What to Say to Someone Who Lost a Pet

Strategy #1: Ignore the words

As weird as this seems, ignoring the words and treating them as noise is the only way you can protect yourself from your own emotional reactivity. Also, when you ignore the words, you free up space in your head to engage the next two strategies. When someone is grieving, you know what is going to be said. You’ve heard it all before.

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Strategy #2: Read the emotions

You might not believe this, but you are an expert at reading other people’s emotions. Reading emotions is an innate skill that every human being possesses. The problem is we don’t practice it. The good news is that the skill does not atrophy. All you have to do is remain in silence as you ignore the words. The other person’s emotions will immediately become visible to you.

When someone is grieving the loss of a pet, their emotions will be obvious.

Here’s a checklist:

• Sadness
• Grief
• Hurt
• Pain
• Loss
• Loneliness
• Abandoned
• Fear, scared, frightened
• Anger
• Anxiety

This list will cover every situation where someone has lost a pet.

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Strategy #3: Reflect back the emotions with a “you” statement

As those emotions are revealed to you, reflect them back to the other person with a simple “you” statement. For example, “You are sad.” “You feel grief.” “You are anxious.” “You hurt.” “You feel all alone.” Keep your reflections very short and very direct.

Here’s the checklist again as a series of “you” statements:

• You are sad
• You feel a lot of grief.
• You are hurt
• You feel a lot of pain.
• You feel a deep loss.
• You are lonely.
• You feel abandoned
• You are fearful, scared, frightened
• You are angry.
• You are anxious.

You may combine emotions into one reflection, such as “You are sad and lonely.” Generally, just reflect two or three emotions at a time, pause, then reflect a couple of more emotions.

Watch for the cues of de-escalation:

• A verbal assent with a head nod
• Dropping shoulders in relaxation
• A sigh of relief

When these occur, the situation is calming down. These relaxation responses occur unconsciously, so watch for them carefully. They are your indicators that you are on the right track.

You might be wondering why reflecting back on these emotions is so powerful. It has to do with how our brains are hard-wired. Although it might seem obvious to you that the person is grief-stricken and heartbroken, that person’s prefrontal cortex is completely shut down. As a result, that person has no control or ability to self regulate his or her emotions.

You are literally lending your prefrontal cortex to the person suffering from the loss of a pet for the time it takes his or her prefrontal cortex to regain control.

Brain scanning studies have shown that when you reflect back the emotions of a grieving person, that person calms down almost immediately. The prefrontal cortex will come back online as the emotional centers of the brain deactivate during this emotional reflection process. The pain of the loss will remain, but it will not be overwhelming.

As a side benefit, when you focus on the grieving person’s emotional experience, you protect yourself from your own reactivity.

What doesn’t work when someone lashes out at you:

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Don’t use “I” statements to someone who is grieving the loss of a pet

The almost universal advice about empathic statements is to use an “I” statement to soothe grief.

For example, you might be advised to say something like, “I think you are very sad.” As you have probably experienced, using “I” statements does not soothe someone who is grieving. It just makes things worse.

Recall the last time somebody used an “I” statement on you? How did it make you feel? You probably felt patronized, disrespected, or manipulated.

Here’s the secret: Only use “you” statements to help someone who has lost a pet.

Don’t offer sympathy

Sympathy occurs when you perceive someone else’s distress, and you attempt to comfort them. Sympathy is socially acceptable but is an extremely poor and weak way of dealing with others’ distress.

Typically, sympathy is “I” centered, such as, “I’m so sorry to hear of your loss.” The idea is that an expression of sympathy builds solidarity and support. Common experience teaches us otherwise.

Sympathy is expressed by people who either have no clue about or are feeling deeply anxious around the intense emotions of a person who has lost a pet. Sympathy generally soothes the anxiety of the sympathetic person without validating the pain of the distressed person. Sympathy also allows you to remain emotionally distant from the distressed person.

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Don’t emotionally invalidate

Emotional invalidation occurs whenever:

• We are ignored.
• We are judged.
• We are dictated not to feel the way we feel.
• We are told we shouldn’t feel the way we feel.
• We are told we are too sensitive, too “dramatic,” or we are “high maintenance.”
• We are led to believe there is something wrong with us for feeling how we feel.

Do not say:

• “I’m so sorry for your loss.”
• “Your friend is in a happy place now.”
• “I know you miss him so much.”
• “It’s ok, you’ll feel better tomorrow.”

These are just a few examples of emotional invalidation. They are devastatingly abusive and insensitive.

In essence, those who think they are trying to help us are actually causing us deep psychic damage.

As human beings, we are 98% emotional and 2% rational. Every behavior, every decision, and every motivation we experience is driven by our emotions. And yet, our culture says that raw emotions are bad. Worse, if we are in a deeply emotional experience, we are called crazy, irrational, menstrual, and worse. The outcome is to deny us that which makes us human.

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Trying to problem-solve too early

A lot of people jump to problem-solving as a means of dealing with someone who is mourning the loss of a pet. You must satisfy and listen deeply to emotions before you can even begin to consider about problem-solving. The reason people go to problem-solving is to ease their anxiety in the face of overwhelming sadness.