Anyone NOT know how to console a person?

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I dont have any problem when they are close family or friends, most of the time I do more taking care of them than talking, just visiting or cooking or even holding them (not my favorite thing to do but I dont mind when someone I love needs it, it actually feels good then).
When they are just acquaintances or even family that I am not close to its completely different. First I feel like Im invading their privacy or something....it is very uncomfortable.

I'm not good at it. It's not that I don't feel bad. I just don't know what to say.

I'm okay with condolences but I can't offer reassurances. When someone is clearly in a horrible situation I can't make my mouth say "its okay, your gonna be fine" when in my head I'm thinking "OMG, this person is completely f***ed, this is so sad". I don't really understand how some NTs feel better when someone lies to them. Maybe its just my depressive mindset but false optimism just irks me when people give it to me, so I generally avoid it.

When I am in a group of people and they are offering their consolations and everyone is saying their sorries and such I get a little nauseas as I wait my turn to say how sorry I am for their loss. I usually repeat what the second or third person would say like an idotic parot.

I don't know how to console people. A few days into the New Year, my nephew Roger passed away from cancer. Everyone was of course upset. But I didn't know how to react to it. I was never close to Roger, and even though I attended the funeral and said the right things ("I'm sorry" and "My condolences"), I was confused. I didn't even cry when Roger died.

Apparently the truth and making people feel better are not positively correlated in this case.
No, I am not good at it and I don't try unless (for some odd reason) I'm given little choice.

Zelda, did you put a ' ' after your comment on her fb page? I'm guessing you were trying to be friendly, but most people would read that as you being happy that the person is dead or that she is sad. Maybe put a ' ' next time, as emoticons are supposed to show the emotion you are feeling.

I've gotten better at consolling people (by mainly just listening and making sympathetic noises and occasionally paraphrasing them) but there have been times when I really feel lost; it's hard to find a balance between irritatingly optimistic/trivialising and making them even more depressed...

I'm the opposite.

Idd, I do not know how to console a person.

That strikes me as not just a lack of understanding and compassion towards you, but a lack of self-understanding on her part. She somehow doesn't get that having feelings and physically consoling someone are two different things and that there's a process in getting from one to the other. There is a difference between feelings, and acting on those feelings. (It's also an overgeneralization... jumping from the area of consoling others to all feelings.)

Well, TBH, if I was the kind of person she is- which is very social- I guess I would be confused by me as well.

That's how I feel most of the time. Some people really do want optimism but I can't really give it because I'm just not an optimistic person.

When I'm on the receiving end of other people's optimism it can annoy me, especially if it seems unrealistic or insincere from my perspective (of course if I'm REALLY depressed everything will seem this way). In that case it DOES make me more depressed and I can't say something to someone else that would make me more depressed if I was in their shoes. Yet other people are often very different from me so I can't really know what they want or what would feel consoling to them. Some people want optimism, some want practical suggestions, and others just want someone to listen to them. I know what I would want but it's hard to know what other people want.

thats another thing i hate about myself i can not comfort people.

I didn't say anything about her being confused by you. I just said lack of compassion and understanding, and even that wasn't the point of what I wrote. I said "a lack of self-understanding on her part". Her understanding her own self. If she understood that her feelings are not the same as her actions, that there is a process in getting from one to the other, then she would understand that's true for others, and thus, wouldn't think lack of action equals lack of feeling.

Oh, I'm sorry. I misunderstood you! Yes, I totally agree. I suppose, in her mind, feeling and action are linked and happen in tandem with one another. Strange way to live though.