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The Platinum Rule of Friendship
ONE AUGUST MORNING during Adam’s first semester teaching in Philadelphia, a student lumbered into his classroom. At six foot two and 240 pounds, Owen Thomas had been recruited to play defensive lineman on the University of Pennsylvania football team. But size wasn’t the only thing that made Owen instantly command attention. His hair was so orange that from a distance it looked like his head was on fire. Adam would have noticed Owen even if he’d sat in the back row, but he sat right in front, always arriving early and asking insightful questions.
Owen made each of his classmates feel welcome, introducing himself with a friendly grin. During a unit on negotiations, students divided into pairs to buy or sell a fictional business. Owen finished with the worst results in the class. He couldn’t bear to take even a dime of hypothetical money that he didn’t need, so he practically gave his business away. In December, when his classmates voted on who was the most cooperative negotiator, Owen won in a landslide.
In April, he died by suicide.
Just two months earlier, Owen had stopped by Adam’s office to ask for help. Owen was always upbeat, but that day he seemed anxious. He said he was looking for an internship and Adam offered to make a few introductions. Owen never followed up and that was the last time they spoke. Looking back on that meeting, Adam felt that he had failed when it mattered most. After the funeral, Adam went home and asked his wife Allison if he should quit teaching.
An autopsy revealed that Owen’s brain showed signs of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a disease believed to be caused in part by repeated hits to the head. CTE has been linked to severe depression and implicated in the suicides of a number of football players. At the time of his death, Owen was the youngest player to be diagnosed and the first with no history of concussions. After learning about the CTE diagnosis, Adam blamed himself less for missing the warning signs of mental illness and started thinking about ways to give more support to students who were struggling. But with hundreds of new students each fall, Adam needed a way to make a personal connection with many people at once. He drew his inspiration from a burst of noise.
In classic experiments on stress, people performed tasks that required concentration, like solving puzzles, while being blasted at random intervals with uncomfortably loud sounds. They started sweating and their heart rates and blood pressure climbed. They struggled to focus and made mistakes. Many got so frustrated that they gave up. Searching for a way to reduce anxiety, researchers gave some of the participants an escape. If the noise became too unpleasant, they could press a button and make it stop. Sure enough, the button allowed them to stay calmer, make fewer mistakes, and show less irritation. That’s not surprising. But here’s what is: none of the participants actually pressed the button. Stopping the noise didn’t make the difference…knowing they could stop the noise did. The button gave them a sense of control and allowed them to endure the stress.
When people are in pain, they need a button. After Owen’s suicide, Adam started writing his cell phone number on the board on the first day of his undergraduate class. He lets his students know that if they need him, they can call at any hour. Students use the number infrequently, but along with the mental health resources available on campus, this gives them each an extra button.
When people close to us face adversity, how do we give them a button to press? While it seems obvious that friends want to support friends going through a crisis, there are barriers that block us. There are two different emotional responses to the pain of others: empathy, which motivates us to help, and distress, which motivates us to avoid. Writer Allen Rucker observed both reactions after being suddenly paralyzed by a rare disorder. “As some friends checked in daily with deli sandwiches, the complete films of Alfred Hitchcock, or just kindness, others were curiously absent,” he wrote. “It was my first indication that my new condition could breed fear in people other than myself.” For some, his physical paralysis triggered emotional paralysis.
When we hear that someone we care about has lost a job, started chemo, or is going through a divorce, our first impulse is usually “I should reach out.” Then right after that impulse doubts often flood our mind. “What if I say the wrong thing?” “What if talking about it makes her feel self-conscious?” “What if I’m overstepping?” Once raised, these doubts are followed by excuses like “He has so many friends and we’re not that close.” Or “She must be so busy. I don’t want to bother her.” We put off calling or offering help until we feel guilty that we didn’t do it sooner…and then it feels too late.
A woman I know lost her husband to cancer in her fifties. Before this tragedy, she used to speak to one of her friends every week; then, suddenly, the calls stopped. Almost a year later, the widow picked up the phone. “Why haven’t I heard from you?” she asked. “Oh,” explained her friend, “I wanted to wait until you felt better.” Her friend didn’t understand that withholding comfort actually added to the pain.
