Dear Carolyn: What do I do when my friends are hurting and I can’t do anything to help them? I don’t have a lot of friends, but right now all of them are in various degrees of pain and depression, and I feel useless and helpless and depressed myself over it. I’m not married and don’t have children, so I can’t even relate to some of their problems or give them any useful perspective. I can listen and be sympathetic, but other than that I’ve got nothing.
— Mr. Useless
Mr. Useless: You care, you’re sympathetic, and you listen. That is everything.
If you have a dinner you can prepare for them and mobility to get out on a socially distanced walk with them and a stupid Zoom-able game to distract them with, then you have everything made tangible.
In other words, please don’t conflate an inability to fix their problems with an inability to help.
And please don’t be so tough on yourself.
And also make sure you have ways to keep yourself afloat when you’re not with these friends. Other people’s sadness can weigh on you, certainly, but it’s important to be able to recognize when you’re carrying around other people’s problems, which isn’t healthy. Sometimes all it takes to stay upright is to build some restorative things into your schedule — ones you know to be a reliable source of perspective, energy, joy.
You can also say to them out loud, simply: “I can listen and be sympathetic, but other than that I feel like I’ve got no useful way to help you.” That has the potential to open a few doors: for them to recognize how much you care, which has its own power; for them to suggest concrete things you can do to help them; and for them.
Write to Carolyn Hax at tellme@washpost.com. Get her column delivered to your inbox each morning at wapo.st/haxpost.
