What NOT to Say to a Person Who’s Grieving
Sometimes saying certain things with the best intentions is the worst thing you can do. So DO.NOT.SAY them and even less so during the holidays.
Published in
4 min readNov 25, 2016
Holidays are hard for the grieving. Do not make them even harder by saying anything of the following (sadly, these are examples from real life):
- ‘It’s been months, you should get over it by now.’ There are no rules when it comes to grieving. Everyone is different, every relationship and bond is different. We use different coping strategies, and we have a different tolerance for pain, including emotional pain. Just because you or someone you know was able to overcome grief in a few weeks or months, that doesn’t mean that everyone could or should do the same. Keep those differences in mind and refrain from telling people when to stop grieving.
- ‘I know that you’re hurting, but I (or someone else) went through something even more horrible — it could be worse, you know.’ For the person who’s grieving things just got worse the moment you said that for by doing so you disvalued their loss and robbed them of their right to grieve. The last thing someone who’s trying to cope needs is having their…
