60 Words of Encouragement for Him During Hard Times
Sixty lines to offer a man you love when he’s struggling and won’t say so, chosen to sit beside what he’s carrying instead of rallying him out of it.
12:09 AM, Screen Brightness All the Way Down
It’s Thursday night, and Rowena is thirty-seven years old and wide awake. Her husband has been lying on her left for the last twenty minutes, finally asleep. Really asleep, not the shallow, restless thing that’s been passing for sleep for the past five months. She hears his breathing even out. She watches the blue light of her phone move across the ceiling like a slow tide.
He’s been job-searching since December. Forty-two applications. Seventeen first-round interviews. Three final rounds that went nowhere. The rejection doesn’t announce itself in their apartment. It just shows up in how he sleeps, in how he answers a question, in the particular way he goes quiet after dinner. That quiet used to mean contentment. Now it means something else.
She typed “words of encouragement for him” into the search bar and deleted it three times before she let the search go through. She’s a corporate attorney. She argues for a living. She’s supposed to be good with words. But the words she has, the ones that come easily in a deposition or a negotiation, feel wrong here. Too clean. Too resolved. She doesn’t want to give him a closing argument. She wants to say something that tells him she sees him.
Rowena is an illustrative example, not a real client, but that midnight search is a common one. That’s what this collection is for. Not a pep talk, and not a motivational poster in text form. Something quieter: language that can sit next to what he’s carrying without shrinking it. If you’re on your phone at midnight looking for the right thing to say to the man you love, these words were gathered for both of you.
Why Finding Words for Him Is Its Own Kind of Hard
There’s a particular frustration that comes with loving someone who won’t let you in when he’s struggling. You want to help. You can see the weight. You keep looking for the right door, and none of them open. That experience often gets framed as a communication problem, a personality mismatch, or a sign that something is wrong with the relationship. In my work with clients, I’ve come to see it differently.
The difficulty usually isn’t a lack of love on his end. It’s a deeply conditioned response to a message he absorbed before he had the language to question it. If you’ve spent time with words for getting through hard times, you already know that the capacity to receive support is itself something we learn. And many men were actively discouraged from learning it.
A descriptive term, not a diagnosis, for the pattern in which a man withdraws from emotional connection at exactly the moments he most needs it. It draws on the shame research of Brené Brown, PhD, MSW, research professor at the University of Houston and author of Daring Greatly, who describes the fear of being seen as weak as central to how many men experience shame. That fear doesn’t disappear in adulthood. The man who won’t ask for help, who deflects concern, who says “I’m fine” in a voice that clearly isn’t fine, is often acting out a survival strategy rather than a preference.
In plain terms: The man in your life who won’t talk about what’s hard isn’t silent because he doesn’t feel it. He’s silent because he learned, a long time ago, that saying something cost too much. That’s not a wall you can push through. But the right words can sometimes soften it from the outside.
What makes finding words for him hard is that most of the language we have for encouragement comes from a cultural register that prizes endurance over vulnerability and performance over presence. “You’ve got this” lands differently than “I see how hard this is.” The first asks him to armor up. The second asks him to let you in. For a man who’s been rewarded his whole life for the armor, the second kind of language takes some getting used to.
This matters because the words you choose aren’t just kind gestures. They’re signals about what kind of space you’re making for him. Real support, the kind that actually changes something, begins with someone feeling seen. Not fixed. Not coaxed into a better mood. Seen.
A distinction used widely in relational therapy. Witnessing means being fully present with another person’s experience without trying to alter, minimize, or resolve it. Problem-solving aims at removing the discomfort. Both have their place. But when someone is in the middle of a sustained hardship rather than a solvable crisis, such as job loss, grief, or a shaken sense of identity, being witnessed often brings more relief than being advised.
In plain terms: When you lead with “have you tried…” or “you should…,” you’re solving. When you lead with “I see you in this,” you’re witnessing. He probably needs both at different moments. But if he’s been in the hard thing for a while without resolution, witnessing is usually what registers as care.