Alycia Bennett was on the receiving end of the distress response when she needed comfort most. In high school, Alycia ran a local chapter of a nonprofit to fight poverty in Africa, and she arrived at college eager to continue this mission. She contacted an administrator involved with nonprofits on campus, who came to her dorm room to discuss the program. When he discovered that Alycia was alone, he raped her.
In the painful aftermath, Alycia grappled with depression and reached out to her closest college friend. “Before, we were inseparable,” Alycia told us. “But when she found out about the rape, she said, ‘I can’t talk to you.’ ” Alycia sought support from other friends and got similar responses. One of them even admitted, “I know this has been really hard for you, but it has also been really hard for me.” The friend was feeling guilty for failing to stop the assault and was personalizing the tragedy. Alycia reassured her that she wasn’t to blame, but the friend stopped talking to Alycia, choosing escape over empathy.
“The assault was obviously shocking for me,” Alycia said. “When I decided to report it, there was a lot of tension. It was a pretty affluent community, mainly rich and mainly white. Being black, I felt intimidated. But just as shocking was the response of my friends. I felt helpless.” Luckily, her friends from high school stepped up, and she was able to transfer to a different college and move into an apartment with new roommates who helped her recover. Alycia shared her story on the Lean In community website in the hopes of encouraging other rape survivors to speak out. She wrote that she was determined to pursue her original goals—and she succeeded, graduating from college and getting a job she loves in Middle Eastern affairs and security.
For friends who turn away in times of difficulty, putting distance between themselves and emotional pain feels like self-preservation. These are the people who see someone drowning in sorrow and then worry, perhaps subconsciously, that they will be dragged under too. Others get overwhelmed by a sense of helplessness; they feel there’s nothing they can say or do to make things better, so they choose to say and do nothing. But what we learn from the stress experiment is that the button didn’t need to stop the noise to relieve the pressure. Simply showing up for a friend can make a huge difference.
I was lucky to be surrounded by loved ones who not only showed up but often figured out what I needed before I knew myself. For the first month, my mom stayed to help me take care of my son and daughter…and take care of me. At the end of each endless day, my mom lay down next to me and held me until I cried myself to sleep. I never asked her to do it; she just did. The day she left, my sister Michelle took her place. For the next four months, Michelle came over multiple nights each week, and when she couldn’t, she made sure a friend filled in.
Needing that much help was awful for me, but just entering the bedroom that I used to share with Dave made me feel like someone had knocked the wind out of me. Bedtime became the symbol of all that had changed. The grief and anxiety built throughout the day to that moment when I knew I’d have to crawl—and I mean crawl—into bed alone. By showing up night after night, and making it clear that they would always be there when I needed them, my family and friends were my button.
My closest friends and family convinced me that they truly wanted to help, which made me feel like less of a burden. Every time I told Michelle to go home, she insisted that she wouldn’t be able to rest unless she knew I was asleep. My brother David called me from Houston every single day for more than six months. When I thanked him, he said that he was doing it for himself because the only time he felt okay was when he was talking to me. I learned that at times, caring means that when someone is hurting, you cannot imagine being anywhere else.
This constant support was vital for me but might not be for everyone. A woman who also lost her husband shared that at first she dreaded being alone at night. Her mother stayed with her for two weeks and then she went to her brother’s. She deeply appreciated all the help but admitted, “After a month, I was so ready to just be alone.”
It’s hard to understand—or even imagine—another person’s pain. When we’re not in a physically or emotionally intense state, we underestimate its impact. In one experiment, people were asked to put their arm in a bucket of water and guess how painful it would be to sit in a freezing room for five hours. When the bucket was filled with ice water, they predicted that sitting in the room would be 14 percent more painful than when the bucket was filled with warm water. But when people made their predictions just ten minutes after removing their arm from the ice water, they made the same estimates as the warm water group. Once the icy water was behind them, even for just minutes, they couldn’t quite fathom what it felt like to be cold. (On the bright side, there are very few situations in real life where you find yourself with your arm in a bucket of ice water.)
