Ways to comfort a bereaved friend using emotional intelligence

Comforting a bereaved friend requires emotional intelligence, which includes humility, individuality, patience, and sympathy. Humility allows you to set aside pride and prejudices, making it easier to genuinely connect with your grieving friend. Individuality encourages you to be your authentic self rather than imitating others when offering support. Patience helps you give the bereaved time and space to grieve in their own way, while sympathy allows you to express care through listening, eye contact, and simple gestures like a hug or a reassuring presence. Together, these qualities foster deeper emotional connections and help ease the pain of grief.

In part one of this article, we looked at how agape love, respect and empathy can help you to comfort a bereaved friend in an emotionally intelligent way. In the second part, we will look at more emotional intelligence traits namely humility, individuality, patience, sympathy and laughter.

Humility

A humble person sees things in the correct perspective which will allow him or her to relate with different people easily. Pride does carry with it a multitude of other negative issues that will only serve to alienate the prideful person from other  people. One of the things that closely comes on the heels of pride is prejudice. It is not an accident that a famous literary work was titled “Pride and Prejudice”. Prejudice, in a nutshell, is pre-judging an individual. It is attributing to an individual traits or characteristics that you believe are hers simply because she looks a certain way, or she is involved with a certain profession, or she comes from a certain area of the world or grieves in a certain way and so on. The second you pre-judge someone, you have already put up a huge wall between you and him or her. Pride is the mortar that holds together the bricks of prejudice.

Below are some ways in which you can develop humility:

• Go the extra mile but without you drawing attention to yourself and without telling people: “You see? I have gone the extra mile!”
• Admit that you do not know some things. It is only human to want to appear as a know-it-all but this is not being humble. Admitting when you do not know something is a sign that you are practicing humility.
• Admit it when you make mistakes. Again, it is only human to want to assign blame to everyone else except ourselves but a humble person is quick to admit it when he or she has made a mistake.
• Apologize when you make mistakes. Only a truly humble person can be strong enough to say “I am sorry. I was wrong.”

Being humble will open your eyes and will make you see the possibilities in the individuals you are relating with, even if they are in the difficult process of grieving. Being humble will allow you to lend an ear to your grieving friend, to learn from them and also to forgive them when they inevitably fall short of your standards or expectations.

How will your being humble help you to comfort your bereaved friend? Being humble will open the communication channels, making it very easy for you to relate with him or her.

Individuality

Each human being has some measure of the sixth sense, meaning that they will definitely sense it when you are being or acting fake. So strive to be yourself. The wonderful thing is that it is not that difficult to be just who you are! 

So how can you develop your individuality so as to effectively comfort your bereaved friend in an emotionally intelligent way? First, you can begin by trying not to be awestruck by how other people go about comforting their friends as this will make you erroneously attempt to ape them. Secondly, remember that you are the only person in this whole world who can be the best you you can possibly be! So try not to compare yourself with other people. It is not wise, there is no point to it and it will and only serve to alienate you from your bereaved friend.

Being the real, authentic you means being in touch with your emotions and the different ways that you react to a variety of situations. This is a very important aspect of emotional intelligence as it will help you to know yourself and therefore assist you to relate better with other people, including your bereaved friends.

Patience

“Haraka haraka haina baraka.” (Hurry hurry has no blessings)

Swahili Proverb.

All great relationships are built on the foundation of patience. Patience will allow you to give the people you interact with a second chance. Patience will also allow you to put up with the shortcomings of people, many of which emerge during times of bereavement.

One way to develop your patience muscles is by breathing before you talk, that is, pausing before you speak. This is very beneficial in a scenario where your friend is bereaved. When you start practising breathing before you talk, it will make you let that other person finish speaking and will also make you begin listening to what that other person is truly saying rather than just waiting for your turn to speak. 

Richard Carlson suggests that another way of becoming more patient is by becoming an anthropologist! He defines anthropology as “being interested without judgement, in the way other people choose to live and behave”. You will discover that when you genuinely become curious about people’s behaviours, then you will not become easily annoyed. 

Becoming an anthropologist does not mean that you must agree with every behaviour or culture that you come across. It just means giving everyone the right to be who they are. Patience does defuse anger and a lot of other negative emotions that arise during the grieving process such as resentment, prejudice, fear and hate. When you allow each person to be who they are and to grieve in their own unique way then you will discover that instead of becoming angry or frustrated with them, you will become more patient with them.

Sympathy

In order to be more sympathetic, you will need to listen more and observe more. You cannot show sympathy to someone if you do not know what it is that you are being sympathetic about! Similarly, most people rarely express their problems and more so when they are grieving. You will have to be observant to notice which stage of grief your friend is at.

There are various ways in which you can practically express sympathy towards your bereaved friend. First, maintain eye contact. When someone has opened up and is being vulnerable, telling you their fears, hopes and/or dreams, do not busy yourself with other things – the phone, the computer, the stew, the ironing. Stop what you are doing and maintain eye contact with them. Maintaining eye contact says to the other person: “I care about you, I sympathize with you and I am interested in what you are saying.”

Another way in which you can practically express sympathy is by circumlocution. Circumlocution involves repeating the words of the person who is sharing with you their problems or worries. It is not repeating the words parrot-like. Rather, it is a way of showing that you are listening, that you are understanding what is being said to you or even a way of making sure that you are on the same page.

But sometimes, the best way to express sympathy is by simply being there. A hug, a smile, a pat on the back, providing a shoulder to cry on… may go a long way in expressing your sympathy to your bereaved friend.

Sympathy is one way of connecting to another person on a deeper level, that is on an emotional level. Sympathy is what will make you desire to support the other person and to promote his or her well being. Here are more ways in which you can develop your sympathetic muscles:

• Practice having a sympathetic face – At first, you may feel foolish but it is true that practice makes perfect. A sympathetic face has the eyebrows knitted together to convey sadness and the lips are pressed together.
• Practice sympathetic vocalizations – Sympathetic vocalizations include a soft and caring tone of voice. The pitch begins on a high note, drops then quickly rises again. It sounds like “Owe”.