Grief Guys Guide to comforting the bereaved

(While this post can stand on it's own, it's definitely part of the Grief Guys project.) 

OK, your friend or relative has been bereaved.  You want to help, but you don't know what to do.  And, of course, in our society, doing the wrong thing is worse than doing nothing at all, right?

Well, in this case, wrong.  Grief is lonely.  Grief is isolating.  Grief makes you feel as if you are alone in the world.  So doing nothing is *DEFINITELY* the wrong thing to do.  And quite possibly much wronger than any other mistake you could have made.  (Aside from not listening.  But we'll get to that.)

You don't want to overload the bereaved, it is true.  But it is extremely unlikely (in my experience, at least) that the bereaved will be overwhelmed with calls.  In my case, pretty much nobody called.  Nobody showed up unannounced for a visit.  Nobody came over with casseroles to fill up the fridge or freezer.  Possibly it was because of the pandemic, but nobody phoned, either, and I never heard any cases of anyone getting CoVID over the phone.

I did get a few emails, fairly well along in time, that said they would have called but they didn't know what to say.  Well, there is nothing to say.  You can say nothing.  That's OK, too.  It's possibly better to say nothing in person, because it's hard to tell the difference between saying nothing, on the phone, and being cut off.  (Subtle hint: the way to tell the difference is that, if you have been cut off, the phone starts to beep at you.  Fairly soon.)  There are different ways of saying nothing, though.  There is listening.  That is the best, but very, very few people know how to do it.  Listening is vitally important, and if you are going to try and do any form of comforting you probably need to learn how to do it.  If you want to be helpful, next time someone is bereaved, then practice listening.  Now.  You can easily practice it in pretty much any conversation.  Actually listen to what the other person is saying, don't just wait for the subtle clues that indicate the other person is about to stop talking, so that you can start.  Try to figure out when the person means by what they are saying.  Try to fully understand what they are saying.  If there is anything you don't understand, ask questions.  But don't just ask questions to score points and prove (wrongly) that you have been listening.  Ask questions to understand the other person.

To start practicing listening, you can go search for some tips on listening, such as the Wikipedia entry on listening.  It has some references you can use to get started, but, even in that piece, the longest section is the one that says classical rhetoric concentrated on how to speak, and not how to listen.

Possibly a better place to start is a Harvard Business Review article, "What Great Listeners Actually Do."  A couple of  the things it notes is that good listeners increase speaker's self-esteem, and that good listeners make good suggestions, rather than poor or facile suggestions, so, when you are practicing listening (although possibly not when you are actually trying to help bereaved people by listening) is to close the conversation by asking "do you feel better following this conversation" or "did this conversation help you."  Another interesting HBR article (from 1957!) has some "don'ts" from a business perspective, but the points are likely helpful for listening in general.  A fairly basic set of tips, although it doesn't add much, is from Forbes.  There are a great many articles on "active listening."  One of the few that provides helpful tips is from the Center for Creative Leadership (although they'll probably try to sell you something  :-)

There are some naturally-occurring chemicals that affect our moods.  You all know about tryptophan, which is supposedly why you all fall asleep after Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner.  (The only problem being that turkey isn't really that excessively high in tryptophan, and the reason you fall asleep is because you've eaten so much dinner, regardless of what that dinner is.)  There is also the fact that phenyalanine, which we produce when we are in love, is present in chocolate.  Therefore, many theorize that those who are disappointed in love sooth themselves by eating chocolate.  (This is a case of taking perfectly good data, and drawing the wrong conclusions.  The reality is that those who insist on falling in love have insufficient chocolate in their diet.)

Dopamine is a chemical that we produce, ourselves, in many situations.  Dopamine is associated with reward.  When we produce dopamine, we reward ourselves.  It is pleasant.  It makes us happy and rewarded.  So strong is this association that anything which produces dopamine can become addictive.

Talking about ourselves exercises the part of the brain that produces dopamine.

Why should we have a mechanism that rewards us for talking about ourselves?  Probably because letting other people know about ourselves is necessary for communication.  But, of course, when taken to extreme, it can become a problem.  We get rewarded for talking about ourselves.  We like how we feel when talking about ourselves.  Talking about ourselves can become additive.  We can easily get to the point where we only talk to other people because it gives us a chance to talk about ourselves.

(And that thing the police do, using silence to get people to talk?  Well, suspects being interviewed in a police station are probably a bit stressed.  In a bid to reduce their stress, they'll probably want to do something that produces dopamine, so that they can reduce their stress and discomfort.  Talking about themselves will do that.)

You're probably part of the ninety percent who think they are better-than-average listeners.  You may even feel that you are a pretty good counsellor, even if informally, even if you only try to be good at listening to your friends, or people at church.  Trust me, it's likely that you are not.  OK, Rob, I hear you say, you've said we're not good listeners.  *We* say we are.  So far it's "he said/we said."  Prove it.

OK, I have a challenge for you.  Most of you have smartphones.  Most of those smartphones will take video.  Set them up to record a few conversations.  It may be just you having coffee with a friend.  It may be you counselling a friend.  (If so, let them know what you are doing, and get their agreement.)  Then watch the video.  Watch it all the way through.  Listen to it carefully.  Count all the times you talk about yourself.  (You should really *measure* the amount of time you are talking about yourself, but we'll start with just counting.)  Even if the story you are telling is making a point important to your friend, if it's about you, it counts.

(And remember, if this is a counselling situation, simply letting the counsellee talk about themselves means that *they* get the dopamine reward.  They get to feel good.  Isn't that the point of the exercise?)

If you're being honest, you'll probably be surprised by the result.  You may even be shocked.  I'm not going for shock, here, but you can't start to fix a problem until you realize it exists.  Once you realize that you *do* need to improve, you can start to use this tool (and move on to the measuring part) to practice and improve your listening skills.

Learning to listen is crucial.  It's a skill that has many benefits, so practicing how to do it will help you in many areas of life, as well as comforting those in loss.

However, even if you haven't yet learned how to listen, don't just whine about not knowing what to say, do something!  Do anything!  (Pretty much.)  There is very little you can do that is worse than just doing and being nothing.  So, go over and clean the bathrooms.  If you don't want to go into someone else's space in this pandemic time, then go over and shovel the driveway, or clean leaves out of the gutters.  Take over the aforementioned casserole.  (Or a nice salad.  Why doesn't anyone ever bring salads?)  Sending a card is pretty much the least thing you can do: it possibly sets up expectations and obligations that the bereaved person has to respond in some way and thank you for what was a pretty easy gesture on your part, so I wouldn't recommend it.  Offering to pay for something is the second least: it requires pretty much no thought on your part.

No, on second thought, the *LEAST* you can do is ask, "what can I do to help?"  That puts *ALL* the onus on the bereaved person, and that is a really stupid and unhelpful way to try and support someone who is in real distress.

And if you say you are going to do something, even if it is just "lets get together" or "lets talk" or offering to go for a walk, do it.  Don't overpromise and underdeliver: the bereaved have had enough betrayal already.

A few general grief resources: on Instagram there are a couple of accounts that publish some lovely, and often comforting, "memes": https://www.instagram.com/lifedeathwhat/ , https://www.instagram.com/p/CivlCveue9v/ .  There is also this clip, which relates to what I am trying to get at with the "Grief Guys" idea: https://www.instagram.com/p/CkdJF0dLO6p/