What to Say if Your Friend Has a Sick Family Member
En español l Anyone who has been seriously ill or had a loved one with a health crisis knows that friends and family can say just the right affair — and just the wrong 1, too.
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How do y'all panel a friend who is ailing or grieving?
After my mother all of a sudden became ill and passed away final year, a woman she considered a close friend came upwardly to my begetter correct before the funeral service and said, "I've been having trouble downloading books on my Kindle. Do you lot think you could look at it later and assistance me?" (I am non making this upwards.)
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And I withal remember the shock I felt several years ago after my 8-year-old daughter was diagnosed with leukemia and a friend actually said to me, "Well, everything happens for a reason." (Actually? This is supposed to make me experience better?)
My coworker has an fifty-fifty better one: On her mother's second day in hospice, an acquaintance from church came to visit, plopped herself in a chair adjacent to the bed and announced to her female parent, "Well, you've had a nifty life. You've done wonderful things. At present it'southward time to let go and be with God."
None of this surprises Letty Cottin Pogrebin, 73, author of How to Be a Friend to a Friend Who'due south Ill.
The veteran journalist and writer has heard it all, more often than not cheers to her own stint as a breast cancer patient in 2009. During the long stretches in the hospital waiting room, she began talking to other patients, swapping anecdotes and eventually soliciting their communication well-nigh what to say — and what not to say — to someone who's seriously ill.
The don't-say-this examples in her volume range from flinch-worthy reactions to a diagnosis — "Wow! A girl in my office only died of that!" — to empty platitudes like "Maybe it happened for the best" and "God only gives you lot what you can handle."
Pogrebin casts a wide net in her volume, offer suggestions for a number of tough situations, including how to remember which friend has what wellness problem — an increasingly mutual occurrence for those in her seventysomething age group. She writes about how to show compassion to someone with Alzheimer'southward, to those with a terminal illness, and — in a chapter titled "As Bad equally It Gets" — to parents who've lost a child to a affliction.
She besides offers some alternatives to that knee-jerk phrase, "Let me know if at that place's anything I tin can do," which puts the burden on the patient or the family to enquire for needed assistance, something they may be embarrassed to do.
"It'due south OK to say, 'What can I do to aid?' as long equally you follow it with something like, 'I'one thousand not simply proverb it, I really mean information technology,'" Pogrebin says. "Then suggest a few things yous remember might be helpful that yous are actually willing to exercise."
And then why do people observe information technology so hard to know what to say to the sick or dying (or to their family)? Pogrebin says and so many of united states of america are awkward effectually those who are ailing "because they agitate our own sense of vulnerability and mortality."
We fall back on clichés like "I'm sure yous'll be fine," because they let u.s. distance ourselves from our discomfort. To the sick person, though, it simply sounds dismissive.
Illness and death are also reminders of how lilliputian control we have over the things in life that are the most precious to u.s.a. — our wellness and the wellness of those nosotros beloved, says Phyllis Kosminsky, Ph.D., a clinical social worker who specializes in helping people deal with difficult issues like life-threatening illness and grief.
Kosminsky, who counsels patients at the Center for Hope in Darien, Conn., agrees with Pogrebin that often a simple, heartfelt "I'k so sorry" is the best way to express your sympathy without demeaning what the other person is going through.
The social worker as well acknowledges that, especially equally we historic period, "it tin sometimes experience like life is a never-ending series of losses and we just tin can't face up ane more than."
If yous feel as if you've reached your emotional limit, don't feel bad almost taking some time to recharge, she says. Offer to do what you tin can "in ways that feel manageable to you lot," such equally picking upwardly groceries, taking the domestic dog for a walk or stopping past simply one time a calendar week to say hello.
And if visiting a hospital or hospice makes you uncomfortable, find other ways to express your business. For my coworker, an offer to take her children to the movies or to dinner so she could stay with her mother would have been much more meaningful than an bad-mannered sickroom visit.
Nosotros asked Pogrebin to tell us five things to say — and five things never to say — to someone who'due south ailing.
What to say:
1. I'one thousand then glad to see you lot.
2. I'm so lamentable you have to get through this.
3. Tell me what's helpful and what'due south non.
four. Tell me when you want to be alone, and when you desire company.
5. Tell me what to bring and when to leave.
What not to say:
ane. Is it concluding?
2. Information technology could be worse.
3. Peradventure it'due south in your caput.
4. What do you think you did to cause it?
5. (To a mourner) God must have wanted him/her.
Candy Sagon is a senior associate editor for health for AARP.
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Source: https://www.aarp.org/health/healthy-living/info-06-2013/what-to-say-to-sick-friend.html
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