I’ve been a therapist for more than 10 years. I worked in social services for the decade before that. I knew grief. I knew how to handle it in myself, and how to attend to it in others. When my partner drowned on a sunny day in 2009, I learned there was a lot more to grief than I’d known.

Many people truly want to help a friend or family member who is experiencing a severe loss. Words often fail us at times like these, leaving us stammering for the right thing to say. Some people are so afraid to say or do the wrong thing, they choose to do nothing at all. Doing nothing at all is certainly an option, but it’s not often a good one.

While there is no one perfect way to respond or to support someone you care about, here are some good ground rules.

#1 Grief belongs to the griever.
You have a supporting role, not the central role, in your friend’s grief. This may seem like a strange thing to say. So many of the suggestions, advice and “help” given to the griever tells them they should be doing this differently, or feeling differently than they do. Grief is a very personal experience, and belongs entirely to the person experiencing it. You may believe you would do things differently if it had happened to you. We hope you do not get the chance to find out. This grief belongs to your friend: follow his or her lead.

#2 Stay present and state the truth.
It’s tempting to make statements about the past or the future when your friend’s present life holds so much pain. You cannot know what the future will be, for yourself or your friend — it may or may not be better “later.” That your friend’s life was good in the past is not a fair trade for the pain of now. Stay present with your friend, even when the present is full of pain.

It’s also tempting to make generalized statements about the situation in an attempt to soothe your friend. You cannot know that your friend’s loved one “finished their work here,” or that they are in a “better place.” These future-based, omniscient, generalized platitudes aren’t helpful. Stick with the truth: this hurts. I love you. I’m here.

#3 Do not try to fix the unfixable.
Your friend’s loss cannot be fixed or repaired or solved. The pain itself cannot be made better. Please see #2. Do not say anything that tries to fix the unfixable, and you will do just fine. It is an unfathomable relief to have a friend who does not try to take the pain away.

#4 Be willing to witness searing, unbearable pain. 
To do #4 while also practicing #3 is very, very hard.

#5 This is not about you.
Being with someone in pain is not easy. You will have things come up — stresses, questions, anger, fear, guilt. Your feelings will likely be hurt. You may feel ignored and unappreciated. Your friend cannot show up for their part of the relationship very well. Please don’t take it personally, and please don’t take it out on them. Please find your own people to lean on at this time — it’s important that you be supported while you support your friend. When in doubt, refer to #1.

#6 Anticipate, don’t ask.
Do not say “Call me if you need anything,” because your friend will not call. Not because they do not need, but because identifying a need, figuring out who might fill that need, and then making a phone call to ask is light years beyond their energy levels, capacity or interest. Instead, make concrete offers: “I will be there at 4 p.m. on Thursday to bring your recycling to the curb,” or “I will stop by each morning on my way to work and give the dog a quick walk.” Be reliable.

#7 Do the recurring things.
The actual, heavy, real work of grieving is not something you can do (see #1), but you can lessen the burden of “normal” life requirements for your friend. Are there recurring tasks or chores that you might do? Things like walking the dog, refilling prescriptions, shoveling snow and bringing in the mail are all good choices. Support your friend in small, ordinary ways — these things are tangible evidence of love.

Please try not to do anything that is irreversible — like doing laundry or cleaning up the house — unless you check with your friend first. That empty soda bottle beside the couch may look like trash, but may have been left there by their husband just the other day. The dirty laundry may be the last thing that smells like her. Do you see where I’m going here? Tiny little normal things become precious. Ask first.

#8 Tackle projects together.
Depending on the circumstance, there may be difficult tasks that need tending — things like casket shopping, mortuary visits, the packing and sorting of rooms or houses. Offer your assistance and follow through with your offers. Follow your friend’s lead in these tasks. Your presence alongside them is powerful and important; words are often unnecessary. Remember #4: bear witness and be there.

#9 Run interference.
To the new griever, the influx of people who want to show their support can be seriously overwhelming. What is an intensely personal and private time can begin to feel like living in a fish bowl. There might be ways you can shield and shelter your friend by setting yourself up as the designated point person — the one who relays information to the outside world, or organizes well-wishers. Gatekeepers are really helpful.

#10 Educate and advocate.
You may find that other friends, family members and casual acquaintances ask for information about your friend. You can, in this capacity, be a great educator, albeit subtly. You can normalize grief with responses like,”She has better moments and worse moments and will for quite some time. An intense loss changes every detail of your life.” If someone asks you about your friend a little further down the road, you might say things like, “Grief never really stops. It is something you carry with you in different ways.”

