Do you avoid awkward conversations? Let's face it, it's easy to, because who likes feeling awkward? No thanks! We may worry about having to give lots of time that we haven't got and saying one supportive thing will mean that we feel obligated to help someone in a worse situation than ourselves at that time.  

If someone's died, or been made redundant or their relationship has broken down, it's awkward - what do you say in that situation? Often, we're thinking 'thank goodness that's not me'.  In awkward situations, we don't know what to say so we avoid the person or don't say anything at all. This actually makes a difficult situation worse, because the other person feels ignored, and  not acknowledged, and then we feel bad for not saying anything, which creates two lots of bad feeling, theirs and ours.  Saying something a little clumsily can be a lot better than saying nothing at all.   

Think of a difficult time that you faced in the past and how you felt when people said nothing. How did it make you feel? Even someone saying "I don't know what to say to make you feel better, but I want you to know that I'm thinking of you and let me know if I can do anything." is better than nothing being expressed at all. 

So how could we create 2 lots of good feeling - theirs and ours from tackling an awkward situation to the best of our ability?  Read on for some tips about how to tackle awkward conversations.