There are moments in life when someone feels low, upset, heavy, or flooded by emotion. Not because they’re weak. Not because they’re broken. But because they’re human.
Yet when we’re faced with someone in emotional pain, something uncomfortable often happens. We rush in with solutions. We try to fix. We distract. We minimise. We offer advice before we offer presence.
Most of us know that emotions are normal. We say things like “feel your feelings” or “it’s healthy to express emotion”. But when those feelings show up in real time — in another adult — many people don’t know what to do with them.
A child crying is easier. We scoop them up. We soothe. We offer comfort without judgement.
An adult crying, however, can make people uneasy. There’s an unspoken expectation to pull yourself together, to be rational, to cope.
If someone hurts themselves physically, we respond instinctively with care, patience, and compassion. We don’t demand they explain the pain or get over it quickly. We accept that healing takes time.
Emotional pain doesn’t receive the same grace.
For many of us, the blueprint we were shown growing up sounded more like:
“Stop crying.”
“Buck up.”
“Don’t be so sensitive.”
Or we were distracted and cheered up instead of being met where we were. The message was subtle but clear: strong emotions are inconvenient.
So as adults, when we’re confronted with sadness, grief, rage, or despair — either in ourselves or others — we haven’t been taught how to sit with it. We haven’t been shown how to witness pain without trying to control it.
And yet, when someone is in the depths of their pain, solutions are rarely what they need first.
What they need is to be seen.
To be met with compassion, care, and presence.
To feel that their experience makes sense — even if it’s uncomfortable.
Allowing strong emotions to flow doesn’t mean encouraging suffering. It means recognising that emotion moves through us when it’s allowed, but gets stuck when it’s suppressed or hurried away.
There is a place for solutions. There is a time for encouragement, perspective, and forward movement. And yes, there are moments when someone becomes stuck in a loop of misery, where a firmer conversation or a nudge towards responsibility and self-support is needed.
But that moment comes after someone has been witnessed — not before.
Before problem-solving, there must be permission.
Before fixing, there must be feeling.
Before change, there must be acknowledgement.
It really is OK to not feel OK.
Not as a permanent state.
Not as an identity.
But as a natural, human response to life.
Sometimes the most healing thing we can offer isn’t advice, reassurance, or positivity — but the simple act of staying present with someone while they find their own way back to steadier ground.