There’s no one way to grieve and there’s no one way to comfort. What helps one person won’t help another, and even what helps one day might not help the next. Growing up, I was taught to follow the Golden Rule: treat others as you want to be treated. But when someone is suffering, instead of following the Golden Rule, we need to follow the Platinum Rule: treat others as they want to be treated. Take a cue from the person in distress and respond with understanding—or better yet, action.
As I was struggling to get back on my feet at home and at work, friends and colleagues would graciously ask, “Is there anything I can do?” They were sincere, but for most of them, I did not have an answer. There were things that would have been helpful but it was hard for me to ask for them. And some of the requests that came to mind were way too much of an imposition. Can you make sure my children and I are never left alone on any holiday? Or impossible. Can you invent a time machine so we can go back and say good-bye to Dave—or at least skip Father’s Day?
Author Bruce Feiler believes the problem lies in the offer to “do anything.” He writes that “while well meaning, this gesture unintentionally shifts the obligation to the aggrieved. Instead of offering ‘anything,’ just do something.” Bruce points to friends who sent packing supplies to someone who was moving out after getting divorced and others who held a “fire shower,” a variation on a bridal shower, for a friend who had lost her home. My colleague Dan Levy told me that when his son got sick and he was by his side at the hospital, a friend texted him, “What do you NOT want on a burger?” Dan appreciated the effort. “Instead of asking if I wanted food, he made the choice for me but gave me the dignity of feeling in control.” Another friend texted Dan that she was available for a hug if he needed one and would be in the hospital lobby for the next hour whether he came downstairs or not.
Specific acts help because instead of trying to fix the problem, they address the damage caused by the problem. “Some things in life cannot be fixed. They can only be carried,” therapist Megan Devine observes. Even the small act of holding someone’s hand can be helpful. Psychologists put teenage girls under stress by asking them to give a spontaneous public speech. When mothers and daughters who were close held hands, the physical contact took away some of the daughters’ anxiety. The daughters sweated less and the physiological stress was transferred to the mothers.
This effect resonates with me. Four days after I found Dave on the gym floor, I gave a eulogy at his funeral. I initially thought I would not be able to get through it, but my children wanted to say something and I felt that I had to show them I could too. My sister Michelle stood beside me and gripped my hand tightly. I didn’t know about the mother-daughter study then, but her hand in mine gave me courage.
Dave was a constant source of strength—a button not just for me but for so many. Now where would his friends and family turn for support? A helpful insight comes from psychologist Susan Silk, who devised the “ring theory.” She suggests writing down the names of people in the center of the tragedy and drawing a circle around them. Then draw a bigger circle around that one and write the names of the people who are next most affected by the event. Keep drawing larger circles for people based on proximity to the crisis. As Silk writes with mediator Barry Goldman, “When you are done you have a Kvetching Order.”
Adam drew the first four circles of my ring like this:
Wherever you are in the circle, offer comfort in and seek comfort out. That means consoling the people who are closer to the tragedy than you are and reaching out for support from those who are farther removed.
Sometimes I sought support from those in the outer rings, but other times I was afraid to accept it. About a week after the funeral, I went to my son’s flag football game still in that deep, early fog that makes it hard to imagine that there even is such a thing as a children’s football game. Looking around for a place to sit, I saw so many fathers watching their sons. Dave will never be at another football game again. Just as I was lowering the baseball hat on my head to hide my tears, I spotted my friends Katie and Scott Mitic waving me over to a blanket they had laid out on the grass. Earlier, they had offered to attend the game with me, but because they have their own kids to take care of, I told them not to come. I was so grateful they hadn’t listened. They sat on either side of me, holding my hands. I was there for my son…and they were there for me.
Of course, some people just want to curl up after tragedy and hide in their ring. A friend in Los Angeles was utterly lost after her only son died in a car accident. When friends would invite her over to dinner, her initial impulse was always to say no even though she’d been social in the past. They would press and she would force herself to say yes. Then the day before she’d want to cancel but would remind herself, “This is just you trying to run away. You have to go.”
I was torn by similar conflicting emotions. I hated asking for help, hated needing it, worried incessantly that I was a huge burden to everyone, and yet depended on their constant support. I was suffering from so many insecurities that I almost started a People Afraid of Inconveniencing Others support group, until I realized that all the members would be afraid of imposing on one another and no one would show up.
