How to Help Someone Struggling with their Mental Health (Part 2)
Welcome back! In the first article, we focused on understanding our motivations for helping and recognizing our limits. In summary, we can’t help others effectively if ourselves—body and soul—are also unwell.
In this article we are going to look at some more practical points on listening, staying grounded, and reflecting emotion.
Learn to Listen
How do you know when someone is listening to you?
Usually, we can tell someone is listening to us based on how actively they are engaged in what we are saying. This is demonstrated by:
Appropriate eye contact – Maintaining the right amount of eye contact is crucial. Too little may indicate disinterest, while too much can be overwhelming or uncomfortable. Remember that cultural differences play a significant role in interpreting eye contact. If the person keeps avoiding your gaze, it might suggest you're using too much eye contact.
Nodding along to what is being said – Body language is a strong indicator of engagement. Nodding along shows that the person is following and understanding what you are saying. Observing your own non-verbal signals in a mirror can be a useful exercise to improve your communication skills.
Leaning into the conversation – I mean this both physically and verbally. Physically leaning in shows interest and attention. Verbally, this is demonstrated by asking thoughtful questions and making relevant comments, indicating active listening and curiosity.
“Ooo” and “Ahh” – Simple verbal cues can significantly show that someone is paying attention. These sounds validate the speaker, reinforcing their sense of being heard and supported.
Staying present is essential, especially in a world full of distractions. To ensure you are fully engaged:
Turn off your phone – This eliminates the temptation to check messages or notifications.
Find a quiet space – A quiet environment helps both parties focus on the conversation.
Reschedule if necessary – If you’re short on time or preoccupied, it’s better to have the conversation when you can be fully present.
By implementing these practical steps, you can ensure that your interactions are more meaningful and that the person you are communicating with feels genuinely heard and understood. This is especially important when we are supporting someone struggling with their mental health because parts of them might be on “high alert,” looking for signs that they are unsafe. Taking the initiative to create a safe and inviting space for our friends and family members to connect with us is crucial.
Staying Grounded
When helping people in distress, it’s necessary to be prepared for moments when something they say might trigger you. How will you respond?
To provide effective support, we need to manage our own distress and keep it within a tolerable range. This requires strong self-leadership or self-regulation skills. Regardless of external circumstances, we must be able to remain “calm, cool, and collected” internally. This is often referred to as grounding or staying grounded.
It's important to clarify that this is different from “bottling up” or ignoring your emotions. While suppressing our emotional responses may be necessary in a crisis, it is not healthy or beneficial for your body and soul over the long term. Staying grounded involves actively processing your emotional reactions in real-time to manage your response to the person you are helping.
For those interested in the details, this process involves fluidly moving between empathy and compassion. Both are crucial, and problems arise if we get stuck in either one. By understanding the difference between these two important states of being, and recognizing how each state feels in our body, we can learn to transition between them and offer the best of both worlds to the people we are trying to care for.
Compassion is being with someone in their suffering, saying, “I care about you,” “I want to help you,” and “I am here with you in your pain.” It focuses on the other person and is an “unblended” response, meaning your emotions are not entangled with theirs. In other words, you are grounded.
Empathy, on the other hand, is resonating with someone’s suffering, saying, “I’m feeling my own pain as you share yours.” We feel our own pain in response to their experiences. This is a “blended” response, meaning your emotions are intertwined with theirs.
Understanding the benefits and drawbacks of both empathy and compassion helps us use these natural responses to support our loved ones. Compassion allows us to stay calm, think clearly, problem-solve, and offer comfort. Empathy shows genuine understanding of another’s pain. However, if we only rely on compassion, the other person might not feel truly understood. Conversely, getting stuck in empathy can lead to burnout and overwhelm, making it hard to help effectively.
This is why knowing how to move between empathy and compassion is vital. It helps us stay grounded and able to support those we care about.
Sounds complicated, right? It is, but you don’t have to do it perfectly. Here are some things you can do to help:
Know your own emotions – Become an expert on your emotions by journaling, writing songs, drawing, or painting about them. Spend time with your emotions to understand your inner world.
Leverage your empathic responses – When you notice an emotional response to what someone is saying, use it as a chance to empathize. Your response might match what the other person is experiencing. Connect with your own emotion and ask, “I wonder if you are feeling...?” (more on this further down)
Positive self-talk – Engage in positive self-dialogue. Remind yourself that you have the skills to be present without being overwhelmed and that you don’t need to be their saviour. Keep a list of positive things in your journal or on your phone for easy access when needed.
Sensory activities – Use sensory activities to help stay grounded in the present moment.
Reflecting Emotion
Reflecting is an essential part of communication, especially when it comes to emotions in our close relationships. Reflecting emotion shows others that you understand their experience. This is different from saying, “I know what you’re feeling,” which is impossible and untrue. Reflecting emotion means offering a reasonable guess at what the other person might be feeling and inviting them to clarify.
To reflect emotion, follow these steps:
Actively listen to what the other person is saying.
Note any “feeling words” they use.
Pay attention to your own empathetic response.
Offer a guess at what they might be feeling.
Here are some ways to word a reflection:
“I guess you feel discouraged about all this.”
“You sound overwhelmed at the moment.”
“You seem unhappy about that.”
“It’s a relief for you to be able to talk about this, isn’t’ it?”
Give it a try! I have some example scenarios below for you to offer a suggestion at what that person might be feeling. There can be multiple “correct” answers, though some answers will be closer than others. If you can, try to phrase a response to each quote below as a reflection, rather than just naming the emotion. The answers are at the end of this article for you to check afterwards.
Scenario #1 – “I try and try, but I never seem to do things right. Every time I try to do what they want, it never works out. I just don’t know what to do.”
Scenario #2 – “I’d like to take something and beat it against his head—maybe that will finally get through to him.”
Scenario #3 – “It seems like she isn’t okay. It bothers me, and I really worry about her. I want to help, but I just can’t get through to her.”
Scenario #4 – “What can I do? I have no money, no skills, and no one to help me. I should do something, but I don’t know what.”
Scenario #5 – “I feel like everyone is against me. There is nowhere to turn—just nowhere. I feel so alone and left out. I’m sure no one would miss me if I just disappeared.”
Reflecting emotion serves as a form of validation for the other person's feelings. It communicates that their emotions are legitimate and worthy of attention. This validation can be incredibly comforting, especially during times of distress or uncertainty, such as a mental health crisis. It helps the other person feel seen and heard, which is a fundamental human need. By acknowledging their feelings, you affirm their experience and provide them with essential emotional support.
Our team of professionals is here to support you as you support others. Consider reaching out to us for a free consultation to learn more about the mental health services we offer.
Answers for the Reflecting Emotions scenarios:
Scenario #1 – Frustrated
Scenario #2 – Angry
Scenario #3 – Worried
Scenario #4 – Overwhelmed
Scenario #5 – Depressed (and also a “red flag” for suicidality – more on this in the next blog post)
