There’s that uncomfortable moment when a friend experiences a loss. You want to say just the right thing; help them feel better for just a moment. But you’re at a loss for words.

Many people feel the loss of a job profoundly. While it’s not like loosing a loved one, the grief process can be similar, experts say.

A good friend of mine recently called to tell me her office would soon be going through serious layoffs. She was obviously worried she might end up on the chopping block, but didn’t anticipate the agony she’d face even if she wasn’t pink-slipped.

The Friday before the official layoff notices went out her office was enjoying a bit of gallows humor.

She sent me this email: The joke is not to answer the phone on Monday. Kind of like “The Ring.”

If you haven’t seen “The Ring,” it’s a great, creepy movie about a bunch of people who die because they answer a phone after watching this cursed, creepy video.

Anyway, once Monday came all the humor went out the window when my friend arrived at the company parking lot and people were walking out of the building holding cardboard boxes and crying.

She dreaded walking into the building and thought of reasons to head back to her car and home instead of facing the music. Thankfully, she wasn’t one of the workers on the layoff list, but some of the people she had grown close to in her department were. One particular young woman who had been with the company for two years had just heard she was being let go and she wasn’t taking it well.

My friend told me she just didn’t know what to say to her and found herself tearing up when she saw her colleague’s reaction.

She assured her things would work out and gave the woman her personal email address just in case she needed her for any reason.

My friend kept saying she wished she could have said more or done more.

Well, in reality, this isn’t a time to get into “do” mode. It’s a time to allow the laid off worker to be sad and grieve, says Thierry Guedj, workplace psychology expert and professor at Boston University.

“The person is in shock so you don’t want to get them in a space of ‘let’s do something about this now,’” he advises.

The best tact is to offer help down the line. You can say, Guedj suggests, “This is going to be a very hard time but I want you to know I’m going to be there for you. I’m going to open my Rolodex to you when you feel better and are ready to start looking for a job. I know a lot of people and I can serve as a reference to you. I have only good things to say about your work and your work ethic.”

He bases his advise on the many people he’s helped after they’ve been laid off. Those individuals have told him this kind of approach by coworkers helped them the most.

What was least helpful, he adds, was colleagues who decide to feed the flames of anger.

“People start taking sides and get mad at whoever the boss was that made the decision assuming they knew why someone was cut. They try to come up with some sort of explanation but end up having a mini fit with the person who’s been laid off, trying to help them by getting them angry about a boss, or gossiping about a management team. This can all be destructive,” he says.

Come on. Admit it. We’ve all done that. “The bastard! They’re screwing you.” This, it turns out, doesn’t help anyone.

And there’s sometimes the jerk in the office who has little empathy and tries to point out what the worker did wrong to get them on the layoff list.

Guedj strongly advises against this type of pseudo constructive criticism.

So, bottom line, give them a shoulder to cry on and don’t try to fix things, at least not right away.

“Sometimes it’s easier to be angry and take sides with the person than be with them in their sadness,” he points out. “Just accept being sad with the person and don’t feel you have to do something either destructive or productive.”