0. Prologue: The Spark of Support
Initially this idea appeared in my brain on 2025-04-15, while I was thinking about how I support my friend and they support me - or as we call it, mutual support. What finally pushed me over to write all of this down was a situation that happened recently. A friend accidentally offended another, sparking a conversation. It turned out the friend who offended never really learned how to apologize or support others-and that’s okay!
That got me thinking. I talk to a lot of people, and they all have different ways of showing support. Some hug you. Some sit and talk with you for hours. Some listen in silence. Everyone perceives emotions differently, everyone connects in their own way.
But there’s one thing all the people I know have in common - suffering.
Sure, the form it takes varies. Someone might be crushed by anxiety. Someone else might hate their body. Others deal with abusive families, depression, heartbreak, illness. And all of it is valid. All of it is real. What matters is that pain is universal.
Our own painful experiences let us connect to others’ emotions, even if they’re wildly different-like surviving a near-death drowning versus a heartbreaking breakup. Through that shared pain, we can comfort each other. That resonance helps us support one another. Not because we fully understand. But because we feel something that rhymes. A simple “I’m here” or a quiet hug can say more than any perfect explanation ever could.
1. The Impossibility of Full Understanding
Each person’s mind is a locked room-we can knock and listen, but we can’t step inside. We can hear their words, see their behavior, even guess their emotions but their inner world stays locked away. Even when you’re deeply empathetic, you’re still viewing through the lens of your own experiences, a lens shaped by your own trauma, your own joy, your own fears. You can become closer to someone’s feelings, but you can’t and won’t be able to fully experience the same thing, even if scientists figured out a way to transfer our minds into others’ bodies.
Saying “I understand.” often actually means “I think that I understand”, but there is nothing bad about that. It’s an attempt, an effort, not a statement. And any attempt, any effort is already an act of caring.
Sometimes even the suffering individual might not fully understand what they are feeling. My friend once said her grief was ‘like a heavy fog’, but even that didn’t capture the weight crushing her. Or I tried to tell a friend how social anxiety felt - like I couldn’t breathe or talk - but words failed me. In response they just hugged me, and that was enough.
Being honest about “understanding” is more important than saying a fake “I completely understand you.”. Relax. It’s fine to admit your incomprehension. What matters is being real. Saying “I am with you.” is way more powerful than any “I know what you feel.” that you are lying about. Just even a single hug can make everything better. You don’t need to understand any emotions for that. You just have to see that the person is suffering.
There are times when we don’t care that someone “doesn’t understand” our pleas for help. Sometimes all we need is someone who will listen to us, someone who will care not because of “ethics” but because they fucking simply care. And it doesn’t even matter if they “fully understand” or no, we just want to feel heard. To know we are not alone. That even in this cold, cruel fucking world, someone still chooses to love us. And sometimes just that is enough.
2. Unknowing as Part of Life
People are often afraid to admit that they don’t know something, because we’re taught to “always be sure.” Like confidence is everything. But in reality, unknowing is just a natural part of life. We’re born knowing nothing and we die not fully knowing ourselves. Being okay with saying “I don’t know” isn’t a sign of weakness - it’s actually strong as hell. That’s not ignorance. That’s honesty and humility.
You can read a 1000 books, know a million words, but even with that still be not able to understand others’ feelings. Knowing why a person feels bad doesn’t mean knowing how bad it is for them. Maybe for you it’s an “whatever” type of sad and for them it’s “end of world”. Admitting unknowing doesn’t disrupt support. It makes it more honest. Even the most empathetic people can’t fully understand others’ emotions.
Often, when we say “I don’t understand” the person starts explaining their feelings, like my friend said “smaller grains of something larger”, oftentimes it makes not only the listener understand a bigger “part”, but also the one struggling too. This vacuum of not knowing is not a dead-end, it’s an invite for a dialogue.
You don’t need to fully understand something to still do something with it. Most atheists don’t know what was before the big bang, and it doesn’t stop them from living their life in the universe that was created by it. It’s the same thing with support, you don’t need “knowing” to help a person. Sometimes, when you drop the idea that you already “get it,” and instead lean into curiosity, it’s when the real connection happens. As one of my friends put it: “sometimes I can directly ask“how can I help you with this?” and usually this can solve the problem [of not understanding what the person wants to hear].”. And that’s just the way it is. You just need to embrace curiosity and ask questions.
It’s okay to not know. What matters is that you want to.
3. Support without understanding
There are a ton of ways to show that you care. Talking on the phone, offering a hug, inviting for tea, or just even sitting quietly and listening can be all worth more than a million words. Being truly compassionate is the most important thing. Even a small gesture, be it offering food or a drive home can mean a lot to a suffering person. Support isn’t always about finding a “solution”. It’s mental, more close or even intimate, compared to help.
