Supporting someone experiencing grief and loss

Grief is a deeply personal and unique experience. Supporting someone navigating loss can be challenging, but it’s also an opportunity to show compassion, empathy, and understanding. Providing grief and loss support requires a thoughtful approach to understanding and addressing the needs of the grieving person. This guide is designed to help you provide meaningful support to a loved one going through grief and loss. 

Understanding grief 

Grief is a natural response to loss, encompassing emotional, physical, and behavioural reactions. It may arise from the loss of a loved one, a relationship, or other significant changes in life. 

Key points to understand 

• Grief is unique to each person, shaped by their relationship to the loss, personal circumstances, and resilience. 
• Emotional responses can include sadness, anger, guilt, and confusion. Physical symptoms might involve fatigue, sleep disturbances, or a lack of appetite. 
• There’s no fixed timeline for grief; it’s a journey that evolves differently for everyone. Providing grief and loss support means acknowledging this individuality and offering patience and understanding. 

How to support someone grieving 

Supporting someone grieving involves patience, empathy, and practical assistance. Here are actionable steps you can take: 

Listen

You might not always know what to say to someone who’s grieving but that’s okay as listening is more important. When you’re listening to someone who is grieving, make sure you put effort into being an active and compassionate listener. Remember to:

• Listen intently and with compassion.
• Prepare yourself to hear difficult thoughts and feelings. Grief can create complicated and dark realities for the grieving person, which can be challenging to hear.
• Try not to use platitudes when speaking to a grieving person as they can come across as uncaring and generic. Phrases like “Time heals all wounds”, “They are in a better place” and “There are other fish in the sea” may not be helpful to hear.
• Don’t force grieving people to talk. Sitting together in silence can sometimes be as comforting as talking.

This style of listening may be draining for you. Make sure you give yourself time to rest and process as well.

Acknowledge

Everyone experiences grief differently. When listening to someone who is grieving, remember to allow them the freedom to express their grief in their own way. Don’t imply there’s a right and wrong way to grieve. Your role is to listen rather than guide or judge their grief.

Keep an Open Mind

The grieving person may feel confronting emotions that are difficult to understand and explain. When listening, try not to judge them for their feelings. They should focus on expressing their emotions rather than feeling like they need to justify those emotions. Being non-judgmental is an important component of grief and loss support, as it fosters a safe environment for open communication. 

Create a Safe Space

As a grieving person processes their experience, complicated feelings can emerge at different times. You can help them process their emotions by creating a safe space for self expression. Encourage them to speak about their feelings, even if they are hard to hear. For example, if a grieving person is blaming themselves, don’t cut them off. It can be an automatic reaction to say “Don’t talk like that,” or “Don’t say those things about yourself, you know that’s not true,” but they do not need validation at this time, rather acknowledgement of their current reality and feelings.

Time

There’s no set timeline for how to grieve. Everyone grieves in their own way and in their own time. Not every grieving person will go through the ‘Stages of grief’ you often hear about. You may feel disappointed or frustrated when the grieving process doesn’t line up with what you’ve read. Trying to push a grieving person through a set process and timeline you have read about might give them false hope or even leave them feeling lost or ashamed when their recovery isn’t as straight forward as expected.

Check-in

The process of grieving can happen over years, not days. While the early days of grief may require friends and family to be more hands-on, a grieving person may need different types of support for a long while. Make sure you check in regularly to see how the person is going and reassure them you’re still there. Over time, you might find check-ins don’t need to focus on the grief itself. A check-in can become a text just to say hi or an email to share a funny story. Gentle gestures that let the grieving person feel your presence can help them feel connected and like life can return to normal again.

Our online moderated forums are an alternative to telephone counselling, and are a safe and confidential space to connect, give and receive support.

Visit our Grief and Loss – Loss of Loved One forums here