The Research Behind Why He Goes Silent
Brené Brown, PhD, MSW, research professor at the University of Houston, has spent years studying how shame works, and her writing in Daring Greatly describes a pattern that’s relevant to every midnight search like Rowena’s. For many men, the shame trigger isn’t failure exactly, though failure often sets it off. It’s the perception of weakness: the sense that he can’t handle what he’s been given.
That isn’t a character flaw. It’s conditioning. Boys get steady cultural instruction, from media, from other boys, from well-meaning fathers and coaches, that their value rests on their capacity to endure without complaint. When that capacity is tested, when the job search drags into month five and another interview goes nowhere, what shows up isn’t just sadness. It’s closer to exposure. Being seen struggling can feel, to many men, like being caught without armor. So they go quiet. They say “I’m fine,” not as a lie but as an attempt to contain something they’ve been taught is shameful.
Terrence Real, family therapist and author of I Don’t Want to Talk About It: Overcoming the Secret Legacy of Male Depression, adds another layer. His work describes what he calls covert depression in men: depression that shows up less as sadness and more as withdrawal, irritability, overwork, or numbness. The man who seems fine but isn’t sleeping, who’s busy but distant, who deflects concern with humor or defensiveness, may be carrying something neither of you learned to recognize as struggle. If that description sounds familiar, this guide to male covert depression and why depression in men can look like anger go further. Only a clinician who meets with him can say what’s actually going on.
Sue Johnson, EdD, clinical psychologist and developer of Emotionally Focused Therapy, wrote in Hold Me Tight about how much a felt sense of safe connection with a partner matters under stress. Put her work next to Brown’s and Real’s, and it points somewhere useful for the partner looking for the right words. The goal isn’t to get him to open up. It’s to keep signaling that opening up is safe, that the door is unlocked and will stay unlocked. You can do that with words. Small ones, repeated over time, without an agenda. That’s what the lines below are meant to support. Not scripts. Starting places.
Words for When He Won’t Ask for Help
These are for the moments when he’s clearly carrying something and hasn’t said a word about it. For the long evenings when you can feel the weight between you but neither of you knows how to name it. Several of these name the conditioning itself, which can be easier for a guarded man to hear than anything aimed directly at him. None of them demand anything. They just hold the door open.
“We do a great disservice to boys in how we raise them. We stifle the humanity of boys.”
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Author and Novelist, We Should All Be Feminists (2014)
“We teach boys to be afraid of fear, of weakness, of vulnerability. We teach them to mask their true selves, because they have to be, in Nigerian-speak, “hard man.””
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Author and Novelist, We Should All Be Feminists (2014)
“Most girls are taught to avoid risk and failure. We’re raising our girls to be perfect, and we’re raising our boys to be brave.”
Reshma Saujani, Author and Founder of Girls Who Code, Brave, Not Perfect: How Celebrating Imperfection Helps You Live Your Best, Most Joyful Life (2019)
“The main problem of setting aside our most vulnerable part is that nobody can actually see us, and we can’t truly connect to other people.”
Anabel Gonzalez, psychiatrist, MD, PhD, It’s Not Me: Understanding Complex Trauma, Attachment, and Dissociation (2018), p. 81
“When the alarm bell of the emotional brain keeps signaling that you are in danger, no amount of insight will silence it.”
Bessel van der Kolk, MD, Psychiatrist, The Body Keeps the Score (2014)
“Our injuries do not occur in a vacuum, so our healing cannot occur in one either. Our hurts and losses need to be repaired interpersonally. We cannot heal alone.”
Arielle Schwartz, PhD, The Post-Traumatic Growth Guidebook: Evidence-Based Strategies to Recover from Trauma and Build Resilience (2020)
“Trauma isolates; the group re-creates a sense of belonging. Trauma shames and stigmatizes; the group bears witness and affirms.”
Judith L. Herman, MD, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence, From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror (2015)
“Shame is a wound of not belonging. It can leave you feeling like an exile, a stranger in a strange land.”
