Dear Grief Guide, My Friend Keeps Trying To Fix Me

Hello and welcome to Dear Grief Guide,

A podcast where each week I answer one anonymous letter from a listener feeling lost,

Stuck,

Heartbroken,

Or overwhelmed in the midst of grief.

My name is Shelby Forsythia.

I'm a grief coach and author,

And I'm here to help you create a life you love from the life loss forced you to live.

Let's get to today's letter.

Dear Grief Guide,

I'm dealing with grief after being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis,

MS.

I know it's not the same as experiencing grief after the death of a loved one,

But it's a loss to me all the same.

The diagnosis took a long time to arrive at,

And knowing that it has no cure means that it will have a permanent,

Irreversible effect on my life.

The door to my life before MS has closed forever,

And for that,

I'm grieving on so many levels.

One significant frustration I have is a close friend's persistent efforts to help me.

It took me a few months to process my diagnosis before telling people about it,

And he's responded to the news by repeatedly trying to fix me.

For instance,

He's suggested alternative treatments like herbal supplements and shared stories of people who supposedly overcame MS through unconventional means.

While I appreciate his research,

It makes me feel like I'm a problem or a puzzle for him to solve.

Another example is his insistence on recommending different diets,

Convinced that a specific eating plan will miraculously alleviate my symptoms.

It's challenging because it implies that my lifestyle choices caused this,

And that food is a simple solution for a complex situation.

I want him to understand that MS isn't a puzzle to solve or a challenge to conquer.

It's an ongoing part of my life with physical,

Mental,

Emotional,

And even spiritual complexities.

What I need most is his understanding,

Not his relentless search for a magical missing puzzle piece that doesn't exist.

How can I tell him to stop fixing me without hurting his feelings?

I want a friend who acknowledges my struggles without trying to make them go away.

I know his actions come from a good place,

But I feel like every interaction with him revolves around him making me quote,

Feel better.

I miss being his friend.

Right now,

I feel like his patient.

I'm more than a diagnosis.

Sincerely,

Under a Microscope.

Hi there,

Under a Microscope.

My heart goes out to you,

A,

Because of your diagnosis,

But B,

Because you are struggling with one of the most common and heartbreaking circumstances that grieving people face.

People grieving all kinds of losses,

Death,

Divorce,

Diagnosis,

I call them the 3 Ds,

But there are so many more beyond that.

And that is the loss or the fracture of friendships,

Especially from people you thought would be there for you.

People who were major parts of your support system in life before or people you considered close to you.

All of a sudden,

It's like they're bitten by some radioactive grief bug,

And they don't know how to respond to this awful thing that has befallen you.

For lack of better phrasing,

Again,

Death,

Divorce,

Diagnosis,

They are perceived as awful things in our society.

And people don't always know what to do with that.

I can appreciate in your letter that you state that I know he's got good intentions.

I know he's really trying.

I know this is his way of showing care.

But for you as the recipient of that care,

It's also okay to acknowledge this care hurts.

It is not impacting me the way that he's intending it to intention and impact are two wildly different things.

And you are receiving it as something that is hurtful when his intention is to help.

And it's funny and important to me that you put the word help in quotation marks in your letter.

I think you might start there to have a conversation with this guy,

Whether whatever medium resonates best with you,

Text,

Email,

Phone call,

However you usually communicate,

Would be a great place to communicate.

Sometimes it can feel a little unexpected or sideways when you've never written like a snail mail letter to have a letter pop up in your inbox from a friend.

But if there's a consistent method that you already use to communicate with each other,

Whichever is the most comfortable for you.

I prefer text messages because there's like a paper trail of something to read.

I would encourage you to reach out to him and I would structure what I was going to say like this.

I would say something like,

Hi,

Friend.

Ever since I got diagnosed with MS,

I've noticed that every time we have a conversation together or most times we have a conversation together,

Your focus is on fixing this disease or fixing this thing that I've been diagnosed with,

With fixing me.

And I know you're trying to be helpful.

I know you have good intentions,

But to me,

It feels like you're judging my choices.

You're judging my diet.

You're judging,

You know,

The things that I do,

How I spend my time,

What I put into my body.

I feel very judged and that feels hurtful to me.

I feel more distant from you as a friend than I felt in a while because it feels like in your words,

I am a problem that you're trying to solve or a puzzle that you're trying to solve.

I wish you would,

And this is a very helpful and important statement.

The sentence that you used in your letter,

I wish you could understand that my diagnosis isn't a puzzle to solve or a challenge to conquer.

This is an ongoing part of my life.

It affects me physically,

Mentally,

Emotionally,

And spiritually.

