I’ve recently heard a lot of bad news from friends of mine, much of it health related, and this has started me thinking. When we hear something horrible (your friend X has cancer), our instinct is to try and help. This is obviously a good thing.
However, our first instinct is to try and do this in a dramatic way, to show how much the we care, to show how much this upsets us, to rail about how we wish that we could make it better. Most of this is focused on us, not on the people that are really in trouble. We are trying to reach out that extra mile just to show how much we care.
I’m starting to think that it’s much better to handle news like this in a bland and boring way. Just listen, offer your sympathies, and don’t really do much else unless you can think of a real way to make a difference. This probably just means waiting and being ready to help AFTER your friends are ready to for it. In the mean time, show you are there for them, but give them enough space to deal with things in their own way.
By staying calm and controlled you can help your friends and family stay in control and deal with the real issues. This is the exact opposite of trying to show how upset we are, and so doesn’t seem as natural. However, I think it does more actual good.