Unhelpful Responses

Although there has been a huge surge of interest in psychology and healing, there has also been an influx of unhelpful responses. These can range from making things slightly worse to downright destroying somebody. Since the problem must first be diagnosed before a prescription can be given, I’ll cover some unhelpful responses in this post and some helpful responses in the next post. For now, here are some things to avoid when attempting to support someone going through a hard time.

1. Saying “The pain never/never fully goes away”. This is absolutely the last thing I wanted to hear when I was drowning in sorrow shortly after my dog Sawyer’s death. I could barely do anything during that time other than lie on the couch and cry all day. How would it bring me any degree of comfort or peace to hear that that overwhelming pain would always be with me? It didn’t. It just made me feel even worse. Further, grief and loss are very individual things. One person may grieve a lost loved one for the rest of their life while another may find the grief has fully gone away after a certain amount of healing work. In either case, neither person should set an expectation for the other of how their journey will go as results vary widely and having an expectation in mind can often prevent healing, create disappointment, or both.
2. Dismissing someone’s emotions. In addition to preventing healing, this is also downright rude. Even the people whom I’ve seen repeatedly dismiss the emotions of others hate when others do the same to them. I’ll admit that it can be frustrating at times to hear someone go on and on about their problems, especially if they do nothing to improve their situation. That being said, dismissing their emotions will only escalate an already difficult situation, strain relationships, and make things worse for everyone involved.
3. Taking focus off of the person who is struggling. I hate when I pour my heart out to someone and they respond by bringing up their own experiences that they think are similar to what I’ve just described. Even when the situations are superficially similar, the pain is quite different since we are two different people who don’t experience anything the same way. Also, the longer they talk about their own experiences, the more it seems like they don’t care what I have to say and are only interested in talking about themselves. Regardless of their intentions, turning the focus onto themselves always makes me feel worse and I wish nobody did it.
4. Starting off with “You should ________.” Immediately giving advice without first verifying what the other person is wanting and needing is extremely unhelpful. It’s also presumptuous to assume that someone wants advice or hasn’t yet tried a particular approach. If you don’t know what someone is looking for, then it’s much harder to help them. Often, all they’re wanting is someone to listen without judgment; once they’ve fully explained their situation, they almost always feel better and, in many cases, have talked themselves to a solution.