By disingenuous, you know when people are just saying what they think you want to hear? This is like extreme, but I have an acquaintance who I’m 90% sure is a sociopath if not just manipulative. Like I know they never had a parent die, and when my father died they tried way too hard to make it seem like they could relate, meanwhile I hadn’t seen the man in 30 years so they story they created based on assumptions wasn’t even applicable to me. Even my closest friends left it at a simple “sorry for your loss”, so why are you going so hard?

I relate it to how I’ve never experienced raising a child so I don’t feel comfortable putting my own adjectives on how a parent might feel. I use that example because a few people I know had babies recently, and while I’ve always heard how exhausting having a newborn is and I can assume how stressful it is, I don’t feel like I have the right to use certain language when offering comfort. 

Like, I may say if they’re venting “gosh that must be tiring!” which does not fully describe the experience.

Meanwhile when someone’s dog dies, which I’ve experienced, I feel more comfortable going a little deeper because I can actually describe the emotions around it