I recently read the conversation Alexandra started about offensive platitudes people sometimes give to people who've just lost a person or animal to death. Another prime situation for that sort of thing is when someone learns you have just received a terrible diagnosis. When I told a masseuse about my breast cancer diagnosis 12 yrs ago, and expressed my terror, she said something like It will make you a better person to go through it. I was ready to shoot her, but I was already on her massage table, and it would have been really messy. Often people really don't know what to do or say. Their defenses can produce such f@kd up responses. A couple of other people immediately launched into horrific tales of the torments and death someone they knew or had only heard of had gone through. After a while, I saw the whole thing like a gigantic Rorschach test. [Posted in FML 7423]