By Kathleen Ririe
“The greatest act of kindness is being there for someone when they need you the most.”
There is no way to see a 6-year-old body in a casket and not feel something heavy inside. This past week, I was reminded again of the fragility of life and the deep ocean that grief can be as I attended the funeral of my friend’s 6-year-old son who passed unexpectedly and tragically. Coincidentally, my husband was simultaneously out of town attending his uncle’s funeral and our family was also commemorating the anniversary of the death by suicide of a close family member. There was so much inside me as I drove home thinking of all these losses. How could they possibly ever be overcome? I wondered if there was anything I could do the lighten the load of grief for these close friends and family. I thought back to a poem I’d studied in my 8th grade English class by Ella Wilcox called Solitude which ends with this stanza:
Feast, and your halls are crowded;
Fast, and the world goes by.
Succeed and give, and it helps you live,
But no man can help you die.
There is room in the halls of pleasure
For a large and lordly train,
But one by one we must all file on
Through the narrow aisles of pain.
My heart broke thinking of my loved ones filing down a dark grief-filled aisle alone! With that thought I determined to investigate what the research says about giving effective support to those grieving. With over 3.3 million posts in 2023 with the hashtag #grief and 85% of people over 16 years old reporting experiences of grief- unfortunately, grief is a common human emotion*. I acknowledge that grief is a difficult construct to measure and also extremely personal in experience and effect for individuals. Although there is not a one-size-fits-all solution, there may be some helpful actions that we can take toward easing the grief of a loved one including offering a supportive consoling touch, giving emotional support, and lending a listening ear.
The Power of Consoling Touch
Consoling touch is contact targeted toward alleviating distress. Recent brain research has connected comforting touch, such as hand holding, with a decrease in physical pain experienced by the receiver. Furthermore, the brain perceives comforting touch in a feedback loop involving centers in the brain that process shared distress, activating a brain-to-brain coupling effect for the giver and receiver of the touch (Shamay-Tsoory and Eisenberger, 2021). This is a fancy way of saying that touch can increase the feelings of connection between the empathizer and the griever, thus increasing the perception of support. Not only does consoling touch work to decrease physical pain, but it also decreases the emotional pain experienced with lasting effects. (Sahi et al., 2021) Although hand-holding was found to be preferred by some (Sened et al., 2023), focus on giving whatever type of consoling teach feels most natural to you. If you have a friend grieving, don’t shy away from squeezing their hand, hugging them, or putting your arm around their shoulder- it can make all the difference in alleviating both their physical and emotional load.
The Power of Giving Emotional Support
Emotional support involves showing care, compassion, trust, and mutuality for another person’s experience. In one study the bereaved participants agreed that emotional support was preferred over other types of social support after traumatic loss (Cacciatore et al., 2021). Although social support in the form of financial aid, giving information, professional support, etc is helpful, compassionate action appears to be the special ingredient. Boiled down to its core, compassionate action is doing for someone what you would want to be done for you. It can feel intimidating to be vulnerable to offer hugs, tell the feelings in your heart, and be present with another in their suffering. It can be helpful to remember that both compassion for the griever and self-compassion for ourselves can help us to connect deeper and feel less inadequate. Self-compassion buffers the effects of grief (Sarper and Rodrigues, 2024). Learn more about self-compassion in this complete module from MyBestSelf101.org. Don’t worry about doing it wrong, just give emotional aid in the best way you know how. It may feel awkward, insufficient, and inadequate, but as you have self-compassion to allow yourself to give your imperfect human gift of support, it will also allow the receiver to discover the common humanity between you, elevating the sense of emotional support.
The Power of Listening
Sometimes all you can do is be there and listen.Think of a time when you felt distress and had a friend who really listened, likely you experienced relief just in sharing what you felt. In a survey of those experiencing traumatic loss, it was expressed that the main thing others did to help alleviate grief was to listen (Frantz et al., 1998). Mindful listening involves listening actively with your whole body and being fully present. Listening mindfully has been correlated with more effective supportive communication (Jones et al., 2019) For a deeper look at mindfulness and how to polish your skills of presence, check out this full module. Set down distractions. Look into their eyes. Offer a consoling and supportive touch. Don’t try to fix it. Just hear it and be a witness to their pain- see it, feel it, allow it. Make mindful and compassionate space in your heart to allow yourself to feel their hurt without needing to change it. Hold it with them. Hold it FOR them.
It can feel overwhelming to know how to offer compassion in a way that is helpful when we see another’s suffering. But don’t worry! YOU CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE just by allowing their pain to be seen, heard, and shared. YOU have the power within you to bring comfort to that all-to-universal experience of grief.
“One of the most important things you can do on this earth is to let people know they are not alone.”
References
admin. (2023, March 3). Grief Statistics and Bereavement 2024 - USA and UK. Britta Grubin. https://brittagrubin.com/grief-bereavement-statistics/
Cacciatore, J., Thieleman, K., Fretts, R., & Jackson, L. B. (2021). What is good grief support? Exploring the actors and actions in social support after traumatic grief. PLOS ONE, 16(5), e0252324. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0252324
Frantz, T. T., Trolley, B. C., & Farrell, M. M. (1998). Positive Aspects of Grief. Pastoral Psychology, 47(1), 3–17. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1022988612298
Jones, S. M., Bodie, G. D., & Hughes, S. D. (2019). The Impact of Mindfulness on Empathy, Active Listening, and Perceived Provisions of Emotional Support. Communication Research, 46(6), 838–865. https://doi.org/10.1177/0093650215626983
Sahi, R. S., Dieffenbach, M. C., Gan, S., Lee, M., Hazlett, L. I., Burns, S. M., Lieberman, M. D., Shamay-Tsoory, S. G., & Eisenberger, N. I. (2021). The comfort in touch: Immediate and lasting effects of handholding on emotional pain. PLoS ONE, 16(2), e0246753. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0246753
Sarper, E., & Rodrigues, D. L. (2024). The Role of Perceived Social Support in the Grief Experiences of More Anxious and Self-Compassionate People. OMEGA - Journal of Death and Dying, 00302228241229484. https://doi.org/10.1177/00302228241229484
Sened, H., Levin, C., Shehab, M., Eisenberger, N., & Shamay-Tsoory, S. (2023). I wanna hold your hand: Handholding is preferred over gentle stroking for emotion regulation. PloS One, 18(4), e0284161. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0284161
Shamay-Tsoory, S. G., & Eisenberger, N. I. (2021). Getting in touch: A neural model of comforting touch. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 130, 263–273. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2021.08.030
solitude ella wilcox - Google Search. (n.d.). Retrieved February 27, 2024, from https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=solitude+ella+wilcox&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8