99 Words of Encouragement for Someone Going Through a Tough Time
When someone you love is struggling, the right words can feel impossibly far away. This collection of 99 carefully chosen words of encouragement, organized by what the person actually needs to hear, is grounded in research on compassionate witnessing and what the nervous system registers as safety. You’ll also find clinical context for why words matter, what makes some phrases land and others miss, and how to show up for someone when you genuinely don’t know what to say.
- 2:14 a.m. and Eleven Deleted Drafts
- What Words of Encouragement Actually Do
- The Neuroscience of Being Witnessed
- How This Shows Up for Driven Women
- The 99 Words: Six Buckets for What Your Person Needs
- Both/And: The Text Matters and It Isn’t Enough
- The Systemic Lens: Who Is Saying These Words to You?
- How to Use This List Without Feeling Like a Script
- Frequently Asked Questions
2:14 a.m. and Eleven Deleted Drafts
Sarah set her phone face-down on the kitchen table and stared at the ceiling. It was 2:14 in the morning. She’d been a physician for eleven years. She’d delivered bad news in hallways, had conversations that broke people open, had learned to hold her face still while the world fell apart around a patient. None of that had prepared her for this.
Her college roommate had texted at 11:58 p.m.: I don’t know how to do this anymore. That was ninety minutes ago. Sarah had written eleven responses and deleted every one. She turned off the kitchen light twenty minutes in because it felt too bright for this particular kind of thinking, and now she was working in the blue glow of her phone screen. Her daughter’s crayon drawing was still spread on the table from dinner — a rainbow with uneven stripes, labeled “For Mommy,” the letters slightly wrong in the way of a four-year-old who hasn’t gotten them quite right yet but drew it with absolute conviction anyway.
What do you say to someone when you know words aren’t enough but silence is worse?
If you’ve ever sat in that particular paralysis (phone in hand, cursor blinking, starting and deleting and starting again) — this article is for you. It’s also for anyone who is the one in the dark right now, hoping someone finds the right words. Both experiences are real. Both deserve attention.
What I want to offer here isn’t a formula. It’s a collection of 99 words of encouragement, organized by what the person actually needs to hear at different points in their pain — along with some clinical context for why certain words land where others miss entirely. In my work with clients, I see how much weight language carries, even when we tell ourselves it shouldn’t. Words don’t fix things. But they can reduce the physiological cost of carrying something alone. That is not a small thing.
What Words of Encouragement Actually Do
Let’s start with what we’re really talking about, because “words of encouragement” is a phrase so softened by overuse that it can feel almost meaningless. We see it on greeting cards. We hear it from coaches at halftime. We scroll past it in Instagram captions beside sunrise photos. What actually separates words that help from words that land like furniture in the wrong room?
Research in positive psychology and interpersonal neurobiology, including the foundational work of Kristin Neff, PhD, associate professor of educational psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, demonstrates that compassionate witnessing (having one’s struggle named and held by another person) — activates the same neural pathways as self-compassion. When someone speaks your pain back to you with care and accuracy, your nervous system registers it as a signal of safety. The dorsal vagal threat response, which keeps the body in a state of contraction and hypervigilance, begins to downregulate. The body shifts, even slightly, toward connection and rest.
In plain terms: The right words don’t fix the problem. They reduce the physiological cost of carrying it alone. When someone says the thing you couldn’t say yourself, and says it without flinching — your body exhales. That’s not metaphor. That’s biology.
This is clinically distinct from toxic positivity, which also uses words but in the opposite direction. Toxic positivity tries to move someone away from their current feeling, toward a better one. “Everything happens for a reason.” “At least you have your health.” “This will make you stronger.” These phrases aren’t neutral — they create a secondary wound. The person now has to manage your discomfort with their pain on top of the actual pain they came in carrying.
Effective encouragement doesn’t require optimism. It requires presence. The best words of encouragement say, in some form: I see you. I’m not leaving. You don’t have to pretend this is okay. That’s it. The length of the message, the eloquence of the phrasing — those matter far less than whether the words are rooted in actual witness.
