PART 1: WHAT HELPS, WHAT HURTS

Two-Part Series: How We Show Up for Each Other in Times of Change

When life shifts — gently or all at once — we don’t always respond the way we think we will.

Sometimes we pull inward. Sometimes we reach out.

Sometimes we freeze for a while trying to understand what just happened.

Change can surprise us like that.

But what seems more universal is what comes after — the disorientation, the drifting, the slow search for something steady inside ourselves. That quiet longing to find the place where we can breathe again…a place where we can trust our own responses. And in those unsteady seasons, the way people show up can make all the difference.

• Sometimes it helps.

• Sometimes it confuses us even more.

• And sometimes it just… hurts in ways no one intended.

Most people are trying. But the trying can take a few familiar shapes:

1. The Fixers

These are the people who hear one sentence and immediately start creating a plan. They offer solutions before we’ve finished breathing.

• Fixers are already drafting a recovery roadmap while we’re still staring at the wall.

They care — truly — but their urgency can land like pressure instead of comfort.

2. The Cheerleaders

“Stay positive!” “You’ll get through this!” “It’ll all work out!”

• Encouragement has its place, but not always in the first moments of disorientation.

Sometimes reassurance arrives before our feelings do.

3. The Storytellers

You share something vulnerable, and suddenly you’re hearing about someone else’s crisis, success, mishap, or spiritual awakening.

• One minute you’re crying, the next you’re learning about your friend’s cousin’s cat’s surgery.

Their stories are a way of relating, but they can pull the focus away from what we’re actually feeling.

4. The Disappearing Acts

Some people vanish — not because they don’t care, but because big emotion scares them. They retreat, hoping the situation will feel safer later.

• Sensitive topic? Poof. Smoke bomb. Gone.

It stings, even if it’s not meant to.

The Tender Truth Behind Unhelpful Help

One of the most painful responses is the rush—the suggestion we should “move on,” “just let go,” or be finished before our heart is ready.

These phrases reduce grief to a task.

• They boil our complexity down to impatience or stubbornness.

• They treat an entire chapter of our life like paperwork someone wants off their desk.

• They make our internal process invisible.

• They assume healing is about speed instead of understanding.

And many people struggle with our blank spaces.

When we’re stunned, quiet, or staring at the wall, their first instinct is often to fix our pain — not because they don’t care, but because our silence makes them anxious.

• When we’re quiet, they feel helpless.

• When we’re hurting, they feel pressure to make it better.

• And none of us handle anxiety well — so they rush, they nudge, they encourage us to “get over it” so they can feel less afraid.

• It’s rarely about us being too slow. It’s often about them wanting us to return to ourselves so they can stop imagining the worst.

• Letting go is not a switch. It’s a human process — slow, uneven, and deeply personal.

What Actually Helps

For all the ways support can miss the mark, what truly helps us is often so simple it’s almost quiet. We don’t need someone to fix our pain. Or hurry us. Or make sense of what we haven’t made sense of yet.

Most of us are looking for something softer — something that doesn’t crowd our experience, but makes a little more room inside it.

Here are a few of the things that tend to help, in any season of uncertainty:

1. Someone who listens without rearranging our feelings

• Not shaping them.

• Not correcting them. Not rushing them toward a more comfortable story.

• Just… listening.

Letting our words come out crooked and unformed until they find their own shape.

2. Someone who can sit with our silence

• Silence is not a problem. It’s often where truth gathers itself.

• Someone who can stay present — without filling the air or panicking — gives us space to find our own footing again.

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3. Someone who doesn’t fear our tears

• Tears make many people uncomfortable, but the ones who don’t flinch…who don’t need us to wipe them away quickly…who don’t apologize for our emotions before we do…

Those people offer a rare steadiness.

4. Someone who says, “I’m here,” without adding a single instruction

• No fixing.

• No nudging.

• No pushing us toward “better.”

• Just a simple presence.

• A hand on the back.

A voice saying, “You don’t have to move faster than you can.”

5. Someone who says, “I’ve got you.”

• There’s something different about these words. “I’m here” tells us we’re not alone.

• But “I’ve got you” tells us we’re being held — consciously, gently, without being squeezed or pushed toward anything.

• It’s steadiness without pressure.

• Presence without instruction.

A kind of emotional shelter where we can stop bracing, even for a moment.

6. Someone who trusts our process, even when it doesn’t look tidy

• The people who support us best aren’t the ones who know the answers —they’re the ones who don’t panic when we don’t.

• They trust we’ll find our way, even if it’s not the straightest path.

And their steadiness gives us permission to trust ourselves, too.

To Be Continued…

Next week, I want to explore the other side of this —how we learn to show up for others, especially when we’re tired, uncertain, or holding our own emotions together.

Because being supported is one thing. Learning how to support — gently, honestly, imperfectly — is another kind of courage entirely.

If this reflection spoke to you, you can find more here Past Reflections.