can react in many different ways, some express grief in anger, others tears. So you have to change the way you deal with people accordingly.
Death is not the end of the journey, but the beginning.
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