If fix-it platitudes are so unhelpful, why are they so common? Val Walker, in her book, The Art of Comforting, argues that our culture values production over presence, and organization over emotional mess. We believe in getting things done rather than just letting things be, and we believe that "healing" means getting over rather than learning to live with the loss. Our discomfort with suffering, and our rush to make it stop, can result in simpleminded fixes that suggest the problem of grief is an easy one to get over. This superficial effort just makes the suffering person feel even more broken (and pathetic) for suffering at all, and more detached from the person trying to help.
-- Kelsey Crowe and Emily McDowell, There Is No Good Card for This, p. 207
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