Sandra: When we were preparing for today, we talked about something called the kvetching
circle, which I had never heard of before, which helps people with some of these conversations.
So, can you take us through this kvetching circle and the rules for conversations now
to help people understand this?
Jess: Yeah, so we're talking about individual resilience, and this about how to respond
as a group, as a network of people, because we're so poor at it, really.
This is titled, this is from an article in LA Times and Op Ed in 2013 and it was titled
"How Not to Say the Wrong Thing", it's a double negative, so it's a bit confusing, but this
woman called Susan came up with the kvetching circle, and I believe kvetch is a Yiddish
word for ... you know what?
I've got to google it.
I think kvetch is supposed to be expressing negative emotion.
Sandra: It's like a complaint.
Jess: Yeah, complaining.
Sandra: Yeah.
Jess: Yeah, yeah.
It's also known as the ring theory.
So, the idea, or the general idea here is that in an uncomfortable situation in our
context here, death, and dying, and loss, the point is that we're trying to push comfort
towards the centre of the situation, and we're trying to push stress or negativity outwards.
So, the idea being that we're trying to not make things emotionally worse for those who
are at the centre.
So, what do we mean by centre?
Well, if say we actually drew this situation for perhaps and experience that we've been
in where somebody has died, we start with the person in the centre, so the person who
is unwell, or the person who is grieving.
The person who is going through the hard time, and then we start to note people who are most
closest to them, so their significant other, their immediate family.
We might then go to the next ring which is their close friends, and might then be their
colleagues.
It might then be their neighbours, and so on and so forth, and so the idea is that if
we are mindful of our own role, as it relates to where we're placed in this ring model,
then it will inform what we need to do.
So, if we are at the centre, our job, our role is to receive the comfort.
If we are towards the outer of this model, our job is to help the people in the centre
dump out their stress, dump out their negativity.
So, I think some examples of where this is not used is when you've got a person who's
relatively not close to somebody who's going through a really hard time, and that person
makes it about them.
They might over identify, "Oh, I've been through that, too," and they make it about them.
So, the idea is that we nurture the people who are closest to that person who's going
through the hardest time.
We need to understand our role and where we are in it in this model, and when I first
saw this, I thought, "What if a workplace had this?
Wouldn't that be awesome?"
And my own experience was that my boss recognised that my two closest colleagues needed to be
empowered to be close to me while I was going through my hard time.
So, she went to Beth and Helen and she said, "Beth and Helen, your job is to be with Jess,
and to take her out for a coffee at least once a week and have a check in with her,"
because she recognised that she was not in the inner circle.
She was two rungs out, but she empowered people who were close to me.
Sandra: That's great.
Jess: Yeah.
Sandra: That's quite practical, isn't it?
So, let's talk a little bit more about some of the things not to say.
You mentioned earlier that there are some examples.
Let's go really into some very practical specific things now around building our skill around
death literacy.
Let's start with what not to say with someone.
Jess: No euphemisms.
Sandra: Right.
Jess: No euphemisms.
Sandra: What do you mean by that?
Jess: I'm sure somebody's listening.
I so would love to ask the group.
"What are your examples?", but look, euphemisms are poor language that we bring in because
we have a death denying society.
So, things like, "Everything has a meaning," that's my favourite.
It's not.
I'm being facetious.
"God doesn't give you what you can't handle".
"Grief is a journey."
We made these platitudes that actually what they're really saying is that we're rejecting
that person's experience.
It's too uncomfortable.
It's too hard.
So, we're going to slap on a cliché and that's going to make it all better.
But what happens is the person on the receiving end of that says, "Well, you've just rejected
my experience because that's meaningless to me."
So, I think number one, it's so easy to- Sandra: Part of the discomfort isn't it?
That uncomfortableness, so it's like, "I don't know what to say, so I'll fumble and say something
that maybe someone said to me, or that I think's the right thing to say," but it's that sense
of the skill level going to another level can make a huge difference if we know what
to say.
Jess: Yeah, but even saying, "I don't know what to say," is much better than coming up
with a euphemism.
Sandra: Yeah.
Jess: I work in this space, and sometimes I don't know what to say, and so I say, "I
just don't know what to say," and the other person is so generous with me.
They'll say, "That's okay.
I don't know how to feel.
We're even."
Sandra: Yeah, that's right.
So what can people say?
Jess: Yeah, look, well, empathise with extreme honesty.
So, be extreme with your empathy.
It might sound something like, "I know you are hurting.
I am here for you."
Be direct.
Call out the elephant.
Don't tippy-toe around it.
You can say, "I am so sorry."
Now, you might get back, "Well, it's not your fault," which is fine, but it's not a euphemism.
You can use the words dying, died, or dead.
You can practise using the D word.
It's very weird for a lot of people to use those words, which I totally respect.
So, it does take a bit of practise, but it's good to use those words.
If you know the person that's died and you're speaking to the survivor, share the memories
of that person as a gift, to share the memories, and lastly this might sound a bit surprising,
but it's not that helpful to say, "What can I do?"
It's certainly not very helpful to say, "Call me if you need anything."
The person going through grief doesn't need to be expected to go into their high functioning
brain to work out what to ask you what to do.
So, it's much better to say something like, "I can do this, or I can do that.
Which one is more helpful for you?"
Make it easy on that person.
So, the idea here is like you're being half a step behind that person, but you're not
leading them anywhere.
It's not your job to have to make sense of their experience or take them anywhere, but
be close to them in their experience, and practise empathy with them.
Sandra: So, you're just letting them know really that you're thinking about them, and
that you're sharing your empathy.
You're articulating your empathy.
Jess: Yeah.
Even when you don't know what to say.
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