LETTERS
Send your letters of gratitude and tell us what you loved reading in the magazine to letters@psychologies.co.uk
Drip-feed read!
I am currently living in the USA, but come back to the UK every year – and when I’m here, travelling around on trains and buses, I always like to get a magazine. On my last visit, whilst wandering around the train station and checking the newsstand (mostly full of gossip mags), I came across Psychologies – psychology being a subject that really interests me. I started flicking through the pages and, wow, what a great magazine – I couldn’t get enough!
So, when I returned to the US, I started a subscription. I just love every issue; there are so many topics and snippets to get engrossed in, that I now have to limit myself – otherwise, I finish it too quickly! Nowadays, I read just a few articles when the magazine arrives, and try to make the rest last for a week! Thanks for a wonderful magazine.
Guided by grief
Thank you for a very helpful article about what to say to people when they are bereaved, in the March issue. It is so hard to know how best to approach grief, and the article was right when it said people often say nothing because they are frightened of upsetting the person – and also right in pointing out that the person can’t possibly be any more upset than they already are, so it is always best to say something.
However, I did disagree with one part of the article, where it spoke of a man who had lost his wife. He was made to feel awkward when he answered the door to sobbing friends of his wife while in the middle of a meal with other family members, where they had been laughing as they recalled happy memories of their loved one. The advice given was that people should not cry in front of the bereaved unless the bereaved person is also crying. I agree that it would make a bereaved person feel awkward and guilty if they were having a period of feeling happy in remembering the good times, and then had to deal with other people being in tears, but I’m afraid that, for me, crying is not something that can be switched on and off. If I feel very upset about something, then I simply can’t help crying – in the same way that I can’t help coughing or sneezing.
It is such a difficult and delicate situation, and people often simply react in the way that feels right to them. I don’t think any of the bereaved should be made to feel guilty about how they are fe
