How to Offer Support
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Sometimes it’s hard to know how to respond when someone tells us that they are struggling or that something bad happened. It can also be hard to know when to reach out to someone we're worried about. Sometimes we don’t know what to say, how their response will make us feel or how we’ll come across. It’s important to not ignore our own distress, and it’s important to not ignore someone else’s struggle.
Traumatic Events
When bad things happen and we need someone to talk to, it’s most likely that we will turn to someone close to us to talk aboutĚýour experience. How that person responds matters. If the response is negative, it may shut someone down or increase the impact of a traumatic event. If the response it positive, it can help a person feel hopeful.
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How to help a friend
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Here are some important things that we can do to support someoneĚýwho discloses a traumatic or disruptive life event:
- Check on their safety and help them address any immediate safety concerns.
- Actively listen and seek to understand their feelings and needs.
- Reflect back what you hear.
- This helps to clarify understanding and shows that you are really listening.
- Normalize and validate their feelings.
- This doesn’t mean normalizing the bad thing that happened but rather affirming that their response to it is understandable.
- People respond to traumatic events differently and howeverĚýsomeone is feeling or acting (e.g. laughing, crying, no emotion, etc.) is normal.
- Keep calm and avoid having your own emotional response interfere. Your job isn’t to “fix” the person, make them feel better, or take their pain away. Your job is simply to listen.
- Recognize your own internal judgment and how it may affect your response.
- Having judgment about what someone could have done differently is normal, but we need to keep from verbalizing that judgment, as it is likely to increase defensiveness, shame, and self-blame for the person disclosing something traumatic.
- Avoid a tone of voice or any actions that would escalate their response or the situation.
- Follow their lead and let them decide what they need.
- This means we don’t want to tell them what to do or how to feel.
- Help them explore options and choices for additional support or next steps, but don’t pressure them to take action.
- If you are a member of the CU community who has an obligation to report, let them know that you must contact theĚý when it comes to discrimination, harassment, sexual misconduct, intimate partner abuse, or stalking,Ěýbut that they still have a choice in whether to follow-up or take additional action.
- For more information on how to help someone who discloses a traumatic event, please visit the Office of Victim Assistance (OVA)Ěýhow to help page.