Think about the last time you were really struggling. Now think about the people who showed up.
Some of them were probably kind; they cared, they meant well.
And yet, somehow, you walked away feeling a little more alone than before.
The disconnect between someone trying to help and someone actually helping is something most of us have felt (or caused) but rarely understood why.
It generally boils down to emotional intelligence. People who have it have learned that the following, very common ways of offering support rarely land how we intend them.
And the good news is, they are easy to avoid with awareness and a little practice.
1. Minimizing your pain or downgrading it compared to others’.
I have a particular someone in my life (who shall remain nameless) whose signature move appears to be downgrading suffering with the “At least it’s not as bad as…” or “It could be worse…” mantra.
What’s the problem, you might think? It could be worse. Susan up the road does have it much harder.
These sorts of phrases are so embedded in what we think support looks like that calling them out feels almost ungrateful.
But underneath the warmth, what they communicate is: “Your pain is not valid because someone else has it worse.”
But of course someone else has it worse. There will always be someone who has it worse. Does that mean no one’s pain is valid?
Of course not.
It leaves people feeling guilty for not being more grateful. It also completely ignores the fact that people experience and process emotions differently (“you shouldn’t let it bother you” is also great for that, by the way).
But people’s feelings are valid, even if you wouldn’t react the same way.
Emotionally supportive people understand the power in sitting with someone in their pain without trying to minimize it away.
A simple “That sounds really hard” is really all that’s required.
2. Projecting how they would feel or what they would do onto the other person.
Projection often masquerades as empathy so convincingly that it’s one of the harder habits to spot.
It’s assuming you know how someone should feel, based on how you would feel in their situation.
It’s saying, “You must be absolutely devastated” with total sincerity and total care, when you’re actually completely wide of the mark.
The person might not be devastated. They might be relieved, or numb, or feel something complicated they don’t yet have words for. All of those responses are valid.
Why does it matter, you might ask? Well, when someone doesn’t feel what they’ve been told they must be feeling, two things can happen.
One, they perform the expected emotion, which is exhausting and isolating. Or two, they feel pretty darn abnormal for not feeling it, which I’d say is even worse.
Projection doesn’t just extend to feelings, though. It can also take the form of telling them what they should do based on what you would do.
And that’s not to say sharing our experience isn’t valuable, but it assumes we have a clear enough view of their situation, relationships, inner resources and capacity to know what the right next step is.
We almost certainly do not.
An emotional supportive person instead tends to use the language of invitation instead. “I wonder if it might help to…” or simply “what do you think you want to do?”
These keep the person in the driver’s seat of their own life, which is exactly where they belong.
3. Relating it back to themselves.
Now, this one often gets misconstrued as story-topping, but more often, it comes from a different way of communicating and showing empathy.
For many people, particularly those who are autistic, sharing your own experience is a way of saying “you’re not alone, I’ve been there.”
I do it myself. And sometimes it comes across exactly as intended.
The trouble starts when the pivot to your own story is so complete that the person you’re supporting gets left behind.
And I’ve learned from experience that it often happens faster than you’d think.
Someone shares something painful. You say “I totally know how you feel — when I went through my thing last year…” and suddenly five minutes have passed, and you’re still talking.
The person who came to you hurting is now, somehow, supporting you.
If this is your natural way of showing empathy too, it’s not bad. But it’s worth remembering that most people want to feel heard, particularly when they’re sharing something hard.
Another thing worth knowing about is the concept of comparative suffering.
When you share your own hard story alongside someone else’s, you are (consciously or not) inviting a comparison. And comparisons in raw moments rarely validate. They measure.
A brief acknowledgment of shared experience is fine, beautiful even. But then return the focus. Personally, my go-to phrase is, “But back to you. Tell me more about it.”
4. Jumping straight into fix-it mode.
When someone we love is upset, our immediate instinct is to help them fix it. And that instinct comes from a good place.
The problem is that fix-it mode is often more about relieving our own discomfort with the other person’s pain than meeting them where they actually are.
When you jump to solutions, what the other person often hears is: “your feelings are a problem that needs resolving.” And that is a very different message from: “I see you, and what you’re feeling makes complete sense.”
One question can change everything: “Do you want help thinking this through, or do you just need to vent right now?”
And of course, honoring the answer helps too.
5. Offering advice without first checking whether they want it.
Think of unsolicited advice as fix-it mode’s quieter, more socially acceptable cousin.
It often shows up even after the emotional moment has passed. In the follow-up text, the coffee catch-up, the “I’ve been thinking, and you should really try…”
It feels generous to the person giving it. And it is. But it rarely feels that way to the person on the receiving end.
Because even the most gently offered unsolicited advice carries an implicit message. That is, “I can see a solution that you cannot.”
Then there’s the “have you tried XYZ?” phenomenon. The assumption that the person hasn’t already thought of, googled, or exhausted the most obvious options. It’s well-intentioned. But it can also feel a little patronizing.
People who offer the best emotional support learn to hold back until asked specifically for advice, or at least test the waters before giving it.
Instead of launching straight in, they might say something like, ” You’ve probably tried lots already, but I’ve been mulling over your problem, and if you want to discuss ideas, just say the word.”
That way, the offer of advice is available for if and when the person is actually ready and able to take it on board.
6. Making it about reassuring themselves.
This one is subtle enough that it often goes completely unnoticed — by both people in the conversation.
