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Someone tells you they are not doing well. Maybe work has become too much, there is conflict in the family, or everything simply feels a little overwhelming at the moment. While the person is still talking, your own mind is already searching for a solution. Maybe they should speak to their manager, work fewer overtime hours, take a few days off or finally have the conversation they have been avoiding for weeks.
Usually, the intention is good. When someone we care about is struggling, we want to help. Simply listening to a problem can feel surprisingly passive. So we start looking for a solution, sometimes before we have really understood what is troubling the other person. We offer what seems like sensible advice and then wonder why it brings so little relief. Perhaps the response is a brief “Yeah, maybe.” Perhaps they start explaining why the suggestion would not work. Or the conversation ends sooner than expected.
Not necessarily because the advice was bad. Maybe advice simply was not what they needed yet.
This idea is particularly relevant around World Mental Health Day on the tenth of October. The 2026 theme, “Lived experiences heard: real voices, real change”, focuses on the perspectives of people with lived experience of mental-health difficulties. Behind it is an idea that reaches far beyond healthcare systems: good support does not necessarily begin with knowing what is best for another person. It begins with understanding what that person is experiencing and what they actually need.
Why we are so quick to offer solutions
Wanting to solve problems is understandable. If a friend tells you they are working late every evening and barely sleeping, the answer may seem obvious from the outside: work less, set boundaries, switch the phone off. If someone has been talking about the same conflict for weeks, at some point you may find yourself thinking: Then you just need to talk to them.
Problems often look simpler from the outside than they feel from within. We see one obvious course of action, while the other person may be thinking about consequences, relationships, fears and previous experiences that we know very little about. A suggestion can therefore be completely sensible and still miss what the person actually needs in that moment.
Research on social support has long distinguished between different forms of help. Sometimes people need information or a concrete suggestion. In other situations, emotional support matters more: understanding, closeness or the feeling of not being alone with an experience. Which type is useful depends on the situation. If someone does not know how to phrase a difficult email, a practical suggestion may immediately help. If that same person has just been told that an important relationship is over, the main problem is probably not that they have not yet found the right plan.
Sometimes, then, we give advice not only because the other person needs it. A solution can also feel more comfortable for us. Once there is a next step, the situation feels manageable again. Really listening may require something more difficult: tolerating, for a moment, that we cannot fix another person’s problem.
What it means to feel understood
Relationship research uses a helpful concept for this: perceived responsiveness. It refers to the experience of another person genuinely responding to us. Do I feel understood? Is my experience being taken seriously? Do I feel that the other person actually cares about how I am doing?
Listening plays an important part in this, but listening is more than simply staying quiet. Someone who is only waiting for their own turn to speak may hear every word without making the other person feel understood. What helps more is staying curious for a little longer. What exactly makes this situation difficult for them? What does it mean to them? Which part of it is affecting them most?
Imagine a colleague tells you they completely lost their train of thought during a presentation and have felt embarrassed ever since. A quick response might be: “Don’t worry about it, that happens to everyone.” The sentence is meant kindly. At the same time, it contains a subtle correction: perhaps you should not be feeling this bad about it.
A different response might be: “That sounds like it really affected you. What was the hardest part about it?” Perhaps it turns out that the mistake itself is not the main issue. Maybe the colleague is worried that a new manager now thinks they are incompetent. Only then does it become clear what the conversation is really about.
Research on responsiveness in relationships suggests that this feeling of being understood matters. Support does not become helpful simply because someone does something. It also matters how well the response fits what the other person is actually experiencing.
Why good advice can still be the wrong advice
Advice is not bad in itself. Sometimes it is exactly what someone wants. If a person says, “I have this conversation tomorrow and I have no idea how to start it,” they may genuinely want to think through possible approaches together.
Different situations, however, do not automatically call for the same kind of support. Research on social emotion regulation suggests that people may experience different forms of support as helpful depending on whether they are dealing with emotions such as anxiety or sadness. A problem-solving approach can fit very well in one situation and miss the point entirely in another.