The Neuroscience of Being Witnessed
A concept developed across the fields of interpersonal neurobiology and attachment theory, compassionate witnessing refers to the experience of having one’s internal state (including pain, confusion, or fear) accurately reflected by another person without judgment, minimization, or the pressure to change it. Daniel J. Siegel, MD, clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine and founding co-director of the Mindsight Institute, and author of The Developing Mind, identifies attunement as a primary mechanism through which relational healing occurs — the resonance between two nervous systems creating conditions for repair. To be witnessed is not simply to be heard. It is to have your experience held in someone else’s mind with full accuracy and without distortion.
In plain terms: When someone says something that lands, something that feels true to the inside of your experience — your nervous system responds to their presence as regulating. You’re no longer alone in the feeling, which means your body doesn’t have to hold it all by itself. This is not about “feeling better.” It’s about not having to do it alone.
Kristin Neff, PhD, whose research on self-compassion has generated over 25 years of empirical study, identifies common humanity as one of the three core components of self-compassion — the recognition that suffering is a shared human experience, not a personal failing. When someone speaks that back to us, we receive it more readily than when we try to generate it alone. The voice of a friend, or even a poet we’ve never met, can carry the message our own inner voice can’t yet deliver.
This is why the quotes in this collection aren’t just aesthetically pleasing lines from famous people. At their best, they name what the person inside the experience hasn’t been able to name yet. They arrive from outside and say: Yes. This is real. Other people have been here. If you’re searching for words of encouragement for a friend going through a difficult time, consider reading a few aloud to yourself first. The ones that shift something in you are the ones most likely to reach across the gap.
How This Shows Up for Driven Women
There’s a particular version of this I see frequently in my work with driven, ambitious women: they’re incredibly capable of giving encouragement. They’ve talked friends through divorces, sent flowers at exactly the right moment, written cards that made people cry. What they’re far less practiced at is receiving those same words, or even believing they need them.
Priya is a senior product manager at a tech company in the Bay Area. She described sitting next to her best friend at the hospital after a miscarriage and knowing exactly what to say. Two years later, Priya had her own loss and couldn’t bring herself to call anyone. “I told myself I was fine,” she said. “I kept saying it. I went back to work four days later. I didn’t want anyone to say any of those things to me, even though they were true, because then I would have to stop being fine.”
The avoidance of encouragement is its own wound. When we can’t receive the words that might help, we stay stuck in a kind of emotional efficiency mode: everything processed alone, at speed, without letting it cost us anything visible. What I see in women like Priya, again and again, is that the words weren’t the problem. The receiving was. That’s not a character flaw. That’s what happens when someone has learned, over a long time, that being seen as struggling comes with costs.
If you’re reading this for yourself rather than for someone else, I want you to know: sitting with these words without immediately forwarding them to a friend counts. Letting them land counts. That quiet private moment of recognition, yes, that’s it exactly — is you giving yourself permission to be witnessed, even if only by the page.
For more on how driven women navigate crisis without asking for help, the work at Annie Wright Therapy explores exactly this territory.
The 99 Words: Six Buckets for What Your Person Needs
These 99 words of encouragement are organized not by author or sentiment but by what the person on the receiving end actually needs. The same quote that would feel hollow in the first week of a crisis might be exactly right three months in. Match the words to the moment, not just to the topic.
“The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.”
HENRI NOUWEN, Priest, Author, Out of Solitude
Bucket 1: Words for the First 24 Hours
When someone is in shock, newly broken, not yet able to process — the last thing they need is silver linings. These words are short, present-tense, and make no demands. They don’t require the person to feel better. They only require that they not be alone.
- “I’m here.”
- “You don’t have to figure anything out right now.”
- “I’m not going anywhere.”
- “I carry your heart with me (I carry it in my heart).” — e.e. cummings
- “This is real and it’s awful and I’m sitting with you in it.”
- “You don’t have to be okay right now.”
