The 3 Worst Things You Can Say To A Friend Who Needs Help
And why your natural inclination is probably all wrong
I volunteered on a suicide hotline and I have to confess something. I did it for the wrong reasons.
I wanted to learn how to say the right things to friends and family when they were feeling bad. I wanted to be the person that people came to when they needed to talk.
The other reason was even worse. I wanted to save people. I could tell that the other twenty or so volunteers wanted the same thing. But, after eight weeks of training, we learned that you can’t save people, and if you try, you will almost certainly make that person feel worse.
This is why out of 50 people who started the training, only 23 volunteers were left at the end. I wasn’t the only one who was there for the wrong reasons.
People called the suicide hotline because they were in crisis, but not the dramatic, standing on a ledge crisis. Devastated by years of pain, the crisis was almost every day. Chronic illness, sexual abuse, traumatic childhoods, relationship breakdowns, relentless loss — these were reasons people called. If It only took a few shifts on the hotline to realize what an idiot I was for thinking I could fix such things.
The person who trained our class had a lot of hard work to do. Mostly, he spent his time smacking us upside the head for our preconceived ideas about “helping.”
The training was tough. I used to think I was pretty smart. I thought I could ace any class I put my mind to. Crisis work rudely awakened me.
In the class, we learned the rules. Every week we role-played. The teacher played the caller and a volunteer went into the ring with him. It usually took a couple of minutes for the volunteer to get knocked out. At best, our responses were ridiculous, and at worst, they were potentially dangerous.
The fact is that you can’t save people. You can’t fix people. All you can do — and it’s a lot — is you can make them feel heard. Because people who are in pain feel invisible. They get avoided. They get judged. They get shut down.
What passes for success on the hotline is when you are having a conversation with a caller and you hear her take a deep breath. It’s literally a breather, the sound of someone relaxing just a bit. It doesn’t get better than that.
Give up the idea that you can save someone, and you have a chance to help someone in pain.
The rules of the suicide hotline are rules you can take with you everywhere you go. They can help you be a better listener, a better friend, and a better parent, child, or sibling.
Rule #1 Don’t give advice
Giving advice tells someone that you know better. It tells someone that they don’t have any answers themselves. It makes that person feel more helpless than they did before you started talking to them.
You give advice because you want to fix the problem, to make it go away. You give advice because if you could just make the person's problem disappear, you would feel so much better.
And there’s more. Your advice isn’t a lightning bolt idea that no one has ever thought of. It’s not easy to solve lifelong, deeply embedded problems with a simple “fix.”
Imagine how you would feel if someone told you that you’d be able to lose weight by exercising more and eating less. Imagine if someone told you that you’d get along better with your mother if you could just let those snide comments of hers go. All great advice. Not helpful.
Rule #2 Don’t tell someone you understand how they feel
You had an abusive childhood. He had an abusive childhood. You lost a partner to cancer. She lost a partner to cancer. You get the idea. Those shared experiences make you think you’re an expert on the experience.
Yes, we want to be understood, but not like this. Your experience was years ago. Theirs is right now. Your entire life history is not the same as anyone else’s, and that’s what led to how they feel.
Telling someone you know how they feel means telling them your story. When someone comes to you with their pain, it’s not an invitation to tell your story. That’s your ego. It’s a way of diverting attention from someone else.
People do want you to really see them. They want to feel heard. There are ways to do this. Telling them that you understand is making it about you. It’s making it a contest. It’s also a lie.
Rule #3 Don’t try to cheer someone up
This is the opposite of listening. Trying to cheer someone up who is down is showing that you haven’t heard them. It is denying where they are at the moment.
Like giving advice, cheering someone up is about making you feel better. It’s uncomfortable to hear someone’s pain. But if you want to offer anything, you can endure listening to them.
Why it’s so hard to be helpful
Helping people isn’t about solving a problem. Once you can get past that idea, you have a chance.
Most of those “don’ts” on the list show something about where we go wrong when we talk to someone in crisis. They are about you. Your comfort. Your fears. Your pride. If you can get to the point where it’s not about you . . . at all, you might have a prayer of helping.
Second, thinking that you know something about another person’s suffering is arrogant. Stop thinking you know anything. You can try to understand by using active listening skills, by reflecting on what they know, but that’s another story.
Finally, people feel better when they feel heard. That’s all you really can do. And. . . it’s a lot.