And I wish I could just have your understanding because I sincerely miss being with you as a friend,

As opposed to a project or something to solve or something to cure or something to puzzle out.

I hope we can talk about this and then send.

This can feel enormously vulnerable.

I can validate that 100% and if you are interested in keeping this person in your life,

Which it sounds like you are,

Because you're like,

I just want to stop him from doing this.

I don't want to cut off contact permanently.

Then this is your way of setting a boundary while grieving.

You are approaching him and assuming good intent.

You are defining what's been happening that feels hurtful to you.

You are offering substitute activities or actions I wish you could understand.

You could even do real tangible actions like I wish we could just go play mini golf together.

I wish we could hang out and watch a movie together.

I wish you'd come over and we could cook together.

I mean,

Something that feels like something you'd normally do in life before that you still feel capable of or desirous of now.

And then I hope you understand.

I hope you want to talk about this.

Because I do miss hanging out with you as just a friend.

I do miss this relationship structure that we used to have.

I miss feeling like somebody who wasn't equal to you as opposed to not human,

A puzzle,

A mystery,

A problem,

Insert feeling here.

And something else I'll offer you to under a microscope is that I would love if you could if you have the energy and the capacity to do so to create a plan for what happens based on his response.

What will you do if he responds well?

What will you do if he responds poorly?

What will you do if he does not respond at all?

If he responds well for a lot of grieving people that I work with,

There's celebration,

There's gratitude,

There's I'm looking forward to the next time we're talking.

I can't wait to see you next week.

There's very much a yay,

A win,

You might journal or write or put some sort of milestone in your calendar like this is a day I set a healthy boundary,

It may even encourage you to set others if you have other friends who are doing this in your life.

I hope you don't.

If you do,

It might give you some chutzpah to set boundaries with other people in your life.

If he responds poorly,

You might ask yourself,

Okay,

So what is the cost of this relationship to my life right now?

How much do I need to be exposed to this person?

How much does it hurt to spend time with them?

And how much is that worth to me to maintain this friendship?

What capacity,

What energy do I have?

How might I take a step away?

How might I state my boundary in another way?

How might I distance myself or put more space between this relationship?

Or how might I pause this relationship or request a pause for now,

That's something you're allowed to do as well.

You could always say something like,

I hear that that's how you feel that this is how you're insistent upon talking to me.

And I'm not interested in hearing that right now.

So when you choose to talk to me differently,

My door is always open to you.

But until then,

I wish you well.

And I will be seeking out other forms of support that genuinely feel helpful to me.

And you can leave it at that.

And then if he doesn't respond at all,

You can make a plan for following up,

You can send the same message again,

24 hours later and say,

Hey,

Just making sure you got this,

You can ask him in person,

If he got the message.

You get to decide what you do with his response.

You do not have to react to what comes you can take a breath and respond.

There's a lot of talk in mindfulness land about responding versus reacting,

Taking a breath before determining what to do next.

And if this is something I can help with,

I would love to I have a framework for negotiating grief relationships with other people in life after loss Academy.

I also work with people one on one to set relationship boundaries with friends,

Family,

Co workers,

Bosses,

On a one on one basis through grief guidance,

Which I offer on my website.

But whichever you choose,

And however you go about this,

Know that and I probably should have said this at the outset,

But you are not wrong for wanting this.

You are not crazy or bad or delusional or overly needy for not wanting to be treated like a problem or like your diagnosis or that you have become something different,

Simply because you have been diagnosed with MS,

You get to ask for the treatment that you would prefer in relationships and you get to decide to maintain those relationships or end those relationships if people can't follow through.

It's a shame that much of our grief experience involves sorting through and refiling reshuffling the deck of our friends I was incredibly surprised by who ended up actually being there for me and who ended up distancing themselves or I distanced myself from after my mother's death.

And then again,

After the death of my best friend,

It happened,

It's happened many times in my life.

And also,

I know from experience,

The power and the peace,

That's that's an even better word than power,

The peace that comes from being surrounded by people who see you and see your grief and see your diagnosis and see your life and can hold all of those things together as one.

As opposed to zeroing in on let's fix you.

Let's not have this be real anymore.

Let's make this go away.

That is an entirely different energy in relationship than that is real.

That is hard.

I am here.

That's what you're going for in friendship and relationship.

And if all else fails,

You can always send this guy this episode of Dear Grief Guide just to see how he responds,

What happens.

I wish you luck under a microscope.

I know that the road from here will not be an easy one.

It's not been an easy one to arrive at already,

Where you are.

And I also know that there are so many communities,

So many circles of people,

So many from organizations to just personal groups that want to be there,

That know what it is to have empathy and compassion for people like you,

For people who are going through what you are experiencing right now.

And you are not alone.

You are not alone.