Coping with friends family and social situations

UK Helpline: 0 345 123 23 0 4 | tcf.org.uk Other people’s reactions “How do I answer questions about what happened to my child? How do I cope with silence or rejection? How do I cope when people expect me to have ‘moved on’ or ‘found closure’?” We may be lucky enough to have friends and family who support us in the way we need. It can be a wonderful thing to receive this level of love and understanding. However, many of us discover that some people simply don’t “get it”, even those we thought would be our most supportive friends. Their lack of empathy can be very painful. People may ask how we are, but not really want to hear any other answer than that we are okay. Some expect us to “get over” our grief and “move on” . They might make comments which they think are helpful, but which hurt us deeply such as “he’s in a better place now!” or “everything happens for a reason” . We may find that people actually cross the road to avoid us, look away when they see us come into a room, or in other ways ignore us. Perhaps they have no idea what to say, so they don’t say anything. It might be better if they said something, rather than nothing at all – although in some cases silence can be better, as clumsy or cutting comments can be even more wounding than silence. Some people seem unable to cope with our grief and disappear from our lives. We may also find that to look after ourselves we need to cut off contact with certain individuals whose attitudes are making our grief worse.