How to comfort a bereaved friend using emotional intelligence

Comforting a bereaved friend can be challenging, but emotional intelligence provides a framework for support. The article emphasizes seven key principles—agape love, respect, empathy, humility, individuality, patience, and sympathy—as effective ways to offer comfort. Agape love encourages unconditional support without expecting anything in return, while respect involves actively listening and valuing the bereaved person’s emotions. Empathy helps one understand and share in their pain by putting oneself in their shoes and offering practical support. Ultimately, emotional intelligence fosters meaningful connections that help ease grief.

Introduction

Comforting a bereaved friend can be a difficult thing to do. You may feel as though you are at a loss of what to say, do, think and even be. The five principles of emotional intelligence offer a guide post of how to go about comforting a bereaved friend. Knowing your feelings, controlling your emotions, exploring the incentives of controlling your emotions, recognizing other people’s emotions and managing your relationships go a long way in lessening the burden of comforting a bereaved friend.

In this two-part article, we will explore seven emotionally intelligent ways you can use to comfort a bereaved friend. They are: agape love, respect, empathy, humility, individuality, patience and sympathy.

Agape Love

One of the most potent spiritual healing practices is unconditional love or agape love. This is the kind of love where there are no strings attached. It is the kind of love you show people without expecting them to do anything in return or even expecting them to love you back. If you do your best to love individuals with unconditional love - especially when they are bereaved - then you will notice that your relationships will start to improve. The majority of the relationship and spiritual problems that people experience stem from the selfish and defensive attitude of “what will I get out of this?” With unconditional love, you say to the individuals you relate with “I will love you unconditionally simply because you are a very valuable individual. I do not want anything from you except just to love you unconditionally.”

So how can you go about loving people unconditionally? You can do this by changing your mind about love. Love is not a feeling. Rather, it is an action. Your feelings will constantly change. If your plan is to wait for the individuals you relate with to give you a “lovey-dovey” feeling before you can begin loving them unconditionally, then do not expect to ever love these people unconditionally. However, if you embrace the concept of love being an action rather than a feeling and then make the decision to love people even when you do not feel like giving them unconditional love, then you will definitely succeed in developing your capacity to love people unconditionally!

Doctor Dean Ornish’s 1997 work titled: “Love and Survival. The Scientific Basis for the Healing Power of Intimacy” chronicles some of his findings. He writes: “…love and intimacy are at the root of what makes us sick and what makes us well... I am not aware of any factor in medicine -- not diet, not smoking, not stress, not genetics, not drugs, not surgery—that has a greater impact on our quality of life, incidence of illness and premature death from all causes.”

Respect

 According to eqi.org: “On a practical level respect includes taking someone's feelings, needs, thoughts, ideas, wishes and preferences into consideration. It means taking all of these seriously and giving them worth and value. In fact, giving someone respect seems similar to valuing them and their thoughts, feelings, etc. It also includes acknowledging them, listening to them, being truthful with them, and accepting their individuality and idiosyncrasies.”[ http://eqi.org/respect.htm#What%20Respect%20Is]

Respect will make an appearance in all areas of your life whether in your professional life or in your personal life.

Consider this verse attributed to Edward H. Richards:

A wise old owl sat on an oak,

The more he saw the less he spoke;

The less he spoke the more he heard;

Why aren’t we like that wise old bird?

One way to respectfully comfort a bereaved friend  is by simply lending them an ear. Listening to someone, hearing them out even if you do not agree with their views is a great way of showing your respect for them. When your bereaved friend gets emotional, don’t just disregard their emotions. Don’t be insensitive to what is going on with them. Instead, give that person your respect through a moment of silence or a look of empathy.

Empathy

The essence of being empathetic is putting yourself in another person’s shoes. Being empathetic and being emotionally intelligent go together. You cannot separate one from the other. Empathy is an important component of trust and is required in any relationship, whether a professional relationship in the workplace, a personal relationship in your family or a societal relationship. Is your bereaved friend in a bad mood? Well, try to imagine just how difficult it is to be in his or her condition. Is your bereaved friend being rude, unruly and moody? Try to imagine all the uncertainty they must be feeling. Is your bereaved friend acting like a crazy, dictatorial, unreasonable person? Well, try to imagine what it must be like to suddenly be a widow, widower orphan, fatherless or motherless. 

So how can you develop your empathic abilities? Well, you will require two main ingredients, that is, action and intention. Intention requires that you open your heart to other individuals. Action requires that you do corresponding actions. For instance, you can donate your money or your time towards the care and upkeep of your bereaved friend. To some extent, your level of empathy. For example, someone who has gone through the horrible experience of being bed-ridden will have more empathy towards anyone who is chronically sick or people who are disabled. However, this does not mean that because someone has not experienced a certain feeling that he or she will not be able to empathize with the people around him or her. Empathy is what allows someone to understand in depth what someone else is feeling. Thus, it is true to say that empathy goes a long way in creating the correct environment that will allow you to deeply connect with your bereaved loved ones.

In part 2 of this article, we will look at more ways in which you can comfort your bereaved friend in an emotionally intelligent way.