How To Offer Support In A Crisis

There will be times in your life when your friends or family that are closest to you will go through a difficult and possibly unexpected situation.  You will worry about them and want to offer help and support.  I have some advice for helping friends and family through a crisis…

A few months ago my apartment in Brooklyn suddenly burned down.  Luckily I wasn’t in the unit at the time, but I did lose my home and a lot of my belongings.  Obviously the situation could have much worse, but I still see the situation as a small crisis.  I suddenly had no place to live and very few belongings.

In situations like these I realized that everyone cares and wants to help, but it is the people who make a specific offer that are truly helping you.  Lots of people say “I’m so sorry.  Please let me know anything I can do to help.”  Although these are kind and thoughtful words, I found that they weren’t in actuality helpful because I didn’t have the time or clarity of mind to figure out how different people could be useful to me.  And even if I did come up with something I needed, I didn’t really feel comfortable asking when they only said “let me know.”

The life-saving help came from those friends and family who took action.  They made specific offers like “You can use my truck to move your belongings” or “You can stay at my apartment this weekend while I’m out of town.”  I can probably say that I accepted almost all of these offers because it was actually helpful!  Their offers helped to relieve some stress from my situation.  They didn’t require me to do extra analyzing to try to figure out how they could be of some help in my crisis situation.

If you know someone going through a crisis in their life and you know that they need help, please offer something specific.  Home-cooked meals, beds to sleep in, babysitting, pet sitting, rides, use of vehicles…all of these things are great ideas.  It is helpful for you to do some thinking and analyzing on your own to figure out what you can do and offer.  Then propose to them what you can do to help and be prepared that they will take you up on it!

I guarantee that they will be forever appreciative and you will feel that you have truly done your part to be supportive and giving.

Image: sxc.hu