The COVID-19 pandemic dragged us into a haunted house of grief. Loss pops up as we turn a corner, silently follows, threatens and jangles us. We may know someone who died in Queens, spent weeks on a ventilator in Cleveland, languished alone in a Dallas hospital. We may know someone who lost their job, cannot pay rent, went bankrupt, visited a food bank. We may know someone living alone, hungry for touch, enduring anxiety, depression or sad about the postponed wedding, the Zoom graduation, the solitary funeral. We may be those people.

How can we help each other grieve? For 14 years, I have worked as a hospital chaplain. I have learned that attentive listening is rare. This is especially unfortunate now, because listening well is critical to our collective emotional health.

Obvious and subtle barriers prevent good listening. We hear someone else’s story and want to tell a similar or more dramatic one. We share our own story rather than asking reflective questions. Mentally preparing our story, we miss chunks of content and meaning. Some stories appear intolerable to hear; for example, people living with cancer tell me few loved ones can bear their descriptions of living in fear, pain or sorrow. Because few people listen well, we compete for time in conversations. Not listening attentively, shifting the spotlight to our troubles, indirectly conveys the message “I don’t want to or can’t hear it.” We also police each other’s expression of challenging emotions. “Cheer up.” “Don’t be so negative.”

One way we suppress sadness and fear is by pouring emotional energy into anger. Many of my discussions with loved ones and colleagues about the pandemic bubble with anger. There are reasons to be angry; it can warn us something needs to change. The protests after the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery express rage that lethal racial injustice persists. However, sometimes anger obscures more vulnerable emotions. I have witnessed people sheltering their sad, scared selves in an angry shell. When I meet a bereaved person’s seemingly disproportionate anger with statements of sadness that their loved one has died, tears may come, taking the anger with it.

To add a patina of science to a listener’s discomfort with loss, some turn to the five stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance) described by psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross as an extension of her work with dying people. Abundant research discredits the five stages theory. Even so, the idea crops up everywhere. People have told me about friends who do not understand why they are angry when they already had “progressed” to depression. Above all, we urge others to arrive at acceptance.

In a May opinion piece for The Washington Post, former CDC director Tom Frieden said, “people don’t necessarily proceed through all the stages (of grief) … But … widespread embrace of the final stage, acceptance, could speed our collective path to a new, post-pandemic normal.” Accepting we need to behave to prevent the virus from spreading makes sense. But rushing others past naturally-arising emotions is the wrong approach.

When talking about what facilitates resilience, clinical psychology professor George Bonnano told news anchor Steve Paikin, “One emotion that’s associated with loss is sadness. Sadness is not a byproduct … it appears that we’ve evolved sadness to help us deal with these kinds of situations.” Social work researcher Brené Brown comes to a similar conclusion in a 2020 television interview with Frederic Skavlan, saying, “We’re experiencing grief, fear, anxiety, uncertainty, vulnerability, and the only way through that is to acknowledge it. If we spend all of our energy and effort trying to pretend we’re okay when we’re not … that’s actually the thing that keeps us from being okay.”

I have witnessed people descending into a valley of sadness. If I can tolerate my own discomfort in the face of emotional misery and accompany them with silence and reflective questions, most of my patients and their loved ones will begin to express their own self-soothing statements. If humor emerges, I encourage it; we need the full palette of emotions to keep us emotionally whole.

Listening now presents unique challenges for me, because I am experiencing the same losses and uncertainty. I must adapt to meet this moment. At work, I take more breaks to breathe and reflect to remain present to others. In my personal life, I consider my capacity to listen well and make adjustments, perhaps letting a loved one know I need to change the subject, or asking for time to express my feelings.

May we emerge from this pandemic as more attentive listeners. Enhancing our collective emotional intelligence will not negate the losses of this time, but may leave us better able to navigate life’s challenges.

Rabbi Lori Klein is the director of spiritual care at Stanford Health Care.