What You Should Never Say To Someone Who Just Experienced A Natural Disaster

More than 150,000 people have been forced to evacuate their homes as the Los Angeles wildfires and windstorms continue to burn through whole neighborhoods.

The scale of what’s been lost to the fires is not just material. Dale Short, a 91-year-old Pasadena, California, resident, lost his home in the recent California wildfires, and as he told CBS News, “I’ve got 60 years of memories in that house.”

What do you say to someone who has just lost so many memories? Or even someone who had to leave their neighborhood, not knowing what they may return to? In the aftermath of a natural disaster, it’s normal to want to help your neighbor feel better. But unfortunately, people often say invalidating comments that do more harm than good in their well-meaning attempts to comfort people.

“It’s just so uncomfortable to be in the presence of suffering that the well-intended comment is often to help the person who’s responding feel better, feel like they’ve done something,” said Patrick O’Malley, an assistant professor at TCU Burnett School of Medicine who teaches physicians about grief-informed care and is the co-author of “Getting Grief Right.”

But instead of helping your friend or neighbor, what you say can often end up making them feel even more isolated and stressed. O’Malley warned that these invalidating words end up “piling on to what is already just an indescribable amount of pain that these folks are feeling.”

To help us all learn how to be better to each other, HuffPost asked people who have experienced natural disasters, as well as experts on the biggest culprits to avoid saying to someone after such a loss:

‘At Least…’

It’s been almost 20 years since Hurricane Katrina affected George Smith and his life “has never been the same” since, he said. Smith, now a San Antonio, Texas-based insurance analyst, said the date of the hurricane still puts him in a depression every year. And he still can recall the invalidating “At least” statements people have told him about living through a natural disaster.

“Yeah, my house didn’t have bad flooding. The water stopped at the door. The door was warped and we had to shoulder it open. I’d get, ‘Well, at least your house didn’t flood,’” Smith recalled. “We basically lost everything connected to power. The fridge was the worst-smelling thing I’ve ever smelt to this day … ‘Well, at least you got new things.’”

O’Malley said people should “never” use “at least” statements “as an opener to somebody who’s who’s grieving, because it’s immediately minimizing and not respectful of the attachment.”

He noted that these statements like “At least you made it out alive” rank the material losses as less important and it sends an underlying message to the recipient that they should not be feeling what they are feeling.

Comments Implying People Could Have Done More

Author and film producer Dete Meserve lost her Los Angeles home in a 2018 fire, and made a recent viral Facebookpost about how this experience taught her what not to say to victims of natural disasters.

“The worst question and comments are those that somehow imply they could’ve done more,” Meserve wrote. “For example, don’t casually mention ‘My friends in Altadena hosed down their house and their house was spared.’”

Suggestions about what worked for others or questions about what people did to try to prevent their situation isn’t helpful ― it’s invalidating.

‘Can I See Your House?’ And Other Specific Inquiries About What They Lost

Meserve said one of the biggest mistakes she said people made in her own case was asking for painful specifics of what happened like what exactly she lost.

“What does it matter what I lost? Like, you don’t know what’s in my house. So why do you need to know that? Because that’s not really what’s important. What is really important is, where am I in this?” she told HuffPost.

“I wish I’d had the fortitude to say, ‘I’d rather not discuss that right now’ more often,” Meserve said. “People believe they’re doing you a kindness when they ask questions — they think this is how they show compassion and care — but they are not seeing how many times a day you’re asked the same questions and they have no idea how many thousands of tasks you’re juggling just to put your life together. Your compassion is in the listening, not the questioning or telling.”

Meserve recalled people even asking to go over and see her burnt-down home, which she compared to asking to see a “dead body.”

Statements That Compare Your Experience To Theirs

People sometimes may want to bring up their own experiences with calamity and natural disasters, as a way to connect with people currently experiencing tragedy. But it’s not actually comforting to the person who is in crisis to hear how bad your own brush with a wildfire was.

“When we hear something tragic has happened to someone, sometimes people’s first instinct is to wonder: ‘Could that also happen to me?’ …But that instinct is absolutely one to ignore,” Meserve said. “A tragedy is not a time to learn about fire safety or homeowners insurance from the victim.”

