How to Comfort a Friend Who is Hurting (Exactly What to Say)
How to Comfort a Friend Who is Hurting (Exactly What to Say)
This video teaches you simple techniques for how to comfort a friend who is hurting. It provides, specific, evidence-based advice about what to say to provide effective emotional support. If you want to know how to comfort someone, but you don’t know exactly how, this video is for you.
Much of this advice comes from a paper written by the late Brant Burleson, who for may years was a professor of communication studies at Purdue University.
Introduction
How to comfort a friend or a family member or a colleague who is suffering, who’s upset, who’s in need of your comfort. Specifically what to say in order to give someone the kind of emotional support and comfort they need, when they’re really in a bad place.
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Bruce Lambert, PhD
HowCommunicationWorks.com
We all have friends that suffer, that are upset. They may have all sorts of things, they may be sick, they may have gotten a bad diagnosis, they may have had a death in their family, they may have a bad career outcome, all sorts of the bad stuff that just happens every day, they could have just had a bad day in traffic. But in any of those cases, to be a good friend, we want to be able to comfort people. And there are some sprcific things that research and social science has shown are better than others, in terms of comforting people.
How To Comfort Someone You Care About
Express a desire to help
- I really want to help you get through this.
Express positive regard
- You are such a good and kind person.
- You know I care about you so much.
- I love you so much.
- I’m just so concerned about you.
Express concern, care, and interest
- I care so much about you.
- I’m really interested in what’s happening to you
- I can see that you’re troubled
- I’m so concerned about you
- You know how much I care about you.
Express availability
- I’m here for you whenever you want to talk.
- I’m here for you. If you need to talk, I’m here for you. You can call me, you can text me, you can come on over whenver you want. I’m here, I’m available if you need someone to talk to.
Express alliance, togetherness, and solidarity（表达联盟、团结和团结）
- You are not going to have to go through this alone. I’m with you all the way.
- I can’t control the weather, or I can’t control the seas, the seas might be very stormy, but you’re not in that boat alone. We’re in the boat together.
Express acknowledgement, comprehension, understanding, sympathy, sorrow, and condolence（表达承认、理解、理解、同情、悲伤和哀悼）
- I am so sorry. I know how much this meant to you.
- I’m so sorry for what’s happening to you.
- I know how much you loved that person.
- I know how much the relationship meant to you.
- I know how much that promotion meant to you. (我知道那次晋升对你意味着什么。)
So just simply acknowledging the depth of the pain and sorrow that your friend or family member is experiencing, is really comforting.
Legitimize the other person’s feelings（使他人的感受合法化）
The next main thing you want to do is legitimize the other person’s feelings. This means telling them that their feelings are okay. Because a lot of times when we’re upset, we’re actually not sure that we have the right to be upset. We always question whether maybe our feelings aren’t valid, so it’s so useful and comforting when people tell us that our feeling are okay.
Say that the other person’s feelings are reasonable, normal, and appropriate
- Of course you are frightened. Anyone would be. This is a really scary situation.
Acknowledge the other person’s plight or circumstances（承认他人的困境或情况）
So you can talk about the bad thing that happened. Give them the acknowledgement.
- It totally sucks to work so hard for so long towards a goal and then not achieve it.
Absolve the person of blame or guilt（免除责备或有罪的人）
Absolve them of blame. People might feel like it’s theri fault that this bad thing happened to them. That they’re somehow to blame for their own bad circumstances. But when we’re comforting someone, we don’t want to say that to them. We want to sort of absolve them of blame.
- You certainly didn’t do anything to deserver this, and there’s no reason to feel bad about how you are reacting. It’s not your fault.
Reassure the person that it’s okay to express any feelings, that none are off-limits or bad(向对方保证可以表达任何感受，没有任何感受是禁止的或不好的)
One of the mechanisms by which comfort people is creating a space for them to express their feelings. One of the things we really want to do is let them know it’s okay to express their feelings. Many of us are taught that some feelings are good and some feelings are bad. That some feelings are okay to express and some feelings need to be kept to ourselves, or bottled up and not expressed at all. But when we comfort someone, we want to let them know that’s not true, they can express any emotion that they want.
- There are no right or wrong feelings. We can’t control how we feel. So no matter what you’re feeling, it’s okay with me. I’ll still love you, I won’t judge you.
Encourage elaboration of feelings and the story behind the feelings（鼓励阐述感情和感情背后的故事）
The actual way that the comforting works is that we allow people to re-appraise their own situation. On of the ways we do that is by encouraging them to elaborate on their feelings and tell the story behind their feelings. Why are they feeling the way they are? This can help people come to terms with their own feelings, and even understand their own feelings. Just because our feelings are our own and we feel them viscerally, it doesn’t mean that we always understand our own feelings. Sometimes we need to have a conversation with a close friend before we even know what we’re feeling. So if you’re that close friend, you want to encourage people to elaborate on their feelings and tell the story behind them.
Encourage the expression of feelings
- Can you tell me how you’ve been feeling?
- I’m just so interested to learn how you’ve been feeling.
Ask open-ended questions about feelings
- How have those anxious feelings been lately?
- Has that gotten worse? Or are you feeling better?
- Are you still as sad as you were last time we talked?
- How are you feeling since we talked?
- How are those of feelings of sadness?
- What’s the worst part about what you’re going through now?
Reflect and restate the thoughts and feelings that you hear
If you do nothing else, this strategy alone can be incredibly powerful. To simply observer what people are telling you, observer how they’re holding themselves, observer their non-verbal behavior, and listen closely to what they say and just reflect it back to them. This lets them know you’re hearing them, lets them know you’re paying attention, and this alone can be comforting.
- From what I can tell, you are still really sad about the end of that relationship, and you’re not sure how you are ever going to get over it.
And you can say this even after they just finished saying “I’m so sad, I don’t think I’m ever going to get over it”. You just reflect back, and if you do it sincerely, it won’t sound like a tactic, it won’t sound like a trick or a game, people will really feel heard.
Offer hypotheses about how the person might be feeling
People don’t know necessarily how they’re feeling, or why they’re feeling that way, so we can explore it with them.
- Could it be that you feel guilty that you didn’t do more to help your friend when she was sick?
This is a way of exploring with your friend the way they might be feeling, why they’re feeling so upset. And you could be wrong, and of course if you are wrong, your friend will tell you, and you say, “Oh, I got that wrong, didn’t I? I thought you were feeling that way.” They won’t blame you if you’re sincere and authentic in your expressions.
Use back channel cues
- yeah
- and uh huh
- and ahh
This just let them know, you’re still present, you’re still listening.
Ask open-ended questions about the problem, but do not interrogate（询问有关问题的开放式问题，但不要询问）
You could also ask open-ended questions about problem, but you don’t want the person to feel like you’re interrogating them; you don’t want to give them the third degree.
- What happened next?
- How did that make you feel?
- What has been the hardest part(of this whole situation)?
All of these are inviting elaboration. You want them to tell their story, You want to listen attentively, and affirm them. Affirm your concern for them, affirm that you’ve heard what they’ve say, explore the feelings with them and give them chance to figure it out on their own.