#11 Love.
Above all, show your love. Show up. Say something. Do something. Be willing to stand beside the gaping hole that has opened in your friend’s life, without flinching or turning away. Be willing to not have any answers. Listen. Be there. Be present. Be a friend. Be love. Love is the thing that lasts.

Megan Devine is the author of Everything is Not Okay: an audio program for grief. She is a licensed clinical counselor, writer and grief advocate. You can find her at www.refugeingrief.com. Join her on facebook at www.facebook.com/refugeingrief

Why won’t my child listen to me?  Why won’t she open up when it’s obvious that something’s bothering her?  Why does he answer back?  Why does she shout rather than talk when she gets upset?  Why does he lash out when frustrated rather than seeking my support?

Active Listening – a communication skill that can bring greater connection, cooperation, clarity and understanding to relationships.

Parents are often baffled to see their child being defiant, uncooperative or becoming verbally or physically aggressive rather than talk about their feelings.   They can’t understand why their child will shut down and refuse to speak or interact when they’re clearly troubled.  Parents know how much they love their child and hope or expect that their child can trust that they can turn to their parent for comfort.  Yet, many of the responses from parents to children when a child needs to feel heard, including very well meaning advice, inadvertently gives children the message that their feelings are not valued, cared for or understood.

Active listening is a skill that anyone can learn and, when practiced, can truly transform how your children talk to you, listen to you and generally improve the quality of communication and co-operation between you.  Active listening tends to result in the connection, the trust and hence the flow of communication opening up, sometimes deepening, sometimes becoming lighter, but certainly moving at least a couple of steps from disharmony to harmony.

Children listen to us more or less as well as they feel listened to.  Probably the number one top complaint of parents is that their child “won’t listen” to them, but what if the child’s refusal or disinterest in listening to us is an indicator that, quite often, they don’t feel very good when listening to us, resulting in some breakdown of the communication.  It’s hard to relate to our child’s feelings and frustrations when we feel ignored by our child or feel that our child is purposely fighting us.  Yet, it’s when we can see past their refusal to cooperate and try to relate to what feelings they may be showing us that things can start to move from stuck back to open connected communication that works for parent and child!

What helps you feel seen, heard and understood?  To gain some insight into your child’s world, perhaps first think about this from your own perspective:  Bring to mind a relationship where you struggle to get your point of view across, a relationship that always feels like a one way communication, even when they listen, you can tell they’re not really listening, that they’re amped to jump back in and get their point of view across, to give advice, to correct or criticize you (perhaps subtly) and generally always bring the communication back to their thoughts, feelings and opinions. You might wish they could show genuine interest in hearing and understanding your perspective.  Notice how you feel when thinking about this person and these interactions.  If you were to need this person’s help or co-operation, what thoughts would come up for you?   Possibly, you’d rather not need them at all and if you do need to ask their help or advice, you would probably already feel defensive and quite stressed.

Now think about the person who always shows genuine interest in your point of view, in your experiences and feelings and gives you positive reflections.  Think about how you feel if you need to seek their help?  Much calmer?  If you think about the messages you receive from these different experiences, you’ll no doubt gain some valuable experience-based insights into what active listening is and is not. These insights are way more valuable than anything you can read on the subject!

Love is not enough, we need communication skills.  The difference between these two different interactions probably has a lot to do with whether a certain person can practice active listening or not.

What is Active Listening?  What does it look like in a conversation? What improvements will likely happen in my family interactions if I can learn to apply it?

When active listening, the listener resists the temptation to make the assumption that they already know what the speaker is trying to say.  It’s easy to think “oh I’ve heard this before” or “I know what you should do”, “yeah right, as if you’re so innocent in this” or “come on get to the bottom line”.  Such thoughts make it difficult to properly hear and interpret the speaker’s words and can deny both parties the opportunity for deeper understanding and to resolve potential misunderstandings.  Mostly when people are speaking, they are showing feelings, not just information and facts.  When the listener responds back to the facts while ignoring the feelings, this can leave the speaker with an unsatisfied sense that their feelings haven’t been seen, understood or cared about (empathized with) hence leading to tension between listener and speaker. This can subsequently make it more difficult for the speaker to then listen actively when it’s their turn to listen.

Yet when the listener has tuned in to the feelings being expressed, as well as the information and facts, and shows a good attempt to acknowledge those feelings (“oh I can well imagine why you found that so frustrating”), then the speaker (be they a child or an adult) may gain more satisfaction and hence in turn feel more open and positive as the communication continues.

