Give Your Friend the Gift of Boundaries
It’s not your job to fix their problems
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When a friend is going through a hard time, you likely won’t be able to make the situation better.
It can be hard to accept, but you’ll both be better off if you do. Because then you can turn to what’s within your power: You might be helpless to change your friend’s situation, but you can help them survive. You can honor and validate their loss, bear witness to their experiences and pain, let them know that they are cared about and valued, and remind them that they are not alone. Even if you can’t make things better for your friend, you may be able to make them feel a little less bad.
Being equipped to show up for others means knowing the basic responses and etiquette that apply in most difficult situations. Regardless of what the person is going through, the following tips are a good place to start.
Showing up in hard times: The basics
Keep your focus on them
When listening to a friend in need, it’s crucial to actually listen. That means listening to hear, not listening to respond. It’s not that sharing your thoughts isn’t helpful; it’s just that it’s so easy to dominate the conversation without even realizing it. And what feels like being empathetic to you might feel like being silenced to them.
Resist the urge to say, “I understand,” or to share your version of a similar-seeming experience
It can be really difficult not to jump in with your own stories, particularly if the person is going through something fairly unique, or if you’re genuinely trying to demonstrate that you get it. But try to pump the brakes. In your attempt to empathize, you run the risk of totally missing the mark and, say, equating the death of their child with the death of your pet goldfish.
If you are confident you’ve had a similar experience that they might want to hear about, maybe say something like this: “I lost my mom to cancer when I was 15, and while I know I’ll never understand how you feel right now, I am here if you ever want to talk about losing a parent.” The key is to let them decide if the…