Arielle Schwartz, PhD, The Post-Traumatic Growth Guidebook: Evidence-Based Strategies to Recover from Trauma and Build Resilience (2020)
“The voice of doubt, shame, and guilt blaring in our heads is not our voice. It is a voice we have been given by a society steeped in shame.”
Sonya Renee Taylor, Founder of The Body Is Not an Apology, The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love (2018)
“Fortunately, once you start listening to your emotions instead of shutting them down, they will guide you toward an authentic connection with others.”
Lindsay C. Gibson, PsyD, Clinical Psychologist, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents (2015)
“In order to rise, you have to lay your burden down.”
Sally Helgesen & Marshall Goldsmith, Authors and Leadership Coaches, How Women Rise (2018)
“When you break up with shame, you’re cutting ties with the main emotion that has kept you in cycles. You’re leaving behind your comfort zone.”
Dr. Mariel Buqué, PhD, Psychologist, Break the Cycle (2024)
Words for When He’s Lost His Footing
Job loss, a shaken sense of identity, the quiet crisis under the surface. These lines are for the man in the middle of something that’s rattled his sense of who he is. Not catastrophic, maybe. But the kind of sustained difficulty that wears down confidence in small daily increments until he barely recognizes the person in the mirror.
When the thing that organized a man’s sense of worth goes away, whether that’s a job, a role, or a public failure that feels exposing, the story he’s been telling about himself can stop making sense. He had a role. He knew what he was for. Now that clarity is gone, and the question underneath the job search isn’t only “when will I find work?” It’s “who am I without the thing that told me I mattered?”
The words that help here aren’t the ones that rush him past that question. They’re the ones that stand in it with him. They say the disruption is real, and he’s still himself underneath it.
“It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all.”
J.K. Rowling, Writer, Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls 2 (2018), p. 84
“Figuring out what you want comes from failing, and then trying again.”
Valerie Thomas, Astronomer and NASA data analyst, Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls 2 (2018)
“First find out what you are capable of, then decide who you are.”
Tara Westover, Memoirist & Historian, Educated: A Memoir (2018)
“Transformation requires a willingness to challenge your basic beliefs about who you are.”
Peter A. Levine, Biophysicist and Stress/Trauma Expert, Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma (1997)
“I could just take care of myself. I could stop proving my worth and step into it.”
Ingrid Clayton, Fawning: Why the Need to Please Makes Us Lose Ourselves, and How to Find Our Way Back (2025)
“By cloaking the labor in the language of ‘passion,’ we’re prevented from thinking of what we do as what it is: a job, not the entirety of our lives.”
Anne Helen Petersen, Cultural critic and author, Can’t Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation (2020), ch. 4
“If workers have a one-on-one love relationship with the job, then the solution for its failure to love you back is to move on or to try harder.”
Sarah Jaffe, Independent journalist and author, Work Won’t Love You Back: How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted, and Alone (2021)
“Instead of offering ourselves grace and space to learn something new, we beat ourselves up, as if our not knowing (yet) is a failure in and of itself.”
Tori Dunlap, Internationally Recognized Money Expert, Financial Feminist: Overcome the Patriarchy’s Bullsh*t to Master Your Money and Build a Life You Love (2022)
“The only antidote to brokenness is the whole self. Maybe to heal isn’t to erase the scar, or even to make the scar. To heal is to cherish the wound.”
Edith Eva Eger, Clinical Psychologist, The Choice: Embrace the Possible (2017), ch. 21
“One night of real pain is enough to strip away your illusions about how strong you are, how brave, how patient and faithful.”
Barbara Brown Taylor, Episcopal priest and professor, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith (2009)
“What if there is no other side? What if this is it? This world, this life, this beautiful, broken thing?”
Ada Limón, Poet, The Carrying (2018)
“I believe above all one has to return again and again to weep the tears which are still unshed.”
