Navigating Bad News
Show notes
Navigating Bad News
Bad news does not wait for a good time. It arrives in grocery stores and parking lots and at the dinner table in the middle of an otherwise ordinary Tuesday. And the world rearranges itself, and the person has to find a way to keep moving inside the rearranged world.
In this episode, Kit Mann looks at what actually happens when bad news arrives — the phased processing, the identity shift that nobody talks about, the mode that takes over before the feeling does. And at what the Taoist tradition says about being in that space without making it harder than it already is.
Kit also covers what not to say to someone who has just received bad news — and why most of what people offer in those moments is aimed at the comfort of the giver rather than the person receiving the news. And what to say instead, which turns out to be considerably simpler.
Also: a listener question from Lanto in San Jose, Costa Rica, who was raised Catholic and still carries parts of it — and wants to know whether Taoism asks him to leave all of that behind.