Thought Picnic: When Support Becomes Self-Insertion

A Childhood Memory

It was July 1977. My father had lost his great-aunt, the wife of my great-grandmother's younger brother. From letters he and his great-uncle exchanged in the 1960s, I could see this man had been a highly respected mentor and confidante. The funeral would take place in our hometown, and we would all attend.

At the graveside, as the priest finished the oblations of dust to dust and ashes to ashes, we all proceeded to sprinkle earth on her coffin. At that moment, I became inconsolably distraught. I began bawling and weeping, overcome with grief. I literally became a distraction. Even as we left the graveside, people continued to console me.

One thing I noted about that day was that no one else, not even the grandchildren, put up such a performance. I was genuinely affected, but others might have wondered why I was weeping more than the directly bereaved.

Learning to Respond

Understanding how to respond to human misery is essential in ways that may not be easily understood. We often mistake our kind of engagement as sharing in the burden of others' misery when it is not.

This became quite apparent to me after my first encounter with cancer. Before that, I had neither the understanding nor the frame of reference to appreciate what people were going through. I could offer a sense of concern, perhaps a lot of sympathy, and possibly some empathy.

On occasion, I have inserted myself into another's misery by narrating my own tale of woe instead of listening to them and offering both comfort and succour.

Nowadays, my experience of cancer, its mental toll, pain, and other life issues makes me knowledgeable enough. Yet I would never suggest to someone in that situation that I know what they are going through, even when I understand their predicament based on what I have experienced.

Finding the Balance

Fundamentally, what is important is not being more affected than those who are truly affected, more distressed than those genuinely distressed, or becoming too ingrained in a situation to which we have no direct connection or relationship. We need to be aware of the degree of affinity, determined from intimate to acquaintance, and further to belonging, whether in a community or through some other sense of identification.

Then again, there is a place for activism on behalf of others. Causes with which we identify can benefit ourselves and others, addressing issues like disengaged officialdom, injustices, advocacy, and knowledge sharing, as I do when informing others about prostate cancer.

However, my prostate cancer awareness activity does not become one where I begin to bear the prostate cancer risk of others. That is not helpful to anyone, and that is the broader lesson: be conversant without becoming absorbed, be understanding without becoming overbearing, and beware of inserting yourself into an issue so completely that you become the issue through how you express yourself about matters for which you have deep feelings.