Some people acting like they fully “understand” can become a performance - showing how deep and thoughtful they are. But the suffering one doesn’t always need a deep analysis. They need some care. Listening isn’t always about comprehension. You’re not there to dissect their emotions into some base ones. You’re there so that they don’t have to carry them alone.
Support can look like silence. Not everything needs a reply. Sometimes just sitting with someone on the roof looking at the sky is the kindest thing you can do. Solidarity in pain is a thing. Broken people can still help other broken people. Support doesn’t come from happiness or from perfection, it comes from intent. I and my friend suffer from completely different problems yet we are able to support each other despite that. Because we care. Sometimes doing something small for your friend won’t even take you 10 minutes of time, just send them a message saying “how are u?”.
Sometimes people who suffer forget that they are not insane for feeling what they feel. Remind them that it’s valid to feel broken and in pain, say “that sounds really fucking hard”, allow them to feel what they feel. Don’t say “Ohhh don’t be sad”. Validation is more healing than dismissal disguised as comfort.
One of my friends said “I just say that they can vent if they want, and if they don’t, I just sit with them.” and that’s brilliant. What she means by that is that she will be nearby, able to help no matter if you understand yourself or not.
I, personally, just try to remember my downs and how much I needed support during those times and it helps me find powers to help others.
4. Suffering as a Shared Language
I decided to ask my friends how they comfort others when they just don’t understand someone else’s feelings. ~3 people said that they are just empathetic enough to just feel emotions through air. I am like that, too. Sometimes it feels like I have some sort of a receiver in my head that tells me how other people feel. I just sit next to a person - and their emotions start flowing into me. Even if they are silent. Even if they pretend that everything is OK. I don’t need to hear words, I feel when someone screams inside, when they are attacked by anxiety, when they are alone even in a crowd. All of that might sound like a superpower. It’s not. Sometimes it’s the opposite, an overload. Especially when you can’t even help in any way but the emotions are still flooding you from all around. But especially because of this I feel so vividly how important is trying to understand. Because if I feel, then I have to at least try, say something, hug them with words, if not hands.
My other friends went into a more analytic approach and said that they directly ask the person about it, guide them thru a dialogue that leads both to a better understanding. One said that they use a different approach for each person. All of those a valid methods of trying to understand. And despite how different they might seem they all have one same thing at the core and it’s caring. It transcends all personalities.
Each person supported me in different ways. Some were really good with words of wisdom, some were listeners, some invited for walks. And this variation is beautiful because it speaks of the fact that we all carry our own unique wounds and express support in different ways.
5. Finding Ourselves in Others
And that’s where the irony lies. You try to understand and help someone else, but suddenly end up seeing dark corners of your own mind. Your triggers, your vulnerabilities, and insecurities. You’re comforting a friend, and mid-sentence, it hits: “Oh fuck, this is me too.”. This has happened to me before. One time I was talking with my friend about their attachment issues and suddenly realized the reason for my issues too.
When people describe their own emotions and experiences they might accidentally describe something you felt but forgot, repressed, or just never knew how to name. Compassion is a mirror, it opens you to understand yourself better too. When you try to help you start asking yourself “What would I need in their place?” and that opens up a whole new door. Each close connection rewires us a bit, you pick up their ways of thinking, coping mechanisms, maybe their phrases, their quirks. Being close to someone in pain makes you softer, wiser, or more alive. Sometimes you ask your friends for help and they help you in some way no one ever did, and now you know a new way to comfort someone too.
Someone vents about their family, their brain, their fears - and it clicks. “Wait. That’s why I act like that too.”. Hearing grief made me revisit my own, like it was a key to a door I’d kept locked. And that is so powerful. You try to help someone else but become better yourself too.
We all speak the language of suffering (like I said before). Listening to someone else’s dialect teaches us our own. That’s the magic of mutual support: we help them, they help us, and we both grow. It’s not about understanding everything - it’s about discovering ourselves in the attempt.
6. Epilogue: The Beauty of Showing up
In the end, we’re all stumbling through this life trying to make sense of ourselves and others. And maybe we’ll never fully understand - but that’s okay. The effort matters. The care matters. And sometimes, just sitting there, saying “I’m here” is more than enough. We don’t need to crack each other’s pain to care. Just keep showing up. It changes their world, and yours too.
Support isn’t perfect. It’s human. And that’s what makes it beautiful.
P.S. Big fucking thanks to Dima, David, Tamara, Yulya, Vitaly, Nil, Alice, Egor, Vova and Ksenya, y’all made this post possible and real. Your stories, from clumsy apologies to wrestling with anxiety, showed me how pain connects us. You’re my strength. To you, readers, thanks for vibing with this. Keep showing up for your people, like my friends did for me. Your support fuels my writing, and I’m so fucking grateful.