‘She was crying uncontrollably’: What not to do when consoling someone who’s grieving

Two years after the Port Arthur massacre, psychologist Rob Gordon’s client was sitting in a yoga class at a health retreat when she was told to “imagine a beautiful, tranquil bushland setting by the sea”.

Warning: distressing content. This story discusses suicide, domestic violence and violent deaths.

The prompt conjured visions of the horror she witnessed in 1996, when Martin Bryant killed 35 people and wounded almost two dozen others at Port Arthur, shattering the sombre, modern-day peace of the historic convict site, which sits on the Tasman Peninsula.

The woman – now crying – was ushered down a passage and into a counsellor’s room at the health retreat, where she began pouring out her story.

The Port Arthur memorial cross, commemorating victims of the massacre, pictured in 1998.Credit: Bruce Miller

“Twenty minutes later, she said the counsellor is crying uncontrollably, and [the woman] has got her arm around [the counsellor], saying: ‘It’s OK, I’ve been sitting with this for two years, I’ll be alright’,” Gordon says.

“She felt so angry that she was deprived of her opportunity for therapy. She had to leave, of course.”

The counsellor’s mistake was offering the woman sympathy rather than empathy, Gordon says. He defines sympathy as sitting in grief and suffering with someone, and mirroring their emotions. Empathy involves listening to someone in a calm and stable space to understand their experience from a distance, he says.

It’s the first of many mistakes people make when trying to comfort those dealing with grief, experts say.

And in terrible circumstances, the worst thing said is often nothing at all.

Don’t: Try to ‘fix’ it

Brothers Grant Monks (left) and Ashton Kline, whose mother Viola was murdered by their father in 2000.Credit: Josh Robenstone

Every day on their way to school, Ashton Kline and his younger brother had to walk past the place where their mother was left to die.

Viola was murdered in September 2000, a few months after she separated from her former husband, who was quick to fly into a violent rage.

She ended their relationship after he strangled Kline – then aged 15 – but her ex-husband ultimately coaxed her to a house where he was staying, then into a caravan, which he had doused in petrol.

“He stood at the door, pushed her in, lit a match, threw the match in, and then locked the door and drove away,” Kline says.

“She died as a result of [burns to 99 per cent of her body] very quickly after that.”

Viola, who was murdered in September 2000, pictured with her son Grant Monks in 1999.

Kline’s younger brother Grant Monks was only six years old at the time, and contending with significant medical needs after he was diagnosed with kidney disease during infancy.

Kline fought for him and his brother to stay together, and their mother’s horrific murder rocked their small town of Kyabram in Victoria’s north. But still, some people tried to find a “silver lining” after her death.

“[They said things like], ‘At least you and your brother are still together’,” Kline says.

“That’s all very well and good, but our mother has still been doused in petrol and set alight at the end of the day. There’s no silver lining to that.

“A lot of people try and do that today; whenever you’ve got a difficult conversation, you try and put a silver lining around it, rather than just say, ‘I don’t know what to say right now, but I’m just here for you’.”

Rather than scrambling to offer a bright side or a “solution” to grief, it’s better for people to admit they don’t know what to say and to navigate a difficult conversation together with the grieving person, Kline says.

Don’t: Draw comparisons. It’s not about you

Dr Rob Gordon, a specialist in trauma behaviour.Credit: Daryl Pinder

Gordon – a disaster recovery pioneer who has helped communities traumatised by the 1983 Ash Wednesday bushfires, Black Saturday bushfires and the Bali bombings – points to the origins of the word “empathy” when explaining why it should be used to comfort grieving people.

“If they’re very sad and emotional, they need empathy, not sympathy,” Gordon says.

“In Greek, the word ‘pathos’ means suffering, and so ‘empathy’ means to kind of touch the suffering of the other person.”

For Kline, misplaced sympathy has manifested in people trying to “one-up” his grief, sometimes inadvertently, as a way for them to try and connect with him through their trauma.

The more public speaking he does, the more he experiences this, he says.