Irene Claremont de Castillejo, Jungian Analyst, Knowing Woman: A Feminine Psychology (1973)
None of these will close a five-month gap in the job search. What they can do is shift how he holds what’s happening, from pure loss toward something with room for meaning later. If you’re carrying your own exhaustion in this season, the words of encouragement for hard times collection speaks to that parallel weight.
Both/And: You Can’t Force Him to Receive. And the Right Words Still Matter
Here’s a tension worth naming honestly: you can’t make him feel supported if he’s defended against support. That isn’t a failure of love or effort. It’s how emotional conditioning works. If he learned early that needing something was dangerous, that vulnerability got punished, minimized, or ignored, then receiving care will feel uncomfortable no matter how beautifully it’s offered. That part isn’t about you.
And the words you choose still matter. Not because they’ll unlock a door that’s been sealed for thirty years, but because steady warmth and careful language, offered over time, do something. They build a record. They create an environment. They say, again and again, that this is a safe place to land if he ever decides to try.
Consider Dani, an illustrative example, not a real client. She’s thirty-four, a physical therapist, and her partner has been quietly unraveling since a business partnership fell apart. She keeps offering the big-feeling words, “I’m so proud of you” and “you’re handling this so well,” and he keeps deflecting, minimizing, changing the subject. Then, almost without noticing, she switches. She starts saying smaller things: “I noticed how hard you worked on that today.” “I’m glad you’re here.” Not encouragement exactly. More like witnessing in real time. The deflection doesn’t disappear overnight. But it starts to slow.
What Dani stumbled into is something I see often in my work: for a man who’s been conditioned to push care away, the words that reach him are often not encouragement at all. They’re recognition. They’re observation without an agenda. They’re the language version of sitting next to someone in the dark instead of turning on every light in the room.
The next twelve lines take on the idea that strength means never needing anything. They reframe strength as something that can include tenderness, rest, and feeling.
“These boys showed that vulnerability and kindness are forms of strength.”
Ben Brooks, Author, Stories for Boys Who Dare to Be Different (2018)
“Shielding away from vulnerability is to allow our fears and insecurities to get the best of us.”
Brené Brown, PhD, MSW, Research Professor at the University of Houston, Dare to Lead (2018)
“Nothing can change the fact that we will always run into vulnerable situations in our journey here.”
Brené Brown, PhD, MSW, Research Professor at the University of Houston, Dare to Lead (2018)
“Achieving vulnerability-based trust is difficult because in the course of career advancement and education, most successful people learn to be competitive with their peers, and protective of their reputations.”
Patrick Lencioni, Founder of The Table Group and Bestselling Author, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable (2002)
“This automatic, natural contact with his own emotions and wishes gives an individual strength and self-esteem.”
Alice Miller, The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self (1981)
“When you are healthy and strong, you’re freed up to give to others in a richer, deeper, healthier and stronger way.”
Jonice Webb, Running on Empty: Overcome Your Childhood Emotional Neglect (2013)
“You also have to be willing to enter a void before getting to the other side. Increasing your tolerance means strengthening an emotional muscle that can hold on in that void.”
Mary Beth O’Neill, Executive coach and family systems therapist, Executive Coaching with Backbone and Heart (2000), p. 30
“I realized that in my dance to sidestep discomfort, I was inadvertently silencing my capacity to truly feel. By avoiding fear and pain, I was inadvertently avoiding life itself.”
Tamu Thomas, Women Who Work Too Much (2024)
“Tears can release fear before it devolves into frightened and frightening thinking.”
Pete Walker, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving (2013)
“You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.”
Mary Oliver, The Art of Losing: Poems of Grief and Healing (2010)
“to hate is an easy lazy thing / but to love / takes strength / everyone has / but not all are / willing to practice”
Rupi Kaur, Poet, The Sun and Her Flowers (2017)
“We are designed to bend and fold, to comfort ourselves and each other. We have so many small parts that need tending to.”
