Words of Acknowldegement

Last night, Saturday Night Live featured some of its more famous skits over the past 40 years. One particularly funny spoof features a character named Stuart Smalley (created by Al Franken) who dishes out the now famous Daily Affirmation:  "I'm good enough, I'm smart enough" and doggone it, people like me."

Words of affirmation get a jab because they can seem insincere or completely untrue. We laugh when in one episode, Michael Jordan says “I don’t have to be a great basketball player, I don’t have to dribble the ball fast or throw the ball in the basket”.  It sounds ludicrous.

When caring for someone who is chronically ill we are sometimes in that very place where words ring hollow.  I once heard a visitor say “You look good today” to a woman with unkempt hair and gray-tinted skin.  She rolled her disbelieving eyes at me as if to say, does he think I’m blind or just mind-numb. The visitor wasn’t trying to be disrespectful; he was using misplaced words of affirmation.

This discomfiture about what to say is why some people abandon visiting their loved ones and friends. But there are ways to communicate which are affirming without being insincere. I would call it using words of acknowledgement. It requires a bit more listening and a willingness to be in the other person’s shoes, if just for a minute. But it is powerful way to connect for caregiver and care-receiver both.

I sat and listened to a former military officer who was sometimes verbally abusive. Both his legs amputated due to diabetes; he was complaining about his care. I simply said to him what was obvious, “You have had a great loss and you must feel terribly angry.”  At first he responded, “You’re damn right I’m angry,” but he then became quiet. “No one has ever acknowledged that to me before.” It was the beginning of cooperation and friendship.

Words of acknowledgement require a gentle kind of truth-telling that can still affirm. You are frustrated but you haven’t given up, to someone struggling with disability. I see you are afraid, but I am impressed with your bravery, to someone facing another round of surgeries. I am sorry this is happening to you, it is hard, to a loved one facing another decline in health.  Words of acknowledgement state what is true. They are true because you have listened to the person in your care and heard what she said, and responded with a strong dose of kindness.

“Not feeling like Sophia Loren today?” I asked the woman after her visitor left. She laughed and said, “Give me a comb!”

Let me know what words of acknowledgement have helped you.