Kline is now a nursing academic and an ambassador for the Alannah and Madeline Foundation, a charity focused on preventing violence against children.

“I call it a ‘trauma-off’,” Kline says. “That attempt to try and connect in that way is more damaging to a relationship than anything else because, for me, it creates this sense of, I just told you something really personal about myself, and the first thing that you did was deflect and talk about yourself.”

Experts and those working with grief warn people should not compare others’ experiences to their own, including when talking about the loss of a loved one or pet – because even within the same family, no two people’s grief are the same.

Some, including Tomorrow Funerals co-founder and funeral director Kate Morgan, endorse and refer to the “ring theory” concept, developed by psychologist Susan Silk and Barry Goldman.

The theory puts a grieving person at the centre of a series of rings.

Each ring outside theirs is tiered to represent the different people in their lives, starting with those closest to them – like their partner or spouse – followed by family and friends, work colleagues, neighbours and onlookers.

The grieving person in the centre of the ring can say anything they want to people in outer circles, airing their sadness, frustration and desperation.

People in the outer rings can only complain to, or ask questions of, those in a ring bigger than their own. They can only offer support to people in rings smaller than theirs.

“In my experience, listening is usually more helpful than talking,” Morgan says.

“Instead of comparing their loss to one of your own, try to offer compassion, with responses such as: ‘That must be so difficult ... I cannot imagine what this feels like’.”

The funeral director says it is dangerous to make assumptions about how people feel during their grief – including, for example, following a death after a long-term terminal illness.

While one person might feel some sense of relief, another might feel a sense of guilt or selfishness for wanting their loved one to keep living despite their pain, Morgan says.

“[A client of mine] said she didn’t care. She wanted her husband to live forever, even if he was in pain, because she couldn’t bear to not have him there,” she says.

Don’t: Judge. Instead, be gentle and speak of the dead

“My daughter’s funeral was like a sledgehammer to the people in the room,” Josephine Humphreys says.

The longtime funeral director’s daughter, Kate Humphreys, died by suicide aged 41 on January 23, 2024, after more than two decades living with complex mental illness.

“Usually, it’s softened. People can suicide, and no one ever is told that,“hj Josephine says.

“My daughter’s service was about her struggle against mental illness that led to her death. That doesn’t happen.”

Kate was a joyful, playful and courageous woman, but her illness destroyed her ebullient and effusive personality, Josephine says.

She had a “lovely clinical brain”, a strong interest in neuroscience and psychology, and a deep gratitude for those who supported her.

“She never wrote a suicide note without saying: ‘I’m sorry, I love you … thank you to all the people who love me … I’m sorry that I’ve done this to you’,” Josephine told Tomorrow Funerals’ podcast.

Kate “desperately wanted to live”, but her illness would not let her – something many people don’t understand, contributing to the shame and stigma surrounding death by suicide, Josephine says.

She felt it in her role as a funeral director, where she saw other families impeded by shame as they grieved loved ones who died by suicide.

Kate Humphreys, pictured with her brother Michael in January 2024.

“They can’t even settle into a comfortable place of talking about their loved one’s illness, because that’s confronting as well,” Josephine tells this masthead.

Josephine says mental illness should be thought of like cancer: a sometimes terminal malfunction of the body, which was “untreatable” in Kate’s case.

Shifting that perspective and approaching suicide without judgment would help families grieve more openly, Josephine says.

She says compassion for people who die by suicide would also grow if people reject misguided ideas of suicide as selfish, and instead consider its “appalling” reality: astonishing terror and despair, and a violent final act in complete isolation.

The terrible fear surrounding talking about grief is not exclusive to suicide, Josephine says.

Tomorrow Funerals co-founder and funeral director Kate Morgan.Credit: Justin McManus

Morgan says many people “run away” from bereaved parents when their worst fears are realised and a child dies.

That avoidance further isolates grieving parents, she says.

“They’re frightened of reminding them that their child has died. You can be sure that it’s never far from their thoughts,” Morgan says.

