How to Comfort Someone Who’s Crying/sad

How to Comfort Someone Who’s Sad/Crying

Have you ever had someone come to you crying?

Maybe your girlfriend had a brutal day at work and fell apart when she came through the door.

Or your mom lost it while reminiscing about your deceased dad.

Or your usually stoic buddy broke down about his girlfriend dumping him.


Interacting with someone who’s sad and hurting can be awkward; you want to be there for them, show your empathy, and strengthen your relationship, but it’s hard to know how to act and what to say. A lot of us end up sitting there uncomfortably, offering some awkward back pats, while saying, “There, there, it’s okay.”

How to Comfort Someone Who’s Sad/Crying

“Witness” their feelings. One of the most difficult things about trying to comfort someone who’s hurting is feeling like you don’t know what to say. Fortunately, most of the time people aren’t actually looking for you to offer specific advice or pearls of wisdom; the most comforting thing in the world isn’t an inspiring platitude, but feeling like someone else gets what you’re going through, and that you’re not alone in the world. The thing people want most when they’re hurting is for you to act as a sounding board and to show understanding and empathy. Gottman calls this “witnessing” your loved one’s distress.


So to start off comforting someone, simply describe what you’re seeing/sensing. Say something like, “I know you’re having such a hard time with this,” or “I’m sorry you’re hurting so much.”

Affirm that their feelings make sense. You want to not only acknowledge that you hear the person’s feelings, but that they make sense to you. It’s lonely to feel like you’re coming at something from out of left field.


So you might say to your friend who’s going through a bad break-up: “Of course you’re devastated. I honestly was depressed for months after Anna and I ended things.”

Keep in mind that while sharing your similar experiences shows empathy, you want to be careful not to pivot the focus of the conversation onto you. Don’t try to one-up the person by sharing a story of how you’ve had it worse, and don’t go on and on about your own experience. Instead, briefly share how you’ve been through something similar, and then return the focus to the other person by asking them questions and eliciting more details (see the next point). Even if you haven’t experienced the same thing, you can still say, “That’s never happened to me, but I can really get why you’re feeling that way.”

If the person’s feelings don’t make sense to you, that makes the next step all the more important.

Show the person you understand their feelings, and facilitate the deepening of his or her own understanding of them. Sometimes people do want advice or a proposed solution to their problem, but even then, they usually first simply want to vent their feelings; as has often been observed, this is especially true of women. So hold off on going into problem-solving mode at first, and just listen. See your job not as talking, but as getting the other person to talk, so that they can sort through their feelings themselves; they may not even be able to articulate why they’re feeling down, unless you draw it out of them.

In getting your friend/partner/relative to open up, you demonstrate your genuine support and interest, enhance your understanding of their suffering, and let them know that you know why they’re sad.

“To understand what is understood and how it is understood means not only that you understand but that the listener understands that you do.”

To facilitate this drawing out process, I recommends using “exploratory statements and open-ended questions” like:

Tell me what happened.
Tell me everything that’s bothering/worrying you.
Tell me all of your concerns.
Tell me everything that’s led up to this.
Help me understand more about what you’re feeling.
What set off these feelings?
What’s the thing that’s worrying you the most?
What’s the worst that could happen? (If you feel like someone is catastrophizing — believing something is much worse than it is.

Important Point : Don’t minimize their pain or try to cheer them up. When faced with tears, it’s natural to want to try to snap the person out of it with smiles and jokes, or by insisting that whatever they’re upset about is “no big deal.” But someone who’s upset wants to take you on a tour of their melancholic landscape, pointing out the blue-tinged landmarks they’re seeing; it doesn’t help to say, “Nope, there’s nothing out there!” or “Look, there’s a dog riding a unicycle!” Something may not feel like a big deal to you, but does feel like a big deal to them. Don’t trivialize their experience, but walk through it with them.

But what if someone’s reason for feeling sad really is no big deal? If you don’t think their deprecating feelings about an event, or themselves, are justified, ask, “Can you think of any evidence that’s contrary to the conclusion you’ve reached?” If they can’t, ask if you can suggest your own and share an alternative way of seeing things (it’s nice to ask permission here, because offering a contrarian view, unsolicited, tends to come off as critical and antagonistic).

If someone’s feelings are habitually irrational and grossly disproportionate to their cause, or they’re constant complainers who get upset about everything, that’s probably someone you simply want to minimize contact with if possible.

Offer physical affection if appropriate. Sometimes people don’t want to talk, and don’t want you to talk either — they just want to be held in silence. But one of the things I think guys struggle with when trying to comfort someone is knowing how much physical affection to offer. The gestures you make should generally match whatever you give the person on a normal basis. If you’ve never hugged the person you’re comforting, then don’t go beyond putting a hand on their shoulder, or an arm around it. If they’re someone you hug regularly, then give them an embrace. If you’re intimate partners, offer a snuggle.

Just be careful about the messages you send; if a girl is crying because you’re breaking up with her, or she just confessed feelings that aren’t requited, physical affection could send a mixed message. Also, if you make your affection towards your significant other too sensual, rather than comforting, they could be offended that you’re trying to make a play for sex, when they’re trying to work through a tough issue.

Suggest action steps. As mentioned above, there are times when people just want to be heard and comforted, and don’t want a solution to their feelings of sadness (often there is no solution; you can’t bring your dead dad back — grief is just grief). In such cases, after going through the above steps, the person typically feels better for having shared the burden on their heart, and the sadness runs its course. Ask if there’s anything else they want to tell you. If it’s nighttime, when these feelings tend to come out, suggest they go to bed; everyone feels better in the morning.

Other times, the upset person still feels unresolved, and wants advice on what to do. First, ask them if they have any ideas as to steps they could take to improve the situation — solutions are more likely to be adopted if the person comes up with them on their own. If they’ve got big, macro ideas, help break those down into action steps. If they’re at a loss as to how to proceed, offer your suggestions.

With someone who’s sad not because of an isolated event, but because they suffer from depression, pivot as quickly as possible to talking about an action step, or just inviting them to do something else besides talking — e.g., take a walk or go for a drive together. Excess rumination is not only ineffective in alleviating depressed feelings, it can actually make them worse.