Kate Bowler categorizes the harmful or unhelpful responses people give when faced with terrible news into the archetypes of "Teachers," "Solvers," and "Optimizers."
Instead of meeting suffering with simple presence, people in these categories try to manage their own discomfort by attempting to fix, explain, or improve the situation.
1. The Teachers
The Teachers look at someone else's tragedy and immediately try to find a lesson, blueprint, or a "silver lining" to explain why it happened.
• The Response: They offer platitudes like "Everything happens for a reason," "God is testing you," or "Think of what you are learning about yourself through this."
• The Reality: Bowler notes that this response forces a false sense of order onto chaos. It attempts to wrap a tragic situation in an educational bow, which ultimately minimizes the raw reality of the person's grief and makes them feel like their pain is just a homework assignment they need to master.
2. The Solvers (or Fixers)
The Solvers treat a person's crisis or illness like a practical puzzle that can be cracked with enough effort or information.
• The Response: They offer unsolicited medical, spiritual, or lifestyle advice: "Have you tried cutting out sugar, or eating more vegetables?" "You should look into this alternative treatment," or "If you just pray harder, things will change."
• The Reality: This response is driven by the fear that tragedy is random. By insisting there is a solution, the Solver protects their own illusion of control. The underlying—and damaging—message to the sufferer is that if they just try harder, they can fix their own tragedy, subtly placing the blame on them if things go wrong.
3. The Optimizers (and "Purpose Monsters")
The Optimizers are products of modern self-help and productivity culture, treating human beings like assembly lines that can be continuously upgraded.
• The Response: When hit with bad news, they immediately pivot toward tracking metrics, relentless self-improvement, or toxic positivity. They want to optimize your mindset, your morning routine, your step counts, or your macros to "outrun" the pain.
• The Reality: Bowler argues that optimization is a joy blocker. The culture of optimization insists that human agency is unlimited and that any physical or emotional limitation is a personal failure. In reality, human beings are breakable and dependent. Trying to "optimize" your way through a tragedy forces you to hoard positive vibes while running away from the necessary, messy work of feeling the pain all the way through.
What to Do Instead: True Presence
Bowler's work emphasizes that life is beautiful and terrible, and there is no cure for being human. When someone receives bad news, they do not need a lesson, a 5-step optimization plan, or an amateur solution. What they actually need is presence and love—people who are brave enough to sit with them in the muck of unpredictable reality without trying to clean it up.
What to say to someone falling with terrible news.
At 39 minutes: "I will keep pace with your hope. I will hold your hope when you can't any longer. I won't turn away from the difficulty you're facing — to hold possibility but not be blind to reality."
39:45 Optimism - the hope that there are still beautiful things ahead for the person. Hold on to a sense of self-continuity. (Vs blind optimism or toxic positivity that "You will be ok no matter what," which leads to not listening to your doctor, or leads to avoiding negative words that might create reality.)
"Remain porous" - Charles Taylor (open to God, open to despair, open to reality.) More beautiful will come your way, and you'll spare yourself the delusion of having control over it.
Modern "self" seals itself off from reality, trying to make meaning out of everything. Every dark chapter needs to be improved, to be a self-improvement project.
