When your Concern touches on another’s Shame

What happens when you ask someone you are concerned about at work, ‘Are you OK?’ and the response comes back, ‘I’m fine!’ in a tone that feels like a door has been closed in your face.  The question How are you? How are you feeling? can result in a door being closed leaving you feeling awkward and less inspired to broach the subject again – despite all the sincerity and discretion in the world.  So we may feel like leaving the subject alone. And that’s the risk - we leave it to someone else to ask. We all know that feelings of anxiety, experiences of ‘black dog days’ and worse can be associated with fear and stigma.  We are familiar with Brene Brown and her messages of vulnerability and its opposite – shame. Shame cripples us and pushes us further apart from one another. Sometimes words of concern are like knocking on someone’s door to encourage them to open up.  But the words How are you?  How are you feeling? only encourages the other person to put on more locks – especially when the knocking is a question that is touching on that place of hurt and shame. For many of us (including me) the admission that I might not be coping is something to feel ashamed of. Instead of How are you?  we can try other words.  Like What did you do?  What did you do on the weekend?  What did you get up to last night?  Sometimes this is the way to open the connection.  It can give you insight and assurance into how a person you are concerned for is spending their time (especially if living alone).  It can tell you if they are caring for themselves or whether they are struggling.  ‘I spent the weekend in the garden planting tomatoes’ or ‘I went for long walks on the beach.  As opposed to, ‘I just spent the time sleeping.  Or I don’t know, I can’t remember’.   It is the kind of question that works at the start of the week and at the end of the week and keeps working week after week.  When we show concern we can invite someone to lift their mask a little (even if we don’t realise it). There is no easy way to show concern for someone without taking the risk of feeling awkward and the door being closed.  That’s just what happens when we express concern and invite the other to be vulnerable.  The key is to keep trying and to change the questions or the approaches you use. 

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I had a boss who suicided and while I wasn’t close to him I remember seeing his children at their father’s funeral.  That was many years ago. Sadly, it wasn't the type of workplace where a colleague would have sat down with him, closed the door and began a conversation with perhaps these words, 'I notice that something doesn't seem right’