Here, it’s the helper who needs you to be okay, for their benefit, not yours. Without realizing it, their support carries an undercurrent of please tell me what I need to hear.
It shows up in phrases like, “but you’re going to be alright, aren’t you?” asked with just a little too much urgency. Or repeated check-ins that feel less like support and more like someone waiting for you to confirm you’ve turned a corner.
And what often happens is that people on the receiving end of this “support” often start performing okayness to protect the person who showed up to help them.
That kind of emotional labor is exhausting at the best of times. But it is particularly hard going when you’re the one who actually needs support.
7. Giving validation that isn’t actually honest.
Validation is definitely one of the most powerful tools in emotional support. But it does need to be real to be effective.
Most of us have that friend who will enthusiastically support every decision and agree with every interpretation of events because they love us and want us to feel good.
And in the moment, it does feel good.
The problem is that on some level, we often know when we’re being told what we want to hear. And if we don’t, we haven’t really been helped; we’ve just been placated.
Now, there is an important distinction that people who offer great emotional support have grasped, and that is the difference between validating feelings and validating the conclusions that are drawn from those feelings.
Validating someone’s feelings is pretty much always appropriate. Feelings are never wrong, even if you can’t relate to them. Feelings are just how you feel, and however you feel is ok.
But that doesn’t mean what you assume your feelings mean or how you interpret the situation that caused those feelings is accurate. Feelings are feelings, not facts — and truly supportive people know the difference.
You can hold both things at once. You can say, “Your feelings make complete sense,” and “Can I share an observation about the situation? You don’t have to take it on board.”
Feelings are still validated, but honesty is offered carefully, and with permission. That combination is where real emotional support lives.
8. Bringing in outside opinions.
“I mentioned it to cousin Sarah, and she thinks you should…”
Now, if you’re a massive open book like me, you probably wouldn’t mind hearing this. But apparently, not everyone likes having their problems discussed with cousin Sarah. Who knew.
Some people are very private, and as such, when they share something vulnerable with you, they are extending trust — specifically to you.
They did not choose to involve cousin Sarah. That choice was made for them, without consent.
For a lot of people, finding out your pain has been the subject of someone else’s conversation is a particular kind of sting that is hard to shake, and harder to forget.
Plus there is the should issue that we’ve already covered.
As a general rule of thumb, the most emotionally supportive approach is to keep it in the room, unless you definitely know they don’t mind you discussing it outside.
9. Checking in once and then disappearing.
When something first happens, people generally rally. Messages flood in. “I’m here — anything you need, don’t hesitate.” And then, gradually, life takes over for everyone else while the person in crisis is still very much in it.
That’s normal and understandable, but the silence that follows can feel like abandonment, even when it isn’t intended that way.
The pattern creates a painful experience: having to re-initiate conversations about your own pain, having to signal to people that you’re still struggling, managing the awkwardness of bringing something up that everyone else seems to have moved on from.
It’s exhausting. And it tends to make people retreat into silence rather than reach out, which is the opposite of what they need.
Continuing to offer emotional support doesn’t require heaps of time and effort. We all have lives and our own problems. But if you’re time poor, a simple “I’ve been thinking about you — just wanted you to know” is better than nothing and might mean a lot more than you realize.
10. Pushing for more detail than the person is ready to share.
“But what exactly did they say?” “And then what happened?”
As a naturally curious and detail-oriented person, I’ve definitely been guilty of using these phrases. But I’ve realized (a little slowly) that what I think is support, is sometimes as experienced as interrogation.
I’ve had to be honest with myself and admit that sometimes the need for detail is less about support and more about my own need to assess the situation — including, occasionally, an unconscious need to establish whose fault it is. It’s a thing, particularly if you have a strong sense of justice.
But people recount difficult experiences in different ways and at different paces. For some, revisiting a distressing event in detail means re-experiencing it with real intensity. For others, reconstructing a full emotional account when they’re already overwhelmed can be pretty destabilizing.
And for anyone carrying a difficult history, being pushed further than they’re ready to go isn’t just unhelpful — it can cause real harm.
11. Using spiritual or philosophical frameworks without consent.
“Everything happens for a reason.” “The universe is redirecting you.” “This was meant to be.”
These get reached for because they offer something people desperately want to give: a sense of order, a feeling that the chaos means something.
They are comforting to the person saying them.
Unfortunately, whether they comfort the person hearing them depends entirely on something the speaker often hasn’t stopped to consider — whether that person actually shares the worldview being offered.
Imposing a spiritual or philosophical framework on someone’s pain without knowing if they hold it is, at best, unhelpful.
At worst, it communicates that their suffering has a tidy cosmic explanation. Which, to someone who has experienced an ordeal the likes most of us could never imagine, can feel frankly offensive.
And “this happened for a reason” carries a subtle implication that the pain was somehow necessary. That is worth pausing on before the words leave your mouth.
This isn’t about dismissing the value these frameworks hold for people who find real meaning in them. It’s simply that they belong in conversations where they’ve been invited.
Final thoughts…
Most of us will have recognized ourselves somewhere in this list. We may not like to accept that, but it can be useful if we do.
Because the people who offer the best emotional support aren’t the ones who never get it wrong. They’re the ones who stay curious about what the person in front of them actually needs, rather than defaulting to what feels most natural to give.
That’s difficult to do, but in my opinion, it’s well worth doing if it means actually supporting the people you love.