“Don’t compare to somewhere else or some other story, and don’t compare to yourself,” O’Malley advised. “All of those kinds of comments might be well-intended start to leave the person who’s suffering.”

‘You Can Rebuild.’

You may think reminding someone they can rebuild their home is life-affirming, but it’s actually confusing empathy for distant sympathy.

“When we express sympathy, we are outside looking in. The painful experience did not happen to us directly, so we can sprinkle in some ‘I’m sorry’s,’ ‘That sucks,’ ‘My condolences,’ or ‘You can rebuild,’ while not quite knowing what it feels like to go through that tragic experience,” explained Alicia Velez, a licensed clinical social worker.

Instead of, “You can always rebuild,” one might say something that acknowledges the depth of the loss like, “I know your home meant a lot to you. I’m glad you’re safe, but I know there were a lot of memories that were lost,” Velez said.

‘It’s Just Things.’

Similar to saying “You can rebuild,” saying “It’s just things” overlooks “the emotional weight of losing a home,” said Shannon Garcia, a psychotherapist at States of Wellness Counseling.

“A home holds memories, a sense of safety, and personal identity. Dismissing that makes the person feel their grief is being minimized. These comments can imply that the emotional connection to those items or the home itself is insignificant,” she said.

‘I’m So Sorry For Your Loss.’

This apologetic sentiment may be real, but if you want to be heartfelt, avoid clichés when you can. O’Malley said they make people who say them feel like they have done “something right, and they’re rarely useful.”

To avoid being impersonal, offer your most genuine response. It doesn’t have to be long to be meaningful. “It feels like you’re doing less if you’re not saying something wise and profound, but you really are doing something very important” if you are taking the time to be genuine, O’Malley said.

Meserve recalled that when she was watching her house burn down, a person she knew “just knew I liked tea, and they brought me a cup of tea, and they just stood with me, didn’t say anything. They didn’t have to, and I just felt their presence. I was like, ‘That’s really wonderful.’”

What To Say Instead To Someone Grieving After A Natural Disaster

Garcia said sometimes we have a tendency to want to jump into “problem-solving” mode when someone has experienced a devastating loss or traumatic period.

But “in the immediate aftermath of a crisis, most people aren’t looking for solutions. They need to feel truly heard and validated in their emotions,” she said. Here’s how to do that:

Listen without an agenda.

“Sit with them, listen attentively, and allow them the space to express their feelings without judgment or the pressure to ‘fix’ anything,” Garcia advised. “Let go of any agenda to cheer them up or move them toward a silver lining. Just let their emotions exist in the moment.“

O’Malley advised inquiring conservatively at first and being open to rejections of wanting to talk. If you get an answer like “It’s too soon to talk,” answer back compassionately with statements like “Know that I love you, and if there is a time where you’re able to talk, we’ll talk.“

And if your friend does want to talk, remain curious and open to where the conversation goes. Instead of worrying about saying the right thing, ask yourself, “How do I stay right with them, where they are?” O’Malley said.

He noted that “I can’t imagine” reflective statements are well-meaning, but they still center your experience over your recipient. To be an even better listener, stay away from “I” statements and stay in the headspace of “I want to understand what this experience is.”

Validate what you hear.

To acknowledge the depth of someone’s loss, let your recipient know that you understand what they have told you.

“Paraphrasing what they share can be a powerful way to show you’re listening and that their feelings matter,” Garcia said. “For example: If they say, ‘I feel like I’ve lost everything,’ you might respond, ‘This is devastating. It makes complete sense that you feel that way.’”

Follow up beyond this week.

Depending on your relationship and your proximity to that person, O’Malley advised people to continue to follow up and check in weeks and months later.

“Somehow people think that they’re only valuable in the moment of crisis. In the moment of crisis, you’re being bombarded by everything. You’re not sleeping, your clothes probably stink,” Meserve said. She said that she has a group of people she knows who are displaced by the Los Angeles wildfires that she plans to follow up with again later.

“No one calls you a month after and that’s why … the key for me is I’m waiting a waiting couple weeks,” Meserve said. “Let’s see how the fires die out, and I’m going to be there when no one else is.”