Dear Christine,

One of my best friends was just diagnosed with a very aggressive cancer. She has two little kids, a loving husband, and a full-time job. I’m not sure what to do or say or how I can help—my instinct is to jump in and start problem-solving. Does she have the best doctor? Can she really afford to take time off of work? I know she knows that this could be terminal. She is only 47 years old.

I know your close friend recently went through something similar. Please just tell me what to do.

—Scared and Sad

Dear Scared and Sad,

My friend, Susie Rinehart, would find it kind of funny that you are asking me what to do when a friend has a potentially terminal illness. Why? Because I initially handled her diagnosis so bizarrely.

Susie and I have been friends for more than 20 years. Before she found out that she had a big brainstem tumor, we’d been talking on the phone a lot about her desire to write a book. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that in the months before her diagnosis, we’d clocked a dozen or more hours gabbing like middle schoolers in the 1980s (that is to say, endlessly on the phone, she in Colorado and I in California). I was trying to help her work out the particulars of her novel. Or of her fictionalized memoir. Or maybe it was meant to be a series of letters to her daughter. Or self-help book for young women in their 20s.

Suffice it to say, we didn’t know what form the book was going to take. But we did know that Susie had an important book in her.

When she found out that she had a tumor wrapped around her brainstem—one that might not be operable and could possibly maim or kill her in as little as three months—she called me. When I didn’t pick up, she left me a message explaining that they’d finally figured out why she’d been having such severe headaches for the past couple of years: It was a massive, tentacled tumor. They were interviewing surgeons. A mutual friend, himself a neurosurgeon, was helping Susie find the best of the best. It was a long road ahead.

I was not as stunned or worried as you’d think I’d be upon learning that one of my dearest friends had a serious illness. In addition to talking about the book, we’d also been talking about her headaches a lot. Two mysteries had been solved!

So instead of thinking through how one might appropriately respond to such news, I immediately called her back and left a long message:

Wow. I’m so sorry to hear that you have a tumor in your neck, but I’m so happy they’ve figured out what’s been causing your headaches! That’s so great. And I’m glad you are taking the time to find the best surgeon ever. Please let me know if there is anything I can do to help. And, also, not to be Pollyannaish about the ordeal that is surely ahead, but SUSIE! THIS IS YOUR BOOK!! You are going to write a memoir about this experience!!

My husband, Mark, overheard me leave that message back to her. After I told Mark what was going on, he said something like: “She just told you that she has brain cancer, and you told her ‘Congratulations! This is going to make for a great book!’ Call her back right now. Maybe you can stop her from listening to that message.”

In my next message, I said little more than, “I am such a dumbass.”

Coincidentally, a few months later, I was having lunch with a new friend, Kelsey Crowe, who was just launching her very helpful and very funny book, There is No Good Card for This: What to Say and Do When Life is Scary, Awful, and Unfair to People You Love.

Kelsey confirmed that I had not responded at all appropriately to Susie’s diagnosis. She gave me a few pointers for the next time something awful happens to someone I love. So here are few things I’ve learned from both Susie and Kelsey:

1. Say something

While Kelsey admitted that what I chose to say to Susie was about the worst she’d ever heard, she was clear that saying something is always better than saying nothing. (But you might need to apologize for being a dumbass, if you are like me.)

A lot of people don’t know what to say when something awful befalls a friend or colleague, and so they don’t say anything at all. It’s terrible for people who are going through something difficult when they feel like people are avoiding them. Here are some things Kelsey suggests:

• “I am sorry you are going through this.”
• “I can’t imagine what you are going through. What’s that like for you?”
• “I want you to know I am here for you if there is anything I can do.”
• “You don’t look sick; how are you actually doing?”
• “How are you feeling today?”
• “I have seen you manage really tough things in the past and I know that you can get through this.”

2. Offer support

Your friend’s diagnosis is an opportunity for you to reach out in whatever way you can. It’s an opportunity to connect, to offer love, and to show compassion. Your relationship will naturally deepen when you offer support, especially if you don’t expect anything in return.

