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How To Tell People You’ve Had A Painful Setback
Some Vietnam veterans found a helpful approach
A paradox of the American self-help industry is that it abounds with advice on how to give people bad news that will affect them, but it says much less about how to talk to others about setbacks in your own life. Many books and articles will guide you if you’re a manager who has to fire an employee, a teacher who must fail a student, or doctor who needs to give a patient a bleak test result.
Much less guidance exists on how to tell people about something bad that’s happened in your own life: You’ve been fired, dumped, or evicted, let’s say. Or you’ve been given other dreaded news.
Authors of self-help manuals — whether they’re therapists or etiquette experts — have two standard pieces of advice for people in such unlucky situations: Tell your family and closest friends first, so they don’t feel hurt by hearing the news from others, and let people how they can help you.
That’s good advice, but it begs the question: What do you say about the incident?
During the Vietnam war, the war correspondent Tom Tiede was at times was asked to help wounded soldiers write letters to girlfriends back at home — not an easy job. Some men had to reveal that they’d had life-changing injuries resulting in…
