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Comment by trentnix | Hacker News Reader

> Among the most toxic phrases to use with anyone who's grieving is, "I know how you feel." No. You do not. You CANNOT. It is profoundly insulting and diminishing to claim you do.

I find this perspective arrogant, rude, and counterproductive. Other people have experienced profound grief as well. They are communicating, possibly inelegantly, it’s possible to get through the grief (what better gift can someone offer than hope?) and they are making themselves available if you need support. And ultimately, they are expressing condolences and sympathy.

Grief should be shared. Grief does not make you special. Confronting grief alone is a recipe for depression and madness.

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Listening to American Gods. One of the interludes puts it well. Paraphrasing: everyone is unique, everyone is the same. You are both right. However, I do think grief is more similar than not. The tragic specific circumstances will always vary, but it is always the same. It is a loss. A hole. Some people are not prepared, can’t be prepared. They sink into the narrowness of their unique experience and can’t or won’t permit themselves perspective. It is /their/ grief, dammit. Saying you understand takes something away from their grieving experience. Sneaks perspective in. Hints at the commonality of deep grief and loss.

Say you know grief, then. That's actually true. You know how YOU experienced grief.

What you do not know and cannot possibly know is how another person is feeling, how they're experiencing their own grief.

I post this for all the well-meaning people who are out there insulting and hurting people they love because they don't actually know any better.

Stop saying you know how they feel. It's one of the most hurtful things you can say, and it's outright false.

> I post this for all the well-meaning people who are out there insulting and hurting people they love because they don't actually know any better.

No, you've decided to take it as an insult. You demand grace from them and give none in return. It's more a reflection on you than it is on them.

The depth of your ignorance of pain here is something I envy.

I hope you never encounter the blinding pain of sudden, devastating grief, and you never have to find out just how impossible it is to try to rise above anything in that moment, to choose anything in that moment.

You're not even sure your heart is going to remember how to beat because the world as you thought you understood it has just come to a screeching halt. The prospect that the next moment has the audacity to happen, and the one after that--that there's still a world at all now that this person isn't in it--doesn't even make sense.

And somebody on the internet is still going to tell you they know how you feel and you shouldn't choose to take their ignorant platitudes as insensitive.

It tells me everything I need to know that you still think it might be the right course to say this to someone anyway.

> And somebody on the internet is still going to tell you they know how you feel and you shouldn't choose to take their ignorant platitudes as insensitive.

But you know what that somebody on the internet has and has not felt, right?

Once you know, you never stop knowing.

I can't explain it to you.

But yes. There is a profound difference between people who know and people who don't, and it's only people who don't who think the difference might be missable.

I can't say what someone has felt, but I can be absolutely certain what someone hasn't.

> There is a profound difference between people who know and people who don't

There may be somebody on the internet who knows then.

> It's one of the most hurtful things you can say,

I respect that is how you feel, yet at the same time I cal tell you that when I experienced great loss I found comfort in the same sort of words. Your mileage may vary.

Personally, I would rather focus on the intention of the person than in their exact choice of words. They are telling me, in their own way, that they feel for me and that they are right besides me trying to bring me a speck of comfort in what they know are very trying times.

That is what matters to me and I'm not going to start splitting hairs over how they express it.

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