How to Help Your Friend Get Through a Difficult Time, Part 1

It’s hard to watch a friend struggle through a challenging time in his or her life. Sometimes it’s more than hard. It’s painful. 

We care about our friends. It’s normal to want to help our friend going through a difficult time and important to know exactly how best to help. In this three-part series, I share information that you can use to help your friend.

In Part One, I share 7 things you need to know about your friend’s problem, emotions, thoughts, plans, and actions.

In Part Two, I share helpful, practical information about the most helpful role for you to be in when helping your friend.

In the last part, Part Three, I give you some practical things to do to help your friend through the difficult challenge.

Part One: 7 Basic Things to Get about Your Friend Dealing with a Problem

1. Your friend’s problem is not yours to take on and try to fix as if it was your own. Doing so robs your friend of an important opportunity in making his way through his difficulty.

    Your friend’s problem is your friend’s problem.

2. Your friend’s emotional responses are what they are. She feels what she feels. Her feelings are neither right nor wrong. They simply are what she feels. She cannot change her emotions by willing them to be different. If she could, she would. Like weather fronts, they will pass. 

3. Your friend’s thoughts are also what they are. They might be about doing things that are either helpful or harmful, but thoughts themselves are neither right nor wrong. They just are. Like emotions, thoughts come and go.

4. Your friend’s emotions and thoughts are less important than your friend’s plans and actions. What your friend plans to do or not do matters. What your friend actually does or does not do matters above all else.

5. What your friend plans to do to address his problem guides what he actually does. Since your friend’s problem is his to solve, his plan to solve his problem is also his. Creating a plan is his work, not yours. But you can help him think through and form his plan.

6. Your friend’s actions are hers. Whatever she does, she will not fail. She will do what she does. And she will get feedback. She will experience the consequences of her actions. Those consequences will help her decide whether to keep doing what she’s doing or do something different.

7. Your friend will make his way through his problem, one way or another: constructively or destructively. And he will do so with or without you. You are not necessary for your friend to solve his problem. However, you might be able to help him act more constructively than destructively to himself and others.

If this post is helpful to you, it probably is to others as well. Please share it and help others help their friends too.

NEXT POST: My next post, the second part of this series, will be about the best role for you to play and practical things you can do to help your friend through a difficult challenge.