Chanel Miller, Author, Artist, Know My Name (2019)
These aren’t just inspirational. They’re corrective. They push back on the cultural instruction that strength means never needing anything. If he’s absorbed that message, he may need to hear its opposite more than once before it registers. When the question of what strength means is tangled up with work and leadership, executive coaching is one place that conversation can happen.
The Systemic Lens: Two Systems, One Midnight Search
Let’s be honest about what’s happening when Rowena is on her phone after midnight looking for words to give her husband. She isn’t only a wife trying to be kind. She’s standing where two systems meet, and each of them, in its own way, makes this harder than it needs to be.
The first system is the one that told him not to need anything. From boyhood on, it said: be the strong one, don’t show weakness, figure it out yourself, man up. That system doesn’t disappear when he becomes an adult with a wife who loves him and wants to help. It goes underground. It becomes the voice that says reaching out is weakness, that being seen struggling is shameful, that real strength means suffering without words.
The second system is the one that put her on her phone instead of waking him up and having the conversation. It told her to manage her needs quietly, not to add to his burden, to find a way to give without asking to receive. It says a good partner absorbs, accommodates, and supports without complaint, and that if she’s struggling too, that’s a private problem to solve in the dark while he finally sleeps.
Naming that intersection changes what “words of encouragement” means. They aren’t just helpful phrases. They’re small acts of resistance against a setup that leaves neither of them feeling supported. When Rowena finds something that lands as witness rather than pressure, she’s not only helping her husband. She’s building a kind of closeness neither system prepared them for.
The larger work of building a partnership that doesn’t repeat what both of you absorbed is something trauma-informed therapy can support in ways a quote collection can’t. But a quote collection isn’t nothing. It’s a place to start. And you deserve words too. You’re not a supporting character in this story. The twelve lines below are for you, the one doing the searching, and the words of encouragement and strength collection has more for this season.
“It is a radical act to love someone without wanting to change them.”
Maggie Nelson, Writer, The Argonauts (2015)
“Being in the middle is a minefield! When you carry the anxiety of others, you prevent them from resolving their own issues.”
Mary Beth O’Neill, Executive coach and family systems therapist, Executive Coaching with Backbone and Heart (2000), p. 73
“Love is the best survival mechanism there is, and to feel suddenly emotionally cut off from a partner, disconnected, is terrifying.”
Sue Johnson, clinical psychologist, EdD, Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love (2008), p. 46
“When people fall in love, they are all but putting their soul in their partner’s hand for safekeeping, and that you both have the responsibility to keep it safe and make it prosper.”
Amir Levine and Rachel Heller, Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment (2010)
“Each of you recognizes that the other is an imperfect human being, and learns what is realistic to expect. Each of you knows that your partner will make mistakes.”
Pia Mellody, RN, Facing Love Addiction: Giving Yourself the Power to Change the Way You Love (2003), p. 157
“It is a luxury to be really listened to, to be truly heard. Most people are not good listeners; they were told to listen at school, not trained or coached to listen.”
Sir John Whitmore, Pioneer of performance coaching, Coaching for Performance (2017), p. 89
“Because you still listen, because in times like these / to have you listen at all, it’s necessary / to talk about trees.”
Adrienne Rich, poet and former Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, What Kind of Times Are These (1995)
“But if love is not the cure, it certainly can act as a very strong medicine.”
Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness (1995)
“Tears lift your boat off the rocks, off dry ground, carrying it downriver to someplace new, someplace better.”
Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Ph.D., Jungian Psychoanalyst and Cantadora, Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype (1992)
“Just like you can thirst for water, you can thirst for touch. It is a comfort to be met confidently, deeply, firmly, gently, responsively.”
Bessel van der Kolk, MD, Psychiatrist, The Body Keeps the Score (2014)
“The more we think of rest as a luxury, the more we buy into the systematic lies of grind culture.”
Tricia Hersey, Poet, Activist, and Author, Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto (2022)
“We laid down our burdens next to each other.”