Doing something, even something small, is better than avoiding the situation or the person, which will only make them feel more alone. Delivering a casserole might seem a little retro, but keeping the kids fed and the family trains running is hard if you’re not feeling well (and nothing says I love you like lasagna).

If you don’t cook or can’t reliably deliver things like meals, don’t feel compelled to sign up for that type of support. Maybe send an inspirational poem if that’s more your thing. Or perhaps you can easily drive the carpool for your friend, or be there to hold her hand during chemotherapy or treatments. Consider doing the thing that will bring you personally the most joy, or create the most connection.

3. Hold space for the scary, awful, unfairness of it all

Your friend’s life may have just fallen apart. There’s probably zero chance that she’s not thinking about the fact that she might die, leaving her young children without a mother. Those are some really hard thoughts to be alone with all the time.

So even though our first impulse is often to cheer someone up, or to offer platitudes like, “God never gives us something we can’t handle,” or to find a silver lining, sometimes optimism can make a sick person feel more alone and afraid. We can be hopeful that treatments will work and that everything will be okay in the end—and at the same time we can acknowledge the scary, awful, unfair outcomes that are also a possibility. Specifically, we can hold a place for them to say the unimaginable:

• “I might die.”
• “My children might grow up without a mother.”
• “Everything has fallen apart.”

Because Susie encouraged me to do this with another friend who had been diagnosed with possibly-fatal cancer, I started by telling him that I was there for him if he wanted to talk about all the dark things that were going through his head. I said, “I don’t believe you are going to jinx yourself if we talk about what you are most afraid of. Sometimes it can help to speak out loud about the worst-case scenarios.” Those conversations were brief—like a door we barely opened and barely peeked through—but they were among the most moving and heartfelt conversations I’ve ever had in my life, with anyone.

Your friend is lucky to have you, Scared and Sad. Not because you’re ready to jump in and start problem solving (please don’t do that), but because you can see how scary this situation is for her. You can see that her whole life has just been dumped upside down—that she’s lost a lot already, and she is likely sad about it, too. Your friend is not alone in her fear or her grief, thank goodness.

Fortunately, Susie forgave me for my initial response, because that’s the kind of friend she is. And, also, she did write a book about her experience. It’s called Fierce Joy, and I hope you’ll read it.

Warmly,
Christine

In “Dear Christine,” sociologist and coach Christine Carter responds to your questions about marriage, parenting, happiness, work, family, and, well, life. Want to submit a question? Email advice@christinecarter.flywheelsites.com.

Dear Christine,

My daughter has a chronic health problem that we’ve been dealing with since she was almost three years old. Until very recently, I managed everything about her illness for her: appointments, medications, decision making around treatment, etc. She’s always been interested in learning more about her disease, and she’s been a compliant patient.

But now that she is a teenager, she needs to be more in charge of herself, and more involved in making decisions about her treatments. In some ways, she’s doing this well; for example, she gives herself a weekly injection.

I’m frustrated, though, because it seems like I can’t give her important information about her illness without eye-rolling and resistance. She needs more information than she currently has to make good decisions for herself. Right now, she wants to take herself off of a medication that makes her nauseous, and her doctor and I are worried that this is going to lead to more severe long-term health problems.

How can I influence my teenager? What used to work doesn’t seem to work anymore.

Signed,
Loving Mom Trying to Let Go

Dear Trying to Let Go,

I feel your pain. I find it really frustrating that I can’t just give my teenagers lots of (important!) information and expect that new information to translate to positive behavior. Even kids who don’t have a chronic disease don’t usually know what they don’t know about lots of things that will affect their health over the long run. It’d be much easier if we could just download information to them—say about sex and drugs, or about their health and wellness—and know that they were going to use that information well.

But, alas, as you and I know from experience, giving teenagers a lot of information doesn’t seem to be the key to influencing them. In fact, we know from some interesting research on this topic that what is somewhat effective for elementary school children—giving them information about their health that they can act on—tends to be mostly ineffective for teenagers.