Before, I defined friendships by what I could offer: career advice, emotional support, suggestions for old (and Dave would have added bad) TV shows to watch. But this all changed and I needed so much help. I did not just feel like a burden…I truly was a burden. I learned that friendship isn’t only what you can give, it’s what you’re able to receive.
Still, as everyone I know who has been through tragedy acknowledges with sadness, there are friends who don’t come through as you might hope. A common experience is having friends who decide it’s their job to inform grieving pals what they should be doing—and worse, what they should be feeling. A woman I met chose to go to work the day after her husband died because she could not bear to be at home. To this day, she still feels the disapproval of colleagues who said to her, “I’d think you’d be too upset to be here today.” You would think, but you just don’t know.
Grief doesn’t share its schedule with anyone; we all grieve differently and in our own time. “It’s been three months. When are you gonna get over this?” one woman said to a friend who miscarried. After the one-year mark, a friend commented to me, “You should be done with that grief thing.” Really? Okay, I’ll just put that inconvenient “grief thing” into a drawer. It’s also probably not the most helpful thing to tell someone who’s grieving, “You’re so depressed and angry. It’s just too hard to be around you.” That one was said right to my face and preyed upon my worst fear—that it was true.
Anger is one of the five stages of grief famously defined by psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross. In the face of loss, we’re supposed to start in denial and move to anger, then to bargaining and depression. Only after we pass through these four stages can we find acceptance. But now experts realize that these are not five stages. They are five states that don’t progress in a linear fashion but rise and fall. Grief and anger aren’t extinguished like flames doused with water. They can flicker away one moment and burn hot the next.
I struggled with anger. A friend might say the wrong thing and I would react way too strongly, sometimes lashing out—“That is just not helpful”—or bursting into tears. Sometimes I caught myself and apologized right away. But other times I did not realize what I’d done until later or, I imagine, at all. Being my friend meant not just comforting me in my grief but dealing with a level of anger that I’d never felt before and struggled to control. My anger scared me—and made me need the comfort of my friends even more. Like the people in the stress experiment who were consoled by the simple presence of a button, I needed friends who let me know that even if I was difficult to be around, they would not abandon me.
Lots of people nicely tried to assure me, “You will get through this,” but it was hard to believe them. What helped me more was when people said that they were in it with me. Phil Deutch did this time and again, saying, “We are going to get through this.” When he was away, he sent emails, sometimes with just one line: “You are not alone.” One of my childhood girlfriends sent a card that read, “One day she woke up and understood we are all in this together.” That card has hung above my desk ever since.
I started spending more time with my closest friends and family, who taught me by example how to live the Platinum Rule. At first, it was survival; I could be myself with them, and they were able to absorb and help carry the anguish and anger. Later, it became my choice. These shifts in relationships happen to most of us naturally over time. As people mature, they focus on a smaller set of meaningful relationships, and the quality of friendships becomes a more important factor in happiness than the quantity.
As the worst of the grief faded, I had to restore balance in my friendships so they weren’t one-sided. About a year after Dave died, a friend seemed distracted and upset. I asked what was going on and she hesitated to tell me. I pressed and she admitted that she and her husband weren’t getting along, but she knew that if she compared her situation to mine, she shouldn’t complain. I joked that if my friends couldn’t complain about their partners, I wouldn’t have any friends. I wanted those close to me to know I was there to help carry their troubles too.
As time passed, I felt especially grateful to my family and friends who continued to check in and show up. On the six-month anniversary of Dave’s death, I sent them a poem, “Footprints in the Sand.” It was originally a religious parable, but to me it also expressed something profound about friendship. The poem relates a dream of walking on the beach with God. The storyteller observes that in the sand there are two sets of footprints except during those periods of life filled with “anguish, sorrow or defeat.” Then there is only one set of footprints. Feeling forsaken, the storyteller challenges God: “Why, when I needed you most, have you not been there for me?” The Lord replies, “The years when you have seen only one set of footprints, my child, are when I carried you.”
I used to think there was one set of footprints because my friends were carrying me through the worst days of my life. But now it means something else to me. When I saw one set of footprints, it was because they were following directly behind me, ready to catch me if I fell.