Joy Harjo, Poet Laureate and Indigenous writer, Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings (2015)
For the Long Game
The hardest thing about sustained difficulty, the long, grinding kind rather than the acute crisis, is a particular hollowness. Encouragement starts to feel thin when the problem hasn’t moved. Month five of a job search isn’t month one. By month five, hope has been banked and spent and banked again so many times that it’s started to feel reckless. Words that felt grounding in January can feel like pressure in May. Not because they aren’t true, but because the gap between the encouragement and the reality has gotten so loud.
These lines are for that place. Not the crisis. The long game. Many of them are about patience, pace, and the slow return of steadiness, which is often what the long game actually asks of both of you.
“No matter how awful and long your journey, I can promise you the turn. One day it will lift.”
Chanel Miller, Author, Artist, Know My Name (2019)
“Both women and men need transitional rituals to help peel away their professional roles so they can feel their own skins again. Otherwise, our well-protected professional selves can seep into our personal lives.”
Ronald A. Heifetz & Marty Linsky, Leadership on the Line
“One day at a time forces you to reckon with the instant you actually occupy, rather than living in fantasy la-la that never arrives.”
Mary Karr, Memoirist, Poet & Professor, Lit: A Memoir (2009)
“Patience comes to the bones before it takes root in the heart as another good idea.”
Mary Oliver, poet, New and Selected Poems, Volume Two (2004)
“Water always goes where it wants to go, and nothing in the end can stand against it. Water is patient. Dripping water wears away a stone.”
Margaret Atwood, novelist, The Penelopiad (2005)
“The key to transforming trauma is to move slowly in the direction of flexibility and spontaneity.”
Peter A. Levine, PhD, Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma: The Innate Capacity to Transform Overwhelming Experiences (1997), p. 216
“The soul thrives when it’s in synch with a deeper, slower pace.”
Sue Monk Kidd, Novelist and Memoirist, The Dance of the Dissident Daughter (1996), p. 247
“Exhaustion means going to the point where you can’t go any further; burnout means reaching that point and pushing yourself to keep going, whether for days or weeks or years.”
Anne Helen Petersen, Cultural critic and author, Can’t Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation (2020)
“We are works in progress, and our autonomic nervous systems are listening and learning in each moment.”
Deb Dana, Licensed Clinical Social Worker and Polyvagal Consultant, Anchored: How to Befriend Your Nervous System Using Polyvagal Theory (2021)
“No amount of success can ever compensate for chronic exhaustion, for persistently going over our bandwidth.”
Tamu Thomas, Women Who Work Too Much (2024)
“When we have enough in our reservoir, we are able to trust that life will turn out okay, even if there are interruptions that knock us off track.”
Mark Wolynn, Director of the Family Constellation Institute, It Didn’t Start With You (2016)
“We go after that which is lost. / We are all of us survivors.”
Carolyn Forché, Poet, The Country Between Us (1981)
What Rowena wants to give her husband, the thing underneath the midnight search, isn’t a list of quotes. It’s a signal. It’s the feeling of being witnessed in a difficulty that keeps not resolving. The words above can carry that signal if they’re offered with the right intention: not as a solution, not as pressure to feel better, but as evidence that someone is paying attention. That the weight is real, and the person carrying it is seen.
The long game also asks you to be resourced, not just resilient. You can’t keep offering from an empty tank. If this season is wearing on your own sense of steadiness, Fixing the Foundations is my self-paced course for relational trauma recovery, and the article archive has more on relationships and resilience.
You don’t have to get this perfect. The search itself, the fact that you’re awake at midnight with the brightness all the way down, already says something. It says you’re paying attention. That’s not nothing. That’s most of it, actually. And if what’s underneath this search is bigger, a relationship under more pressure than a quote collection can hold, you can reach out about working together. You don’t have to be in crisis to deserve support. Sometimes being tired is reason enough.
Warmly,
Annie
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Frequently asked questions.
Why does he shut down when I try to encourage him?
