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Comment by dandotway | Hacker News Reader

It's counterintuitive to logical-thinking programmers, but you almost never want to tell a grieving person any of the following:

1. "Things will get better."

2. "I understand your loss."

3. "Here's how we can fix the problem."

Some insight into why can be gained by watching the short video, It's Not About the Nail:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4EDhdAHrOg

In many (but not all) cases, if the grieving are willing to communicate at all, they want their cries of pain heard and listened to. They would rather that you cried with them instead of trying to tell them that there is light at the end of the tunnel or that there is a 'fix' for their 'problem' or that we must accept that life is hard and unfair and suck it up.

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I think there are different cultures of this. Some want you to simply grieve with them, and some feel it's inattentive to ignore the problem.

People often act what's appropriate to their culture, which is a faux pas to the other culture. So you should probably be really careful and spot what the person needs. But listening and nodding is often the safer route.

I don't really like this framing that "logical-thinking programmers" can't take emotions into account. Emotions are a thing, they are part of our reality. Failing to take them into account is a logical error. If you expect people to act rationally and without emotion, you are wrong, on the very basic "logically wrong" level.

I'm excited to see somebody express this. I've always felt strongly that the perception that emotions don't figure into logical reasoning is in fact illogical. People seem to conflate the contexts of emotions affecting reasoning, and reasoning accounting for emotions.

Rationally, given the nature of grief, sharing, caring, being there is what counts.

What the parent is getting at is solving the problem type interactions. There are not really solutions, more like coping, learning how to go forward and live...

You are not wrong. Emotions can be reasoned with and through. But that is not really where one starts with basic, profound grief.

> What the parent is getting at is solving the problem type interactions.

That's part of my point though. There are problems to solve, like "this person isn't going to have any energy and still has to do all the usual living stuff", which is why bringing food, helping with housework, pets, that sort of thing is useful. But the grief itself isn't a problem looking to be solved. If you think that is a problem to solve, that's an error in your reasoning.

The parent did not make the point you are currently arguing against, nor did I.

Then please explain me what they meant by "It's counterintuitive to logical-thinking programmers", followed by a link to a video called "It's Not About The Nail", that is about a person that has a nail in her forehead, and asking the person that seem to be her partner to stop trying to fix the nail on her forehead, but to listen to her, while she's complaining about things that could be cause by the nail on her forehead.

If that's not painting "logical-thinking programmers" as people that aren't able to take emotions into account when dealing with people, I don't know what point they tried to make.

>I don't really like this framing that "logical-thinking programmers" can't take emotions into account.

Nobody but you said "can't."

It was guidance away from what some may think is helpful, and that is all it was. I would bet it was also learned from their own experiences too.

What I know about grief was.

Alas, when presented with a problem many of us search for a solution. Afterall, that's what we do. But sometimes people don't come to us for a solution. And for me, and many like me, it's really difficult to not look for a solution to help them. There's nothing logical in that, and the search for solutions it's driven by your own emotions and desire to help. But it's what we are or what we have become, and it's not easy to overcome.

As I've said to a sibling, I don't think someone grieving is "being presented with a problem". It's just part of life.

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