This also helps explain why positive reframing can sometimes fall flat. If someone has been hurt, saying, “Maybe they didn’t mean it that way,” may sound reassuring. But it can also leave the person having to explain why it still hurt. In a recent study on experiences of racial discrimination, validating responses were perceived as more helpful than attempts to positively reframe the experience. The study looked at a very specific context and should not simply be generalised to every difficult conversation. It does, however, illustrate why “I understand why that affected you” can feel very different from “Maybe you shouldn’t see it so negatively.”
Validation does not mean agreeing with everything. If a friend receives critical feedback and says, “My boss thinks I’m completely useless,” you do not have to confirm that conclusion. You might instead say, “I can understand why that feedback made you feel insecure, especially because the job matters so much to you.” You are not agreeing that the boss thinks they are incompetent. You are recognising that their emotional reaction makes sense in the context.
Questions can therefore open a conversation more effectively than another suggestion. “What is bothering you most about it?” leaves room for the conversation to develop. “Have you tried…?” already assumes that the next step should be solving the problem. If the person later says, “Okay, I think I understand what is really bothering me now. What would you do in my position?”, the timing is different. Advice now grows out of listening instead of replacing it.
The simplest question can change a lot
We do not need to find the perfect psychological response in difficult conversations. In fact, trying too hard to sound clever, reassuring or helpful can shift our attention back towards our own response instead of the person sitting in front of us.
Often, it is enough not to assume automatically what kind of support is needed. Does the person want to talk things through first? Hear another perspective? Look for a solution together? Or do they need practical help?
That distinction alone can change the conversation. Support becomes something both people work out together rather than something one person gives and the other has to accept. And the listener no longer has to guess which response is the right one.
Perhaps that is also the difference between listening and simply waiting for an opportunity to say something useful. Good listening is not passive. It means putting your own solution aside for a moment and being interested enough in the other person’s experience to first understand what the problem actually is.
A short exercise: Ask first, solve later
Over the next few days, when someone tells you about something they are struggling with, notice your own first impulse. How quickly does a solution appear? Do you want to make the situation seem less serious, find something positive in it or tell them about a similar experience of your own?
You do not need to suppress that impulse. Just wait for a moment before following it and ask instead:
“Do you want to just talk about it for a while, or would you like us to think together about what you could do?”
If the person wants to talk first, stay with their experience for a few minutes. Ask questions when something is unclear and occasionally put into your own words what you think you have understood. Not to turn an ordinary conversation into a therapy session, but simply to make sure that you are hearing the same problem the other person is trying to describe.
If they want advice afterwards, you can still give it — probably from a better position. By then, you do not only know what the problem looks like from the outside. You also understand what makes it difficult for the person who is actually living through it.
Sources and further reading
World Health Organization (2026). World Mental Health Day 2026 – Lived experiences heard: real voices, real change.
Arican-Dinc, B. & Gable, S. L. (2023). Responsiveness in romantic partners’ interactions. Current Opinion in Psychology, 53, 101652. DOI: 10.1016/j.copsyc.2023.101652.
Cutrona, C. E. & Russell, D. W. (2017). Autonomy promotion, responsiveness, and emotion regulation promote effective social support in times of stress. Current Opinion in Psychology, 13, 126–130. DOI: 10.1016/j.copsyc.2016.07.002.
Shu, J., Bolger, N. & Ochsner, K. N. (2021). Social emotion regulation strategies are differentially helpful for anxiety and sadness. Emotion, 21(6), 1144–1159. DOI: 10.1037/emo0000921.
Caceros, E. S., Campos-Ordóñez, P., Ayekun, A., Edalatkhah, M. & Bergsieker, H. B. (2026). Responsive social support to disclosures of racial discrimination: Expectations and implications for well-being. Cultural Diversity & Ethnic Minority Psychology, 32(3), 606–627. DOI: 10.1037/cdp0000762.
