What you shouldn’t say when a friend is going through a tough time

After 12 months of trying to conceive, Lucy Lines was on cloud nine when she finally fell pregnant. So when the embryologist and infertility expert, who runs Two Lines Fertility, miscarried at 13 weeks, she was understandably devastated.

As she told loved ones about her loss, she was taken aback by the number of comments she received that started with “at least”. “At least you know you can get pregnant,” she was told, time and again. “At least it didn’t happen further into the pregnancy,” others said.

Lines was over the moon when her next pregnancy resulted in the birth of her now 13-year-old daughter. But she sadly experienced a further five miscarriages before welcoming her son, who’s now six. Throughout that devastating time, Lines, now 50, heard every platitude under the sun.

“People are uncomfortable with grief and it’s an innate human desire to make others feel better,” she says, “so they think they’re going to help you feel better by trying to make you look at the bright side.”

Psychologist Marny Lishman says those around Lines fell into “the platitude trap”. Rather than offering meaningful comfort and support to those who are suffering, she says platitudes often make the recipient feel unheard and invalidated.

She acknowledges that those who dish out platitudes have their heart in the right place. They’re simply trying to minimise the pain of loved ones by searching for a silver lining. But, she says, “It makes the person just internalise how they are feeling and doesn’t allow them the time or space to process their emotions.”

Lines says being bombarded with platitudes while grieving made her retreat further into herself. “I felt as if I didn’t have a right to be sad about it, so I needed to hide my sadness and my grief.”

Instead of trying to find the upside to an awful situation, Lishman says the best way to help someone struggling is through active listening. She says the aim of active listening is to really absorb what the other person is saying with the purpose of understanding them, rather than trying to think about what you will say next, or with the intention to solve their problems.

Use empathy to listen, validate their feelings, and ask questions to better understand their perspective. “It’s about creating a safe, supportive space for those emotions to come out,” says Lishman.

“It may just involve sitting in the uncomfortable emotions of the other person, and acknowledging how painful it is, paraphrasing what they’ve told you and agreeing with them,” she adds. A simple, “How can I best support you?” may also help.

Lines agrees that having your emotions validated is key when you’re grieving. She’s grateful for her best friend, who was pregnant at the same time as Lines’ first pregnancy and went on to have her first baby at that time. This friend kept checking in on Lines, acknowledging the pain she must be feeling and validating her grief. She told Lines that she was able to hold both her own happiness at being pregnant and Lines’ grief over her miscarriage.

“She was able to continue to talk about it; she didn’t pretend it hadn’t happened, she wasn’t awkward about it,” Lines says. “She cried with me and was just like, ‘It sucks, it absolutely sucks.’ I was very grateful for that.”

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