How to support a friend through a crisis

Your words are more meaningful than you think

Hello!

Apologies for the short hiatus with 60-Second Psychology. I’m afraid an ongoing family crisis has taken me away from writing for the past few weeks. The drama isn’t over but I’m getting back on my feet – and the experience got me thinking some more about the ways we support others through difficulty.

As I describe in my book The Laws of Connection, one of my favourite pieces of writing is a letter from the author Henry James to his friend Grace Norton, who was recently bereaved:

Sorrow comes in great waves – no one can know that better than you – but it rolls over us, and though it may almost smother us it leaves us on the spot and we know that if it is strong we are stronger, inasmuch as it passes and we remain. It wears us, uses us, but we wear it and use it in return; and it is blind, whereas we after a manner see. My dear Grace, you are passing through a darkness in which I myself in my ignorance see nothing but that you have been made wretchedly ill by it; but it is only a darkness, it is not an end, or the end . . . Everything will pass, and serenity and accepted mysteries and disillusion­ments, and the tenderness of a few good people, and new opportunities and ever so much of life, in a word, will remain.

(You can read the whole thing here.)

There are a couple of reasons why I find James’s words so moving. One is his honesty about his ignorance; he shows empathy, and validates her experience, without claiming to know what Norton is thinking and feeling. The other is his emphasis on the transience of her feelings. Without diminishing her pain, he encourages her to see beyond her current circumstances.

Your support may be more appreciated than you realise (Photo by Tim Marshall on Unsplash)

The people who have helped me the most over the past few weeks have done both of these things, and I’m incredibly grateful for their sensitivity and support.

Many of us are scared to reach out when we hear that someone is going through hard times; we fear we will strike the wrong note and only make matters worse. But the research suggests that our efforts are often appreciated much more than we believe.

In one study by James Dungan and colleagues at the University of Chicago, students were asked to think of someone on campus who had been going through a tough time and might appreciate a message of support. On a scale from 0 (not at all) to 10 (extremely) they then estimated how that message might be received by that person, with separate ratings for feelings of awkwardness, perceived warmth and social competence – that is, whether they had chosen the ‘right’ words to express their sentiments. Finally, they sent their letter, along with a link to a survey measuring the recipients’ inter­pretations of the letters, using the same criteria.

Many participants were highly pessimistic about their capacity to support the other person, but these fears were not grounded in reality. On average, their letters were considered significantly warmer and more articulate than they had expected, and most of the people receiving the notes felt comforted by the sentiments behind the words. Contrary to the participants’ initial beliefs, the nature of the relationship did not influence how the letters were interpreted. Whether the person was a very close friend or a more distant acquaintance, the kind deed was equally appreciated in each case.

To find out whether this would also be true of face-to-face conversation, a follow-up experiment paired participants with random strangers who had previously described a difficult situation that they were facing, such as financial problems, romantic woes, family disputes and illness. The participants’ job, in a subsequent fifteen-minute conversation, was to provide as much social support as they could on the issue in question. ‘You could express empathy, give advice, share something from your own life, offer some kind of assistance, or anything else. We only ask that you try to express your support in whatever way makes sense to you.’ Once again, the participants’ expectations of those conversations were completely skewed. They worried that they would be unable to find the right things to say and they expected the chat itself to be uncomfortable and draining. Yet both sides found it to be an affirming experience.

That’s all for this week! Thanks, as ever, for reading, and please do share this post with anyone who might be interested.

David x