Unhelpful Indivdiuals
When I started this Substack, I remembered that I had attempted to write a book roughly along the lines of the Beyond the Expected i.e. a field guide for individuals who had just lost a child. Like most things at that time, I lost focus, or I was not ready to write dispassionately about certain subjects. Since then, I have met people who have suddenly lost spouses with young families, lost a young sibling and even had loved ones murdered. You start to see that these unexpected and traumatic deaths completely devastate individuals and their families, hence I would like this Substack to be a place where individuals and professionals working in this field can share their experience and hard-won wisdom.
I managed to find the initial chapters of this failed book attempt and review them. It was clear that I was angry, surprised, confused and unable to accept attitudes from certain people around me. I was also completely perplexed as to why institutions behaved the way they did. As I write, it remains a large source of annoyance. I think the major reason being that some institutions virtue signal on an industrial scale in this modern age. They seem to want to be seen to take a moral stance on every issue in society whilst ignoring their core functions of making a product or providing a service. In the process they often ignore their own questionable value systems whilst lecturing the greater public on theirs. I have been working to try and improve how institutions treat grieving parents especially in the workplace without much progress at present.
Not all of what I wrote was or has been wasted. I did find a table from my initial draft chapters of the book which I have adapted for this post. This was my first attempt at summarising what I had learnt about unhelpful people’s behaviour. Over time I have learnt to ignore and probably not expect too much from too many people. This has made things easier as discussed in a previous post. I do still feel some responsibility to pass on to others who are just starting on this journey some behaviours to identify in unhelpful individuals. These people can and will take the energy from you. This will be at the time when you are at your most vulnerable. If you can identify them quickly you will be able to move out of their orbit. I know it can be hard particularly when it is family but as I tried to argue in my post Forewarned is Forearmed knowing what to look for is sometimes the quickest and easiest way to protect yourself.
Unhelpful individuals are repeat offenders
I imagine in my life I would have been perceived as an unhelpful individual trampling on some poor person’s grief. If you are empathetic, you will no doubt become quickly aware of the mistake you have made. You may choose to apologise and try not to dwell on the situation or apologise later when you have had time to gather your thoughts. Over time, I have become more understanding towards people who I know are well meaning but are not well practiced in discussing death. I try to remind myself how would I have reacted before learning through experience.
Where I do start to become frustrated is with people who keep repeating certain behaviours even when they have been politely told it is unhelpful. This is particularly frustrating when it is a professional person dealing in the grief and mental health space or a family member who has likely witnessed the devastation your loss has caused. There is a small sub-section of society who are incredibly self-centred. The world does revolve around them. You probably wouldn't have noticed this before as most of us would not have been the centre of attention before. Do not forget losing a person well before their time is shocking. If you are part of a community like a school everyone will know about what has happened. Even worse than this, I know of some people whose relative died and it became the centre of the news cycle. As strange as it sounds for the self-centred individual watching on, the grieving family is getting far too much attention and energy that could be directed towards them. They will only be able to tolerate this for a short period and their behaviour can change very quickly.
Ultimately, I hope you cannot identify any of these behaviours in people you know, as it will mean you are surrounded by some very decent people. However, if you do, I hope it is useful and might help you reflect on who you have around you for the long journey ahead.
Please note the table below has 9 rows of content. Depending on which platform you are reading this post on, you may have to click on the table to allow it to expand to show all of the table content. Any issues click this link DISPLAY TABLE