When you love your family, you want to do everything you can to alleviate their grief and sorrow. If you feel unsure of your ability to provide comfort to your family, there are ways you can work on your relationship skills so you can truly be there for the ones you love.
Discovering the Source of Your Anxiety
I’ve worked with some people who felt insecure about their ability to provide comfort to their family members. Usually, their anxiousness arises around finding that “right” thing to say that will make all their loved ones’ troubles melt away and make everything better.
However, movie and television moments like these rarely exist in real life. The rest of the time, we just need to do our best to help our loved ones through a tough juncture the best we can.
Building Your Comforting Skills
Believe it or not, you can effectively comfort your family without having to say much.
Listen
When members of your family are upset, you might want to consider just listening. That’s right. You don’t even have to say anything to be a comfort to the ones you love. Just being present, focusing on your loved one, giving space to your loved one to express emotions, and listening might be all she needs.
If you take on the attitude that each of your family members are capable of solving their own problems, but you want to be supportive, just being there to listen and giving suggestions to help them brainstorm solutions could be just the thing they need.
Offer Advice Only When Asked
Honor how your family members are feeling and allow them to experience it until they are ready to speak. Offer advice only when asked. If you offer it any other time, your loved one may not be in the frame of mind to receive it, and it could actually trigger an argument.
It depends on how upset your loved one is. Give your family member a chance to express those tough emotions first and calm down. Hugs are always helpful.
Ask Questions Instead of Giving Advice
If your family member gets defensive easily, asking questions might be a good way to help. Even if she isn’t particularly defensive, when your family member is upset, advice could be rejected simply because she is too upset to listen.
For instance, if your daughter is upset because of a social situation at school, you could ask questions not only to understand the situation, but also to help her arrive to what she can do next. You will have to use your awesome listening skills also so you can ask the right questions. Here’s an example of how you can combine those skills:
After hearing why your daughter is upset, summarize what your understanding of the situation is: “Let me see if I understand the situation. Jessica is jealous of you, so she told your best friend Lindsey that you said something nasty about her. Now Lindsey is mad at you and won’t speak with you. Did I get it right?”
Use encouragement. “I know it seems like your feelings will last forever and you won’t work things out with Lindsey (say something like this only if she has expressed these sentiments). Unfortunately, there are some feelings you will go through in life that are tough to experience, like loss, sadness, grief, and anger. However, feelings are temporary and even though it will take some time, you do feel better when you give yourself some time and space.”
If it’s appropriate and you feel comfortable, you can briefly share an experience that was similar to your daughter’s and how you overcame it. Not too long, though, because the focus needs to be on your daughter. Spending too long reminiscing could make your daughter feel like you’re not considering her and her situation.
When your daughter is nice and calm, direct her towards problem solving. Here is a question you can ask to encourage her to focus on problem solving, an important life-skill: “Would you like to see if we can write down a list of possible things you can do about the situation?” A list might look like this:
Do nothing. If Lindsey so easily believes lies other people tell her, then maybe your daughter and Lindsey weren’t as close as she thought they were.
Express her disappointment to Lindsey that she would believe such negative things, even though something like this never happened before.
Give Lindsey time to calm down, then talk to her to explain she would never say anything bad about her.
Explain to Lindsey that Jessica lied to her, and that she was hurt when she believed the lies Jessica told about her.
You can write the list for your daughter if she doesn’t feel like it. Contribute an idea or two of your own if she is open to you doing this. Then allow her to decide how she is going to solve her problem with her best friend.
Your Powerful Presence
When you take yourself out of the role of “the fixer” or “the healer,” you put responsibility and confidence in your family members that even through tough times, they are capable of solving their own problems. If you recast yourself as a “facilitator of healing,” this helps draw some healthy boundaries in your relationships.
Expecting to be the answer to your loved one’s problems is a bit on the unhealthy side and unrealistic, although your intentions do come from love. Your family is lucky to have you. As you know, you can’t heal your child’s body when they get a cut. Their bodies have to heal themselves. Just having you there to put the band aid on their boo boos and give them a light kiss can help you be a powerful healing facilitator indeed.
Thanks for reading.