From the course: Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant on Option B: Building Resilience

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Talking about loss and hardship

Talking about loss and hardship

- Around the world people have a really hard time talking about adversity. Somebody has lost a spouse or has been diagnosed with cancer and nobody says a word about it. It's like there's an elephant in the room. - When I saw someone two weeks after Dave died or even two months and they didn't acknowledge it at all, I felt totally invisible, I felt like they didn't get it at all and I felt really alone and I know that just like I had done when I was on the other side they just didn't know what to say so they didn't say anything at all. - Psychologists years ago came up with a term for this, they called it the Mum Effect knowing that nobody likes to pass along bad news. Some people are afraid that the messenger will be shot but in other cases it's just as likely that people they don't want to remind others of something painful. One way that people are able to overcome the Mum Effect is to open up, to say hey, this is what I'm going through. - I felt increasingly alone and increasingly…

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