Good communication depends on clear coherent feedback.  People often listen passively, not giving any feedback to the speaker about whether they are accepting or understanding what’s been spoken.  When the speaker either doesn’t receive feedback, be it verbal or non-verbal, this can add to the tensions between speaker and listener.  With active listening, the listener reflects to the speaker while they’re still speaking that they are fully listening, this can involve sounds like “mmm”, “yea”, “ok”, “aahh” and it can also be reflected through eye contact, nodding the head and body language that shows patience, presence and interest.  The listener can then reflect verbally what they think they’ve understood and then give the speaker a chance to clarify or further explain; for example “ok what I think I understand from what you’ve said is that … this happened, then this happened …, which led to you feeling …. and what you now need is for …….  Does that sound right?”.

Active listening can deepen the bond, the trust, the mutual respect and mutual understanding in relationships.  Children from birth onwards need and benefit hugely from active listening. With active listening, the listener gives their full attention to the speaker.  They show the speaker that they are truly present, as opposed to half listening or impatiently waiting to jump in with what they have to say.  The majority of communication between people is non-verbal, maybe about 92%, which is why it works so well with babies who are pre-verbal as well as older children and not to mention partners!

Active listening promotes a deeper level of empathy and attunement in that when the listener is fully present and receptive, they tend to become more attuned with the speaker and pick up on a lot more of the non-verbal communication, tone of voice, eye contact, facial expressions, body language and notice what’s not being said through hesitation in the voice, etc. It’s all too easy to view communication in terms of the relaying of facts and ignore the all important emotional information.

When a parent uses active listening, children generally feel more supported and less controlled.  It’s hard for parents to resist giving endless advice and lectures as they feel the huge responsibility of teaching their child. Believe me I know this so well, 16 years down the parenting path I still have to edit what moves from my thoughts to my words, it’s a feeling of pulling in my own reins! Yet, children, like us adults, benefit from the opportunity to work things out as they speak, they like to self-correct and develop self-discipline.  A great way to support our child’s self-confidence and self-competence is to hold back the advice and replace it with active listening as often as possible.  Your time and patience will soon start to pay off as you notice your child taking more responsibility and using these listening skills that you’ve modelled.  By slowing down the communication and resisting giving advice and solutions, parents also give the message to their child that they trust them to find their own solutions and trust them to ask for and access as much or as little help as they need.

With active listening, the listener becomes more present and really allows the communication to slow down.  Generally, as tensions rise in an interaction, the communication speeds up making it less and less likely that either party will end up feeling heard, understood, trusted or supported.  Active Listening creates more time, more presence and more spaciousness to the communication de-escalating stress and increasing mutual listening.

This slowing down process helps children to feel more safe and secure in the parent child relationship in general, it lowers rather than raises a child’s stress levels.  Children can only really access their more logical thinking when they feel safe and secure.  Children need a lot more time than adults to process their thoughts, feelings and needs, they need more time to communicate, to express themselves.  When parents expect their children to think, express and act at an adult pace, children can easily become discouraged and shut down, they can either give up trying to express their real feelings and needs, this is often when they become very resistant, or the other reaction of becoming aggressive and perhaps shouting or demanding or starting a fight with their sibling.

A parent can shift gear into using active listening at any point in an interaction.  Many parents when first learning these new communication skills, don’t remember to use active listening until they can see that things are going down hill in a particular interaction, their child is becoming upset or resistant, so they see this as their cue to start using active listening.  Active listening can start with reflecting the parent’s reading of the feelings their child is expressing and reflecting that back; “hmm it looks like you’re finding it hard to hear what I’m asking you to do this morning? Does that sound right?” Once the communication develops, it can help to ask your child “hmm what do you need my sweetheart?”. I’m a big fan of terms of endearment for expressing love and affection and messages that we’re not annoyed at our child in that moment.

To gain a more comprehensive understanding of active listening and it’s application as a parent, I highly recommend reading “Parent Effectiveness Training” by Thomas Gordon.  Here’s a quote from the book relating to active listening; “Paradoxically, this method will increase the parent’s influence on the child, but it is an influence that differs from the kind that most parents try to exert over their children.  Active listening is a method of influencing children to find their own solutions to their own problems.  Most parents, however, are tempted to take over ownership of their children’s problems.”

Genevieve is an international speaker, group facilitator, parent coach, holistic counsellor, an energy healer, and a writer. She is a contributor of The Natural Parent Magazine, Kiwi Families’ online resource and Kindred magazine. 

Reprinted with permission from http://genevievesimperingham.com/.