How to Support Someone Who is Struggling

There’s no shortage of pain, tragedy and loss in the world. And if you’re anything like me, you don’t always know how to be helpful when a loved one is going through the worst of it.

Over the past few years, I’ve been trying to get better at that.

I’ve read a couple dozen therapy textbooks, I’ve done four hundred or so hours of client-centered counselling, and I’ve been in a handful of other official and unofficial helping roles. By no means am I an expert, but I sure know more than I used to.

For my first blog post, I wanted to write something that past-me might have found helpful when he started stumbling through it all. In time, there’s so much more that I want to say on the art of supporting others. But for now...

Here are four fundamentals for helping someone who’s having a rough time:

1 - Simply listen. It helps far more than most of us expect.

When a catastrophe happens, it can change the whole landscape of one’s world. The tectonic plates shift, things break, and everything comes to look bewilderingly different to how it did before.

In the aftermath, we may have no good choice other than to stop, watch the buildings fall, and slowly map out this strange new world we’re in. Perhaps only then we can move forward.

Unfortunately, processing such big changes purely in one’s own head is… hard. Thoughts are ephemeral and it’s easy to think in circles, to get stuck, to have blind spots, to ruminate.

This is where listening comes in. A good listener can be of much help with that working through process. Patiently, the listener can keep track of where a conversation is getting stuck, gently bring up the things that are being avoided or missed, help bring attention towards what is most important, and bring a genuine sense of connection that makes all the bad stuff a little easier to bear.

As simple as it seems, having someone there to just listen may be exactly what the person in front of you needs.

2 - Rather than focusing on the bright side, sit with the other person’s real feelings.

This next point comes straight from Brené Brown. I’ve been shown the same video of her so many times in different training courses that I’m starting to get Stockholm syndrome. All the same, what it says is important.

Often when we’re trying to support another person, we try to get them to focus on the bright side. Standing separately from the other’s experience, we attempt to offer them silver linings.

“You may have failed this class… but at least your other grades are good.”

“Your partner left you… but at least you’re free to find someone who’ll treat you better.”

“You may have a disease with no cure… but at least there are lots of scientists working to find new treatments.”

People use these silver linings with the intention to help the other person view their situation in a more positive light. Unfortunately, in most cases, this does not end up bringing them any relief.

When you’re going through a tough time, talking to someone who only focuses on the nicer aspects of your bad situation most often just feels disorienting. This happens because, at some level, you’re being told that your problems are not as bad as you think they are. Instead of feeling reassured, you feel like your grip on reality is being questioned. The good intentions get lost in translation.

Luckily, there’s an alternative that really does let us bring some relief to others’ suffering: Empathy.

Rather than try to look on the bright side, it’s helpful to sit with the other person in their pain. To attempt to really understand, at an emotional level, the whole landscape of what they’re going through. When we manage to do this, it brings a genuine sense of connection, and a feeling that one doesn’t have to brave all those storms alone.

Furthermore, if the other person has been misunderstood or ignored for long enough, it can bring a massive sense of relief to finally be seen. Empathy is the polar opposite of gaslighting - it makes people feel sane.

My optimistic brain finds it way too easy to focus on the bright side. But when I manage to use empathy instead, allowing myself to truly see the person in front of me, it tends to work a whole lot better.

3 - Unless advice is explicitly wanted, give advice less often than you’re tempted to.

Watching our loved-ones suffer can at times be very frustrating. You see that they’re in a bad situation, you know a simple solution, and you just wish they’d follow your advice to fix it already!

For better or worse, you’re not alone when your advice goes unheeded. One of the first things that any therapist learns is that clients don’t follow advice remotely as often as hoped. It’s a normal part of human nature to not act based on someone else’s judgement.

The only people who I’ve heard of who manage to get their advice (willingly) followed most of the time are the super charismatic, the cult leaders, and certain religious leaders. Highly devoted followers may be prepared to accept their leader’s advice without the usual skepticism. But unless you’re literally-a-prophet-or-something, this kind of power is likely to cause a lot of harm. So perhaps it’s a good thing that those we wish to help don’t follow every word of us People Who Know Better.

The truth is, good advice is rarely self-apparent. Even a seemingly simple suggestion that you want to give is, in all likelihood, based on a thousand different experiences from your life, many of which you don’t even remember anymore. A person who hears your advice will, in all likelihood, disagree with it based on a thousand different experiences from their life.

Meanwhile, even if the one receiving the advice has had less experience in life overall, the experience that they do have is extremely relevant. They know what solutions have and haven’t worked for them in the past. They’ve experienced the hidden barriers that are hard to see from the outside. They know their own values. And they’ve felt first-hand the mental health complications that may make every step more difficult in real, deeply physiological ways.

Finally, even if the advice we have to give really is excellent, there is only so far we can usefully go in trying to advocate for it. It’s common for communication between loved-ones to get stuck in a cycle of frequent advice-giving, followed by frustration on both sides both when the advice isn’t taken up. Those cycles of frustration sadly make the situation worse if we fall into them, no matter how good the underlying advice is.

Putting all this together, it makes sense to approach any advice that we want to give - especially unsolicited advice - with a sense of humility.

4 - Support the positive initiative that the other person takes, even if it is different to what you would do.

Sometimes, it seems as if a loved one is so stuck, so trapped in their ways, or so depressed that they’ve stopped having any sense of initiative whatsoever. But that initiative - that spark of life and agency and strength - is always there. Even if it’s small and fragile and hidden away.

I’ve had a lot of conversations with people who are beaten down in life and all of them have some source of strength.

Perhaps your loved one doesn’t leave their bed all day, has an impressive stack of physical and mental illnesses, and barely ever talks to anyone. But if you pay close attention, you can still see those sparks.

Perhaps you’ll see it in how they love their family; how they have great empathy for others who are struggling; how they reach out for help in their online communities; how they’re passionate about rock music; how once in a blue moon they still manage to gather up all the bricks tied to their feet and find the energy to leave the house despite it all.

I’ve had the privilege of seeing some people pull their lives back from the brink. And without fail the little things that they do of their own will - those little sparks - are an important part of the process.

Inch by inch, change starts to occur. Positive feedback loops begin to happen that make moving forward easier and more satisfying, doors start to open that didn’t even seem to exist before, and somewhere along the line, those sparks inside grow into a full on fire.

We can’t control what our loved ones value or where they put their initiative. But no matter how small some of their steps may seem, we can sure as hell be encouraging of their attempts to flourish.

Conclusion

There are plenty of complicated ideas out there that helping professionals use to aid others. All the same, some of the most central skills that are relied on are so simple that pretty much anyone can apply them.

It would be beautiful for the world, I think, if these skills became more common knowledge.