Friday, May 6, 2016

Article: What Not to Say a Crisis

http://www.northtexasumc.org/north-texas-conference-news/how-not-to-say-the-wrong-thing-in-death-illness-divorce-and-other-crises

This struck me as both simple and useful.  As I understand it, it's often difficult even for neurotypical people to know what to say in a crisis.  With a crisis on the horizon for my family (impending death of my dad's mother), this seems extra relevant.

As that particular situation goes, I'm on one of the more outer rings, and so my primary focus will be comfort.  I love my grandma, but in truth I don't know her very well.  This is a side effect of the distance that plagues both sides of the family.  I generally only saw my grandparents, uncles, and aunts once a year.  As a child that disliked social interaction immensely, the opportunities for bonding were even fewer.

My father, on the other hand, will lose his mother.  She was, in the past, a vivacious hostess, happy to have company and make tons of food that everyone would like.  She regularly had guests and made them feel welcome and appreciated.  Even now, after years of painful knees, dislocated shoulders, and other assorted health problems, she is a warm and caring individual.  So to him, a great loss.  Expected, perhaps, after years of aging and becoming bedbound.  But painful, as I'm sure the passing of my own mother will be to me.

The other thing I wanted to highlight is that this concentric circles model (Comfort IN, Dump OUT) makes perfect sense from a logical point of view.  The person having the crisis is most affected by it, and as such should reasonably be able to say whatever (but hopefully nothing hurtful).  The person closest to the person-in-crisis is the second-most affected by it, and as such definitely needs support from as many people as possible.  But even that need for support shouldn't allow them to undermine the support from the person-in-crisis.

As you travel further out in the rings, the crisis affects the person less and less, and it makes sense that they should be focusing on comforting those more affected, rather than complaining about this crisis that doesn't affect them very much.

I think the only issue I have with the model is that can be kind of subjective who goes in the closest rings, especially if the crisis affects a lot of people.  In the case of my grandmother's incoming death, I can ascertain that I am going to be an outer ring, and should focus on comforting pretty much anyone else who comes to the funeral.  But what if I was my dad?  Would it be okay to complain to my uncle, his brother?  Or to my cousin, his niece?  It gets tricky.  Perhaps the problem is that I'm not familiar enough with the family ties and bonds to say, and my dad will have no problems ascertaining the best course of action.

For me, though?  I suppose if I were my dad, I'd try to err on the side of comfort.  I'd probably complain to my mother, his wife, but that'd be about it.  That honestly seems like the safest course of action.  Though, it's emotions.  It's often very difficult to think through emotions logically and quietly, especially if they're strong ones.  Which is probably why the folks in the beginning of the article made the mistakes they did. 

1 comment:

  1. ...and it goes without saying "no romanticizing suffering in". That's one of the first things that got me moving away from Christianity. I was going through a period of pretty serious physical pain and mental anguish (which would culminate in a psychotic break) and Christians around me were calling suffering good.

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