by Ariel Kleckner Ford
A friend or family member is sick with a serious illness. We want to help. We want to express our sympathy. But we don't know how. We want to say the right thing. But what is the right thing to say? How do we effectively communicate our sympathy in a way that actually eases the burden of our loved one? Having recently been on the receiving end of alot of well-intended but poorly communicated sympathy, I can offer some tips.
Sympathy is a social affinity in which one person stands with another person, closely understanding his or her feelings. It also can mean being affected by feelings or emotions. Thus the essence of sympathy is that one has a strong concern for the other person. Sympathy exists when the feelings or emotions of one person are deeply understood and appreciated by another person.
Saying things like "Remember you have a husband and kids who love you" or "Don't feel that way, you have so many blessings in your life" is not sympathy. Rather, it is a highly ineffective and unwelcome form of communication to someone who is sick. Telling a person these things is in effect telling them to NOT feel the things they are feeling about their illness. It is also the quickest way to get them to stop sharing honestly with you.
It is important for a sick person to truly feel the emotions that go with their illness. Anger, frustration, resentment, sadness - these are all normal things for a sick person to experience when grappling with their illness. And the sooner they go through them, the sooner they are over them. Telling someone NOT to focus on those things - to instead count their blessings - is telling them it is not OK to feel their honest emotions about what they are going through. It is a form of telling them their honest emotions about their illness are somehow not valid.
A sick person with a wonderful husband no doubt knows she has a wonderful husband. But when you ask how she is feeling and she tells you honestly that she is angry and frustrated about her illness, she is not talking about her husband. She is talking about her health issues. Telling her to focus on something else is not sympathy. It is patronizing, and comes across as highly insensitive.
Effective sympathy comes in the form of sharing a person's burden. When a friend is sick, you can help her by asking how she is feeling and allowing her to explain. When she tells you how she truly feels, some examples of good responses are:
"Yes, I imagine that is very frustrating"
and
"I bet I would feel the same way if I was going through this"
and
"That must have really hurt"
All these responses are examples of validation - they are ways of letting the sick person know it is OK to feel the things they do, that you are somehow feeling the same things as they are by listening to them and understanding. And in validating their feelings, you are actually sharing the burden with them.
Believe it or not, these forms of sympathy actually lessen the emotional pain of the person experiencing these feelings. They come away feeling better because of the conversation. By validating their feelings, you are sharing their burden with them. And by sharing their burden, you have eased their load. This is the greatest form of sympathy, and offers true relief.
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