Quote:
Originally Posted by SilverTrees
An effort to comfort someone (or do anything for another person) should be freely chosen by you rather than coerced or pressured or requested by someone else such as your mother. She's actually overstepping there. How you relate to your cousin after a death or anyone in any situation is entirely up to you.
So the question is, do you have a desire to call up your cousin and try to comfort him/her.....regardless of what your mother wants?
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She probably was overstepping, and I don't really know for certain my mother's intentions because I didn't ask. But, if I had to guess, I think she told me to call them because she knows how I react to these kinds of situations, and this was her way of saying, "this is the socially acceptable way to handle this." Either way, I was put in a position where I needed to console someone, and not doing so would strain my relationship with them.
Even if my mom hadn't outright asked me then, I still would've been expected to call because of social etiquette or whatever. (I should make it clear that my cousins and I practically grew up together - they were more my siblings than my actual siblings - so it would be considered extremely callous of me to not at least call them.)
I get what you're saying, and in a perfect world, people would understand that I'm just not the shoulder you want to cry on, not if you want genuine comfort. Have a problem and want a solution? Sure, come to me. I love solving problems. But when people are grieving and looking for emotional support, it's kind of hard to explain to them that I have the emotional depth of a potato chip and ask them to understand my complete lack of emotion. They're expecting me to respond a certain way, and if I fail to do that, it may irreparably damage our relationship.
Quote:
Originally Posted by divine1966
When my son in law unexpectedly died friends cook meals so we can just be with our daughter and don’t have to cook. That’s the kind of help that makes a difference. Cards or flowers or empty words not so much
Have you tried offering practical solutions or practical help (cook the meal for someone suffering or buy them something to ease their every day tasks)? Or people certainly don’t want that? They just want your shoulder to cry on?
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Yeah, I'm all for practical solutions. I can handle that, or at least make an effort. Offering food is my usual go-to with things like grieving, and it's usually fine. I can understand logically that they're struggling and that it would be kind of me to offer help. It's the whole lack of emotion thing that really gets me.
I don't think I'm being clear when I say "emotional comfort." Even if I were to offer food or help with everyday tasks as my way of supporting them, I think people still look for some sort of emotional response, and I think they become unnerved if they don't find it. It's a bit similar to emergency situations, though not quite as noticeable. Suppose you and a close friend of yours were to come upon a horrific, fatal car accident, and your friend didn't have any emotional reaction at all. It doesn't really matter if the friend is being helpful, trying to save anyone who might still be alive, calling the ambulance, stopping traffic, whatever. It's still scary that they're reacting to a horrific accident with about as much emotion as they would have in a board meeting.
I don't know if I'll be able to articulate this properly. It's just one of those things that's a completely different experience for me than it is for normal people.