How Should You Respond When Asked A Difficult Question?

At some point or another, we have all fielded or launched them – difficult questions that leave the respondent feeling befuddled, angry, anxious, amused or speechless.

Queries like: why do you think your marriage failed, or how does it feel to be a widow, or don’t you think you should watch your expenses at a time like this, or shouldn’t you be wearing a mask?

If the environment is your workplace and it’s your boss asking, then you have no choice but to offer some kind of answer. While politely declining or avoiding a response are available options when dealing with co-workers, friends, or the nosy woman across the hall, experts agree that it’s best not to dodge a difficult question. Offer some sort of reply that satisfies the questioner.

Clarifying the question before formulating an answer is one of my go-to strategies for confusing questions. My husband and I don’t always use the same language, so this saves me from going off on the wrong tangent.  When I’m dealing with my 87-year-old mother, I take my time to respond, mostly because stalling helps me gather my patience.  She has a tendency to ask the same questions over and over.

When probed about something a bit personal, a friend of mine is famous for muttering, “What an interesting question!” or “You pose a really good question.”

Her words are part deferral and part buying time. She almost always answers the part of the question she is comfortable responding to, and this I deeply admire. Just because someone launches a query, doesn’t mean their question requires your attention. 

I’ve adopted this technique of partially answering, buying time or diverting a reply with another question, but these strategies have come to me late in life. I wish that among all the things my mom taught me, this lesson on dealing with difficult questions came with the birds-and-bees talk, not when I’ve settled into middle age.

Here’s an example of an uncomfortable situation from my youth.

On one of the nights I’d been allowed to go on a teen sleepover, my friend and I wearied of the erratic darts and squiggles on the Ouija board and climbed into our sleeping bags.

She asked, “You’re adopted, right?”

Through my clenched jaw and prickly braces, two clipped words slipped out, “Uh… yeah,”

and then like a waning boxer I waited for the sucker punch I knew would follow.

“What happened to your REAL parents?”

I can still feel the uncomfortable heat in my sleeping bag which drenched me in sweat.  In response, I probably muttered something like, I dunno, but inwardly I desperately wished that this question hadn’t been posed.  The shame of not knowing anything about my birth parents was like a festering sliver until I found both of them in 2011 and 2013.

When you know a question is going to keep coming your way, you perfect a response.  That measly phrase offered as a reluctant teen – I dunno – morphed into other responses as I matured. For a while, I’d simply say, “It was a closed adoption.  I know next to nothing.”

Now, I’m fast to dish this out: “Do you have a few moments?  Do you want the short or long version?  I recently completed my adoption search and I’m in reunion…” 

So, why have I grown comfortable discussing my adoption? Because it allows me to talk about my memoir, my adoption blog, and other writing I’m working on. The knowledge I have gained as I researched my adoption fills me with ease, and it erased the shame of all those years of not knowing. If one possesses the knowledge, then a question isn’t difficult to answer.

Regarding the handling of other difficult questions, I still like my friend’s approach best.

“What an interesting question,” buys you time to defer, decline, evade, and pick which part of a full response you wish to share at that particular moment.  Try it out. See how others respond to this strategy.

Or share your favorite strategy to field the difficult questions that are thrown your way!  I’d love to hear from you. 

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