This is because adolescents are much more sensitive to whether or not they are being treated with respect. The hormonal changes that come with puberty conspire with adolescent social dynamics to make teenagers much more attuned to social status. More specifically, they become super touchy about whether or not they are being treated as though they are high status.

In the teenage brain, the part of your daughter that is an autonomous young adult is high status. The part of her that is still a kid who needs your support is low status. Our teenagers might be half–independent young adult, half–little kid—but they are hugely motivated to become 100 percent autonomous. (Even if they do know, on some level, that they still need our support and guidance.)

So, when we give our adolescents a lot of information about an (important!) topic, especially when it is information that they don’t really want or that they think they already have, it can feel infantilizing to them. Even if we deliver the information as we would to another adult, the mere fact of our instruction can feel disrespectful to teenagers.

What is a smart parent (with loads of important information!) like yourself to do? I’ve gleaned three ideas from a related study by some of the smartest thinkers about teenagers: Ron Dahl, Carol Dweck, and David Yaeger.

1. Accord them high status from the get-go. Bring up the topic as you would to someone with the highest possible social status, someone you really, really respect. (I have to literally imagine that person in my head, and then imagine both the tone and the words I would use with that person.) Remember, if they feel disrespected, nagged, spoken down to, pressed upon, or infantilized at all, all bets are off.

The goal: Give them enough information that they can make their own informed decision, hopefully one that benefits their health and well-being in the long term, but do it in a way that allows them to feel respected and high status in the short term. They’ll need to feel competent, so it can help to point out all the ways that you see them as already very competent in this arena. What do you admire about them?

One way to convey your respect is to really listen well. Let this be a two-way conversation, not a lecture. Show your daughter that you are listening to her by reflecting back to her what she is saying (not what you wish she were saying).

Another way to convey respect is to demonstrate her value to a group of other teenagers. Are there other kids with the same chronic health issue that your daughter could help? Could you have her write a letter to someone else struggling with the same decision, outlining her situation and all that she knows about the decision she needs to make? This would help her engage in what researchers call “self-persuasion,” and it would make palpable the wisdom that she has to share and the way that she can help others.

2. Keep it short. You may have a mountain of information to impart, but research shows that less is more. Do not do what I often find myself doing in these situations: repeating myself. This can sound like nagging, and research shows that parental nagging activates anger-related regions in teenager’s brains, and it reduces activity in regions related to planning and behavior change.

I definitely talk too much. I learned this the hard way. I was trying to make an important point to one of my kids, and she didn’t seem to be getting it. I plowed on, with more examples. “Are you hearing me?” I finally asked. She looked up, eyes glazed over. “Yes,” she said. “I hear your words. So. Many. Words.”

So, use as few words as possible to make your point, and then shut up and watch for a response. Awkward silences are okay; often teens will want to fill the silence and in so doing will actually contribute to the conversation.

3. Let them be in control of both the conversation and the actions they take following the conversation. Do not, under pain of death, tell teenagers what to do. When it comes to conversations about their own health, invite them to discover what the information means for their lives.

So instead of sitting your daughter down for a Big Talk using a tone that suggests you are going to decide the course of her treatment, wade in sloooowly. Raise the issue you’d like to discuss from a couple of very different angles. For example: “Do you want to talk about what it is like when you feel nauseous at school?” or “Do you want to talk about what the risks and benefits are of going off of your medication?” Ron Dahl recommends that we always also throw in a super-open-ended question like, “Or maybe there is something else you would rather discuss? What do you think?”

If they say they don’t want to talk, let it go temporarily. Force never works, but persistence does.

As parents I think we often forget that teenagers are motivated by totally different things than we are. We want them to do the things that are best for their health and well-being; they want to do the things that bestow on them the highest social status. But we are most influential when we are able to take advantage of teens’ existing motivations, rather than trying to get them to feel motivated by our goals.

