listening isn’t a cure-all

[Le temps perdu]

disclaimer: I'm not saying that listening itself has no value. I still encourage people to talk to someone they trust. these just my scattered thoughts

when it comes to suicidal thoughts, deep down, I feel like the problems I'm dealing with are rooted in something much deeper, and that there's no way to fix them. If I talked to someone about it, I feel like they would either not know what to say because it's such a heavy topic, or I'd end up hearing things like, "you need to keep going," or "you need to accept reality." And honestly, hearing things like that makes me uncomfortable.


So I usually don't go out of my way to reach out to people one-on-one just to vent. I also keep thinking that if society really wants to help people who are struggling, listening and telling them to "keep going" isn't enough. What matters more is addressing the underlying problems and preventing the same circumstances from happening again. If nothing about the environment changes, then whatever is triggering the problem will still be there. that's why, at least for me, I don't really feel like talking to someone would actually solve anything.


at the same time, I don't think I'd be a very good person to talk to, either. I know that when someone opens up, the wrong response can make them feel even worse, and that makes me worry: what if I end up making things worse for them?

I can think of a few different ways a conversation like that could go. I could just trying to empathize with them, but if that goes on for too long, the conversation might start to feel empty or repetitive. If I tried to give advice, they might feel like I was just throwing clichés at them, or that I wasn't taking their situation seriously enough. I don't have the money or the ability to actually solve other people's problems, either. So I can already imagine myself being a pretty unhelpful person to talk to. I also don't have much life experience, so I don't feel like I have much useful insight to offer. But if I tried to challenge the way they see things, I might just end up invalidating how they feel.

there's no perfect way to handle these situations. maybe some people are just naturally good at listening, but I'm not one of them…

sometimes I honestly feel like it's understandable that I don't reach out to people to talk. Listening isn't a cure-all, and opening up to someone is hard in itself, for both the person talking and the person listening.

 

[Pluto]

 

[spellbound]

My vision of things (which might be wrong, but it's what I've gathered over the years) is that, unless the person just wants to pour their heart out to whoever is willing to hear, in all other cases listening is indeed empty or repetitive. The only thing that manages to help people is trying to understand them. You don't need money, or insightful advice, you just need to try your hardest to understand them. Even if you don't manage to, they'll see that they are taken seriously by someone. And if you do manage to understand them a bit, insightful advices might come to you naturally.
From my experience, people don't want others to feel sorry for them, they want them to genuinely care, genuinely try. Again, it's not a cure-all either, far from it, but it does help.