48. How to Give Condolences
The Highly Sensitive Person Podcast
Kelly
4.8 • 676 Ratings
🗓️ 21 July 2015
⏱️ 11 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
You’d think as an HSP that I’d be good at knowing what to say when someone I care about, a friend or family member, had something terrible happen to them. I want SO BADLY to say something helpful, but I’m always afraid that I’ll say the wrong thing. So this honestly isn’t for HSPs only—these tips could help anyone.
Links from this episode:
- The Condolence Coach blog
- Condolence notes for the death of a pet: A Dog’s Tale
- Condolence notes for miscarriage or stillbirth: Soothing A Terrible Loss
Thank you to Tabitha Jones and Stephanie Pollock for supporting this podcast on Patreon!! THANK YOU!!
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Podcast music attribution: Bust This Bust That (Professor Kliq) / CC BY-NC-SA 3.0
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is the highly sensitive person podcast. For people who experience the world brighter, |
| 0:08.2 | louder, and more intensely, join me on a journey of acceptance of our highly sensitive person |
| 0:14.9 | traits. Welcome to episode 48. I'm your host, Kelly. This is a twice-monthly podcast about what it's like to have sensory processing sensitivity. |
| 0:28.9 | And I'm going to jump right into the topic today, which is condolences, what to say and what not to say to a friend or family member who's going through |
| 0:40.0 | a difficult time. You know, you'd think as an HSP that I'd be good at knowing what to say to someone |
| 0:46.4 | I care about who's had something terrible happen to them. When I'm in this situation, I want |
| 0:52.4 | so badly to say something helpful, but I'm always afraid that I'll say the wrong thing. |
| 0:58.8 | So what I'm going to talk about today really isn't just for HSPs. Hopefully it could help anyone in this situation. |
| 1:07.2 | A friend of mine had a cancer scare recently. While I was waiting to hear from her about her test results, |
| 1:13.6 | I thought to myself, what do I say to her if she does have cancer? I had no clue. I started, |
| 1:20.6 | you know, Googling it and trying to find answers. What do you say to a friend who's sick? And I discovered I really didn't know, and I was so nervous |
| 1:29.1 | about the whole thing, that I would say the wrong thing and make her feel even worse. |
| 1:34.0 | I knew that I would feel the fear and uncertainty along with her, but I didn't know what to actually |
| 1:40.8 | say aloud to her to be helpful. I even said to myself, what would I want |
| 1:46.4 | someone to say to me if I was in her shoes? But I still didn't know. I also had a friend tell me |
| 1:53.2 | about a tragedy that happened recently in her personal life. I wasn't expecting it. I was put on the |
| 1:59.2 | spot, awkwardly trying to think of words that wouldn't |
| 2:02.4 | make it worse. And I just said, I'm so sorry. And then I said some stupid observation that I |
| 2:09.7 | immediately regretted because it didn't help the situation. And I could feel myself panicking. |
| 2:15.9 | I wanted so bad to be a good friend and to say the |
| 2:19.0 | right thing to help her, but I didn't know what. So then I just really closely observed her face, |
| 2:26.5 | her words, and her body language to try to gauge how she felt, whether she was kind of okay with it |
... |
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