Fortunately, our motivations tend to turn out to be aligned already: Our adolescents want to feel like competent, well-respected, autonomous adults. And, in the end, we want our children to be competent, autonomous adults who make choices we respect and admire. Decisions like the one your daughter has ahead of her are a bridge between how she wants to feel and the young woman she is becoming. Though she may not see it right now, she is so lucky to have you walking across that bridge beside—or perhaps a touch behind—her.

Yours,
Christine

Hi Christine,

I have a habit of going to bed later than I want and then being rushed in the morning and getting to work late. For several years now, I’ve been wanting to get to bed earlier, but I can’t seem to do it.

I have a tendency to feel pretty driven and busy during the day, and the evening feels like my only time to relax. I binge-watch Netflix, scroll through my social media and news alerts, and generally get caught doing random things on my phone until late at night. But when I think about going to bed early, I feel kind of deprived. I think I actually do need time to wind down and take a break before I go to sleep, even when I’m totally exhausted.

I would like to try again to go to bed earlier, but I feel a little nervous about it because I’ve made that resolution before and not been successful quite a few times.

Thanks,
Tired and Running Late

Dear Tired and Running Late,

I hear you on all fronts. Who hasn’t resolved to get to bed earlier, only to find themselves going to bed late night after night? I think most people these days have experienced the same frustration (if not with sleep, then with another resolution). It’s very discouraging to try to do things differently, only to find ourselves falling back into old patterns.

Though frustrating, it’s normal to struggle to change our daily routines. Research suggests that 88 percent of people have failed to stick to their resolutions to change; we humans are creatures of habit. Our brains crave routine and resist change.

So how do we change our habits?

Going to bed earlier is a realistic and worthy goal—one that will have very real benefits for you in your busy life. To do so, however, you will do well to change your thoughts before you try to change your habits.

For starters, I’m guessing that the reason you feel nervous about trying to do this again is that failing to keep your resolutions in the past has been stressful. This is normal, but we usually aren’t successful at changing our habits when we’re anxious about it.

Failing at our resolutions is more stressful when we opt for self-flagellation in the face of our setbacks or lapses. We tend to think that if we’re really hard on ourselves, we’ll be less likely to make the same mistake again, or we’ll motivate ourselves towards better performance in the future. Admitting our failings does not need to come with commensurate self-criticism, however.

Why? Because self-criticism doesn’t work. It’s stressful, and it doesn’t actually motivate us. Instead, self-criticism is associated with decreased motivation and future improvement.

Self-compassion—being warm and supportive towards ourselves, and actively soothing ourselves—does help when we fall short of our intentions or our goals. It leads to less anxiety, less depression, and greater peace of mind—and, importantly, it makes us feel more motivated to make the improvements we need to.

So, the first step to making lasting change is to simply forgive yourself for having failed in the past. It’s okay; it’s normal, even. You did the best you could with the skills you had. Take a deep breath and soothe yourself like you might a really good friend: Use kind, reassuring words to ease yourself out of a stress response. Remind yourself that few people are successful the first time they try to change their routines, and that feeling guilty or bad about your behavior will not increase your future success.

The next step is to figure out what’s holding you back.

This may be blazingly obvious, but in order to do better tomorrow, you’ll need to know what is causing you to go to bed later than you are intending to.

You’ve already identified a major obstacle to getting to bed at a reasonable hour: You don’t relax during the day, and so you need time to unwind at night. This is likely more of an identity obstacle than a practical one. By that I mean that I doubt there is an actual, physical obstacle that is keeping you from unwinding earlier in the day or evening. Instead, I’m guessing that there is something that you believe (maybe about yourself, or about your success) that’s holding you back.

Our beliefs really matter when it comes to our behavior. Our thoughts—about ourselves, other people, our circumstances—and the meaning we attribute to our world tend to trigger our emotions, and our emotions are often the motivation for our behavior. Our actions, when repeated, become habits.

And what we do repeatedly tends to add up to our accomplishments. Our outcomes are usually often lagging measures of our habits. You’re tired and running late (outcomes) because of your habit of going to bed late. Feeling deprived of rest led you to stay up late. What beliefs do you hold that keep you from taking breaks during the day? When we get back to our identity, we can see how much what we believe about ourselves can influence our habits. For example, you mention that you are busy and driven. These are beliefs about yourself common to many ambitious people these days.

