I lost my dog recently. Nearly everyone knew enough to just say, "I'm so sorry,"
Your "therapy" ideas are over-intellectual BS. There is nothing you can possibly say that helps in the slightest.
Your "therapy" ideas are over-intellectual BS. There is nothing you can possibly say that helps in the slightest.
For someone you have strong rapport with, some level of humour or other commentary might be handy. And, after listening, and paying very close attention to cues, you might find that there are conversations to be had. They might have to do with the matter at hand, or they might be utterly unrelated but desperately needed diversion or distraction.
Offers of assistance are also usually welcome, though I've seen in a few places that being specific about what you're going to offer is better. "Can I fix you a meal / do grocery shopping / mow the lawn / take care of the pets" is much more specific than "let me know if you need anything". The latter as an addition to the first may work. "Can I fix you a meal, or do anything else?", for example.
Advice is the one thing that's almost uniformly toxic. It's an imposition, unless you're actually a trained professional you may well be far from helpful, and virtually all the most obvious / common (all senses of the word) suggestions have probably been made many, many, many times already. The end result is like telling an obese person that they're overweight. Odds are exceedingly good they're aware of the fact, and another person mentioning it serves no beneficial purpose. At worst, such advice turns into a twisted form of blame or imposition ("you wouldn't be in this state if you'd done ..."). That's hard to appreciate if you've not been in the other person's position, but seems quite common.
And I'm sorry to hear about your dog, really.
They can of course provide a more elaborate response or make an alternate request, if they choose to do so and are capable of formulating such a response. But make the initial ask easy to answer.
Another trap people fall into is in offering gifts or help for their own gratification. Baking a cake for someone who doesn't like eating cake (or has reasons not to eat cake) is not in fact doing them a benefit. And if the baker's response on learning of this is to rebuke them for rejecting your "gift" ... well, that just clarifies that their motivation was self-serving rather than other-serving in the first place.
(Such responses, along with all sorts of other basically idiotic behaviour, is of course far too frequent. I'm hoping some reading this might recognise the patterns.)
The neighbours had taken it on themselves to arrange for who was going to cook, what, and when.
We had absolutely nothing to think about in the process.
It was one of those really simple, but immensely touching, gestures.
There's a bit more context to it than that, but this was really the heart of it.