Someone who is sad is someone who needs comfort. We don’t like to see people sad. We like to make them feel better. That may not be the best move.
Who Is This About?
The problem is they are built to feel sad for a reason. There is something in their life that isn’t working as expected and they are trying to resolve that. They need to work through that.
Let’s face it: we often don’t want them to feel better for themselves; we want them to feel better for us. It hurts us to see them that way. If they can stop being sad, we can stop being sad for them.
So we try to fix, coax, or laugh them back to normal. Instead, we need to let ourselves off the hook: we don’t have to fix them. We don’t have to make them happy. We just have to exist. Almost every single time someone is dealing with something painful, they simply want the presence of someone who cares without a word spoken. What could be easier? Just be there.