I relate totally. Until a few years ago, every time someone would ask me how I was doing, I would always give the same answer: I am so busy. Extremely busy. Crazy busy. Busy and important. As such, I was always running late, white knuckling it through an over-packed day.

I wore my exhaustion like a trophy, as a sign of my strength and a mark of my character. At one point, for example, I ran a half-marathon with a fever, not wanting to disappoint my family who’d driven five hours to support me. The busier I was, the more important I felt.

I held a common mistaken belief: that busyness is a marker of importance, of character, of economic security. And I believed the reverse, as well: If we aren’t busy, we lack importance. We’re insignificant. We’re under-achieving. We’re weak. Un-busy people are lazy, and they are missing out.

Part of my identity included a constellation of thoughts, beliefs, and values about busyness that triggered emotions (feelings of importance, significance), which motivated behaviors (not resting—running with a fever). Over time, staying busy all the time and never resting became a habit, and it really affected my outcomes: Eventually, my body broke down. I got really, really sick, again and again—and this forced me to rest. It also caused me to change my beliefs about myself, and my success.

Behavior that conflicts with our identity doesn’t last. As long as I believed that my busyness was a sign of my productivity and the source of my success, even the idea of resting created a vague anxiety that I was possibly about to fail at something—or that I was about to miss an important email or opportunity.

In order to finally change, it wasn’t that I had to try harder to sleep more, or that I needed more willpower or self-discipline to rest when I was tired, injured, or sick. It was that I needed to change my beliefs about myself, and about my success.

The more deeply something is tied to our identity, the harder it is to change it. By the same token, the more a new behavior is aligned with our beliefs about ourselves, the more likely it is that we’ll adopt it.

Just as I had to upgrade the part of my identity that was keeping me in a continual state of busyness and exhaustion, I suspect you do, too, Tired and Running Late. If I were a betting woman, I’d bet that feeling busy and tired isn’t contributing to your success. At all.

In fact, you can probably already see how getting enough sleep, not rushing in the morning, and getting to work on time are better bets than busyness and exhaustion. Can you take the part of your identity that feels driven during the day and upgrade that from “busy and driven” to “relaxed, focused, and productive,” or something like that?

And then dig into your beliefs about what leads to productivity and focus. I can tell you with certainty that never resting and not taking breaks throughout the day will not help you do your best work, get a lot done, or stay focused when you need to be.

Plenty of research has shown that taking breaks, even brief ones, dramatically improves our performance and productivity. When we don’t take breaks, our focus and the quality of our work usually suffers. But when we do rest throughout the day, we can work for much longer without the quality of our work, or our focus, suffering.

Your mission then, should you choose to accept it, is to take breaks throughout the day. Take a proper lunch break. Go for a short walk between meetings at work. When you get home from work, don’t immediately jump into the next activity—wind down a little. Read a book. Watch a 20-minute sitcom. Call a friend.

Try taking as many breaks as you need to take so that you don’t feel deprived of rest at bedtime.

Do this as an experiment, and record how much you get done and how well you do it. Gather evidence that you are relaxed, focused, and productive—or whatever your upgraded identity is—throughout the day. Note it if you experience greater feelings of relaxation, or more focus. Relish it if you take time to relax before it’s time for bed.

Above all, enjoy the heck out of your breaks. Don’t plan them, don’t worry about them—just let yourself take them. All you need to do is show up, and a little added rest will work its magic on your life. And do let me know how it’s going. I’m hoping, Tired and Running Late, that you’ll soon be signing off as Relaxed, Focused, and Productive.

Yours,
Christine

In Dear Christine, sociologist and coach Christine Carter responds to your questions about marriage, parenting, happiness, work, family, and, well, life. Sign up for Christine’s monthly email list (that’s right: it’s only one email per month) to receive notifications of new columns. Want to submit a question? Email advice@christinecarter.flywheelsites.com.