To console someone who’s grieving, first try not making it about you

Last April, Susan Silk and Barry Goldman wrote an enlightening Op-Ed about how not to say the wrong thing to someone in crisis. The article, which explained the “ring theory” of kvetching, was by far the Opinion section’s most popular piece in 2013. In it, Silk and Goldman set up the premise and laid out the rules:

“Draw a circle. This is the center ring. In it, put the name of the person at the center of the current trauma.... Now draw a larger circle around the first one. In that ring put the name of the person next closest to the trauma.... Repeat the process as many times as you need to. In each larger ring put the next closest people. Parents and children before more distant relatives. Intimate friends in smaller rings, less intimate friends in larger ones. When you are done you have a Kvetching Order....

“The person in the center ring can say anything she wants to anyone, anywhere. She can kvetch and complain and whine and moan and curse the heavens and say, ‘Life is unfair’ and ‘Why me?’ That’s the one payoff for being in the center ring. Everyone else can say those things too, but only to people in larger rings.”

10 tips for a better life from The Times’ Op-Ed pages

They also offered this advice we so often forget when we’re trying to counsel someone in trauma: “Listening is often more helpful than talking.”

The rules seems so obvious, but they’re easy to forget, especially when the knee-jerk reaction is to say something, anything, that we hope will make the person feel better. Too often we want to appear sensitive or empathetic but end up coming across as tone-deaf and self-involved. The person in pain ends up feeling as though they’ve been clubbed over the head in a game of oneupmanship.

Of course, there’s no perfect recipe for consoling someone who is hurting. I was once listening to a loved one and asking thoughtful questions, when, exasperated, he asked me to listen less and advise more.

But there are a few do’s and don’ts that we should use as guidance along with the “ring theory.” As New York Times columnist David Brooks opined this week in “The Art of Presence,” they include:

“Don’t compare, ever. Don’t say, ‘I understand what it’s like to lose a child. My dog died, and that was hard too.’ Even if the comparison seems more germane, don’t make it. Each trauma should be respected in its uniqueness. Each story should be heard attentively as its own thing....

“Do be a builder.... Firefighters drop everything and arrive at the moment of crisis. Builders are there for years and years, walking alongside as the victims live out in the world.”

Also on the list: Bring soup, advice Joan Didion would certainly agree with.

Brooks sums it up like this:

“I’d say that what these experiences call for is a sort of passive activism. We have a tendency, especially in an achievement-oriented culture, to want to solve problems and repair brokenness — to propose, plan, fix, interpret, explain and solve. But what seems to be needed here is the art of presence — to perform tasks without trying to control or alter the elemental situation. Allow nature to take its course. Grant the sufferers the dignity of their own process. Let them define meaning. Sit simply through moments of pain and uncomfortable darkness. Be practical, mundane, simple and direct.”

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