Shutting down in response to encouragement is often a conditioned shame response, not a sign that he doesn’t want support. Brené Brown, PhD, MSW, describes the fear of being seen as weak as central to how many men experience shame. When you offer care during a hard stretch, it can feel to him, paradoxically, like the very weakness he’s been taught to hide is on display. That isn’t about you. Over time, steady, low-pressure witnessing, showing up without needing a response, tends to reach him better than bigger gestures of encouragement.
Is there a difference between what men and women need to hear during hard times?
The core needs are the same: to be seen, to feel less alone, to know the difficulty is real and survivable. But the barriers to receiving support are often shaped by gender. Many women were given language for struggle and have practiced naming what they feel. Many men were rewarded for not naming it. So the same words can land differently depending on how much each person has been allowed to practice receiving. With a more guarded man, smaller, observation-based language often works better than big emotional encouragement.
What should I not say to a man who already feels like he’s failing?
The things that tend to land worst are comparisons (“my friend’s husband went through this and was fine”), silver linings offered too early (“at least you have time to figure out what you really want”), and performance pressure dressed up as encouragement (“I know you’re going to crush the next interview”). Even when they’re well meant, each one signals that the current moment isn’t acceptable and that he needs to get past it, fix it, or redeem it. What helps more is simple acknowledgment: that it’s hard, that you see how hard he’s working, and that the outcome hasn’t changed how you feel about him.
How do I encourage him without sounding like I feel sorry for him?
The difference between pity and witnessing is direction. Pity looks down at the person who’s struggling. Witnessing stands beside him. In practice, that sounds like moving from “you’ve been through so much,” which casts him as a sufferer, toward “I’ve watched how you’ve shown up through this,” which recognizes what he’s doing. Specificity helps too. He’s more likely to take in “you kept every commitment this week when I know how little energy you had” than “I’m so proud of how you’re handling everything.”
What if encouragement feels hollow because the problem is real and hasn’t been solved?
That feeling is honest, and it’s worth trusting. If encouragement is starting to sound like noise, the problem may need something different: practical help, connection to resources, or room to grieve rather than be rallied. Sometimes the most useful thing you can say is, “I don’t have words that’ll fix this, and I’m not trying to. I just want you to know I’m in it with you.” That lands as truth rather than performance. And truth, even without resolution, is a kind of relief.
What if I’m worried he might hurt himself?
Take it seriously, and don’t carry it alone. If he talks about not wanting to be here, about being a burden, or about hurting himself, it’s okay to ask him directly and to get help right away. In the United States, either of you can call or text 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. If he’s in immediate danger, call 911. Outside the US, findahelpline.com lists local crisis services. Encouraging words matter, but they aren’t a substitute for crisis support.
References.
- Brown, Brené. Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead. Gotham Books, 2012.
- Johnson, Sue. Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love. Little, Brown and Company, 2008.
- Real, Terrence. I Don’t Want to Talk About It: Overcoming the Secret Legacy of Male Depression. Scribner, 1997.
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LMFT · Relational Trauma Specialist · Author, W.W. Norton 2027
Helping driven women finally feel as good as their résumé looks.
Annie Wright is an EMDR-certified licensed psychotherapist and relational trauma specialist with over 15,000 clinical hours, and she's been in practice since 2013. She draws on psychodynamic and somatic approaches alongside EMDR, and she is licensed in 15 U.S. jurisdictions and registered to provide telehealth in Florida (California, Colorado (telehealth only), Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and Washington). Annie works with driven and ambitious women from relational trauma backgrounds, and everything she writes about is field-tested across thousands of clinical sessions. She is the founder and former CEO of Evergreen Counseling, a multimillion-dollar trauma-informed therapy center she built, scaled, and successfully exited, and is currently writing her first book, The Everything Years: Navigating the Pressure and Promise of Your Thirties, with W.W. Norton (2027). A regular contributor to Psychology Today, her expert commentary has appeared in USA Today, Forbes, Business Insider, Inc., NBC, and The Information.
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