Pain whether physical, emotional, or psychological, all sorts, are simple facts of life. While dealing with your own pain is a critical part of life, what is just as important is helping others who are hurting. All pain, including physical, comes with emotions of sadness, weakness, loneliness, etc. You can’t fix their physical pain, but you can ease their emotional pain that comes with it. If you have a friend or family member in pain, here are four practical steps on providing them the support they need.
- Listen: People want to be heard. They want to be able to freely share their concerns and cares. Simply letting someone in pain share why they are feeling bad can be a great kindness. At least at first, you should focus solely on listening. The first stage of healing from pain is accepting and processing the hurt. Stay away from direct advice or criticism, and don’t try to talk them out of their hurt. Your goal should not be to ‘fix’ the problem.
- Use touch: Our bodies are an essential part of what makes us human. We feel better when we can make physical contact with people who care about us — especially in difficult moments. A warm hug is one of the best ways to communicate that you care. Touch provides someone in pain with a visceral sense that they are supported and loved.
- Ask questions: It’s good to ask questions to clarify your understanding of the situation. Asking questions is a way of showing you really do care about what’s causing them trouble. Questions can help a person better understand their own pain, which can be a crucial step toward healing. Pain is often complicated. Exploring emotional hurt in all its intricacies is important to eventual recovery.
- Give advice: You should not offer advice to someone in pain immediately. The first step of the recovery process is to simply experience the pain for a while. Once you have provided support in other ways and understand better what the trouble is, you can begin to offer practical advice on dealing with the source of the problem. Just avoid pat, overly simple advice that dismisses the seriousness of the pain.
Helping someone who is suffering pain is one of the kindest acts you can perform. It is also a necessary part of being a good person. Everyone must try to care for those they love when those loved ones are hurting. This moral imperative is why learning how to better support a person in pain is so important.
Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash
