I'm Still Human: Understanding Depression With Kindness (Expanded Edition - 2021)

feelings or cry (you can offer tissue paper). At times, giving
advice, especially prematurely, may invalidate their feelings,
make them feel more useless, not understood and cause them to
further withdraw emotionally.
• 3. Use open-ended statements such as, “So, tell me
about…how…and what happened after that?” Show in your facial
expression, body posture and tone of voice that you really care.
These ways of asking require more than a “yes” or “no” answer
and can be a good way to facilitate conversation.
• 4. You may not need to talk much. You can easily facilitate the
conversation by ‘M.I.Y.A.O.W?’ – “Mmmmm… I see… Ah ha… Ya,
it’s horrible… Oh, like this… Wow, you’re so strong… What
happened after that? What do you plan to do?” Feel free to
change the sequence of M.I.YA.O.W?, while nodding
intermittently to indicate that you’re caring and paying attention.
• 5. It’s unnecessary to pressure yourself to give a solution; after
all, not all problems have a solution. Often just spending time
with the person is good enough to convey the message that we
are trying to understand and care – that’s already therapeutic.
• 6. If the person refuses to talk, respect the decision and get back
to him or her at another time. You may say something like this,
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