How are you feeling?
Is it always caring to ask how someone is? Might we cause more harm than good?
Jun 28, 2006
"How are you feeling?"
What could possibly be ethically improper about asking someone how they feel?
Surprisingly, a lot. If hurting people is ethically wrong, then asking them how they feel can be ethically wrong because it sometimes hurts people to be asked.
There is need to be sensitive to how the apparently concerned and friendly question, "How are you feeling?" can be wounding in an unexpectedly number of cases.
It took me years to get my wife to stop asking me how my head felt after mentioning to her that I had a headache. What I got her to appreciate was that there would be times when I was able to put the headache out of mind while doing something, and that being asked how it felt just brought it all back.
This same idea applies in a very much more significant way to people who are chronically or terminally ill or who have lost a loved one. There may be blessed times during a day when they forget their illness or loss, only to have it all brought back by a well-intentioned expression of concern.
There's also a darker side to at least some concerned questions. All of us fear serious illness, all of us dread great loss. Sometimes our questions about how someone feels have as much or more to do with us than with them. A little bit of it is "There but for the grace of God...," a little bit has to do with morbid curiosity, a little bit has to do with wanting to be in on something serious and important. This last became clear to me when I overheard two people actually upping one another on who knew more about a third person's condition.
Much of this is inevitable; great loss and serious illness are very personal, very immediate topics that concern us more than a tragedy or war taking place half-way round the world. But not restraining our interest can be hurtful to others. Sadly, most of us don't learn this lesson until we're on the receiving end of the questions.
We have to pause and ask ourselves why we're asking before we ask how someone's feeling. Sometimes all they want is to be spoken to normally, not to be objectified as someone suffering. I realized this when I was actually thanked by someone for not asking how they were feeling.