In life, it’s natural for people to develop an affinity with a parent by mentioning their child by name and asking after their child’s wellbeing, Morgan says.

“You just see the person’s face light up.”

In death, it is important for people around grieving parents to find ways to keep mentioning the dead child by name, and to reflect on memories involving them, Morgan says.

“Let’s face it, losing a child is one of the most terrifying things that can happen to somebody who’s already had a child,” Morgan says.

“That sound of their child’s name will still bring music to their ears, even in the long term.”

Don’t: Opt for empty platitudes or be afraid of a real conversation

Morgan says many of her clients feel incredibly isolated by their grief, often because people around them do not know how to have awkward conversations.

“It’s difficult – of course it is. But instead of a once-off ‘sorry for your loss’, try starting a deeper conversation with: ‘I really don’t know how to talk with you about this ... please tell me if I get it wrong, but how are you really feeling? What does it feel like?’ And then just listen,” she says.

When someone dies, the people left behind are not given a guidebook on the right or wrong things to say, or what they should expect to hear, Morgan says.

She reflects on speaking to someone who recently lost a loved one in “shocking” circumstances. In the aftermath of their loss, they were most taken aback by one comment – but most comforted by it, too.

“[Someone told them]: ‘Oh my god. This is so awful. This is terrible. I can’t believe this has happened’,” Morgan says.

“The person said that was the most real thing [they] heard because other people were forming these very … formal responses.”

The funeral director says people supporting family, friends or colleagues through grief should make them tangible offers of service, rather than more general offers, like “let me know if there is anything I can do”.

Those more general offers require a bereaved person to ask for help, Morgan says.

“Instead, try: ‘I was thinking of cooking you a meal, but would you rather I come over and we cook together? Shall we start walking once a week? Can I take you out for a coffee?’”

Other tangible offers could include taking a person out for dinner, dropping off a bottle of wine, or offering to spend a day taking them to appointments, Morgan says.

Don’t: Mine for detail or ‘exoticise’ grief

High-profile deaths often leave people wanting to know more.Credit: Jason South

Gordon says high-profile deaths – like in natural disasters or shootings – often arouse a sense of excitement or “exoticism” that leaves people wanting to know more.

“Often, the profile in the media is driving it. Everybody’s talking about it,” he says.

“The grieving people can instantly feel whether people are asking out of curiosity, or out of compassion.”

Kline experienced as much after his mother Viola’s death, and remembers news spreading fast in their town of about 5000 people.

Most people are geared towards compassion and empathy, and many did not know what to say to him and his brother after Viola’s murder, Kline says.

“[But] then there were people who wanted to know every single intimate detail of our lives,” he says.

“Perhaps they kind of felt that was their right or their need to have that particular information.”

Gordon explains that people who lose their loved ones in harrowing circumstances deal with “traumatic grief”, which has two parts: trauma around how the person died, and then grief around the loss of the person.

Replaying the horror of how they died, particularly with images, takes a grieving person “right back to the trauma of the day” and forces them to relive it, Gordon says.

Speech and language, however, put the traumatic event firmly in the past, and can build a picture beyond the event of what a person’s death meant to other people.

Empathy is key to supporting people who are grieving after the death of a loved one.Credit: Marija Ercegovac

“What’s helpful for the affected people … is not the reawakening, but the representing of it as part of a story and a history, and what it’s done,” Gordon says.

If people don’t have to relive their trauma, they can instead focus on their grief, which is a very different emotional experience, Gordon says, adding that grief does not have to be fraught with horror.

“Grief leads you to a poignant memory of your loved one, and a recognition of what they gave you and what a joy it was to have them,” he says.

“Sadness is sadness that they’re not still here. Sadness is a measure of your valuing of them.”

If you or anyone you know needs support, call Lifeline on 131 114, beyondblue on 1800 512 348, Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800, or the National Sexual Assault, Domestic and Family Violence Counselling Service on 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732).

Tomorrow Funerals’ podcast Life & Death, Today & Tomorrow is on YouTube.