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How Do You Serve a Friend in Despair?
If you adopt this detached, dispassionate, and objective stance, it’s hard to see the most important parts of that person, her unique subjectivity—her
David Brooks • How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen
What psychotherapy realizes is that, in our agony, what we desire more than anything, more than we usually even understand, is companionship: for someone else to know that we are suffering and to feel a measure of our pain more or less as we experience it. We yearn to feel that another person appreciates the scale of our despair and the magnitude o
... See moreAlain de Botton • A Therapeutic Journey: Lessons from The School of Life
Talking with depressed people, offering them help and steadfast support, gently but firmly leading them to pursue and maintain treatment, and keeping in touch with them are all effective ways of reducing suicide risk. Depression lies, but you can be the one in somebody’s life who counters those lies with the truth.
theatlantic.com • Suicide Is Not an Act of Cowardice
As the saying goes, “You can’t read the label from inside the jar.” An empathetic witness, someone who isn’t trying to give you advice, but is altruistically sitting with you and listening, can give you the space to openly express your feelings.
Benjamin Hardy • Personality Isn't Permanent
Yes, he was depressed, but he was coping the way people in the growth mindset tend to cope—with determination.
Carol S. Dweck • Mindset: The New Psychology of Success
When others approach her and ask how they can help family and friends in situations similar to hers, she always answers with the same response: Listen to them, ask good questions, never judge, and never advise. These are the key principles to being an empathetic witness.