- “When everything feels hopeless, I try to remember: hope is not the conviction that things will turn out well. Hope is the certainty that something makes sense regardless of how things turn out.” — Václav Havel
- “You don’t have to explain it. I believe you.”
- “I love you. I’m not going anywhere.”
- “I don’t have the words. But I’m here.”
- “You’re allowed to fall apart.”
- “There is no right way to do this. Whatever you’re doing is enough.”
- “I can’t fix this. I’m sorry. I’m staying anyway.”
- “None of this is your fault.”
- “You don’t have to hold it together for me.”
- “I’m coming over. I’ll bring food. You don’t have to talk.”
- “I see how hard this is.”
Bucket 2: Words for the Long Middle
Weeks pass. The acute crisis fades from other people’s awareness even when it hasn’t faded for the person living it. These are words for the long middle — after the casseroles stop coming and the real work begins. These quotes honor the slow, unglamorous pace of actual healing.
- “Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise.” — Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
- “You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.” — Martin Luther King Jr.
- “It’s okay not to be okay.”
- “The road is long, and you don’t have to run it.”
- “One hour at a time. That’s all that’s asked of you.”
- “You’re still here. That means something.”
- “You’ve survived everything that’s tried to break you so far.”
- “I’m still checking on you. I know everyone else has moved on. I haven’t.”
- “Healing isn’t linear. The hard days don’t mean you’re back at the beginning.”
- “I don’t need updates. I just need to know you’re still in this.”
- “Small steps count. Getting out of bed counts.”
- “This season won’t last forever, even when it feels permanent.”
- “I know you can’t see the other side yet. That’s okay. I can see it for both of us.”
Bucket 3: Words When You Don’t Know What to Say
Sometimes the most honest thing is to name the limitation of language itself. These quotes offer permission to sit in discomfort, to be present without performing certainty, to admit that some things can’t be fixed with words — and to make that admission an act of love rather than a failure.
- “I have no words. I’m still here.”
- “I keep picking up my phone and putting it down. I can’t find what to say. Please know I’m thinking of you constantly.”
- “Some things don’t have words yet. I know that. I’m not leaving anyway.”
- “I don’t want to say the wrong thing, so I’ll just say: I love you.”
- “There are no words equal to this. I know that. I’m showing up anyway.”
- “I’m sitting with you in the silence because that’s all I have right now.”
- “I can’t make this better. I’m sorry. I wish I could.”
- “Words feel small. My love for you is not small.”
- “I don’t know what to say, so I’m just going to be here.”
- “Tell me what you need. If you don’t know, that’s okay. I’ll just be here until you do.”
Bucket 4: Words About Not Being Alone
These are quotes about witness, community, and presence — not the hollow “you’ll get through this,” but the more grounded “I’m here.” They emphasize that connection itself is healing, regardless of whether anything gets resolved. For someone who has been carrying something in private, words that insist on accompaniment can be the most powerful ones of all.
- “We don’t have to do all of it alone. We were never meant to.” — Brené Brown, researcher and author
- “You are loved by people who would show up at 2 a.m. if you asked.”
- “I’m one text away. Always. I mean that.”
- “You are not carrying this alone, even when it feels that way.”
- “Tell me, what is it you plan to do / with your one wild and precious life?” — Mary Oliver, The Summer Day
- “I’m not offering solutions. I’m offering company.”
- “You don’t have to reach out first. I’ll keep reaching.”
- “I know it feels lonely. You’re not carrying it by yourself.”
- “You belong to people who care about you deeply. That hasn’t changed.”
Bucket 5: Words About Strength That Doesn’t Look Strong
Some of the most dangerous messages people receive during hard times are about strength: “You’re so strong.” “You’ll get through this, you’re a fighter.” These phrases, however well meant, can function as pressure — as a requirement to perform resilience rather than actually experience grief. These quotes redefine strength as survival, not performance. They hold open a different kind of door.
- “Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says I’ll try again tomorrow.” — Mary Anne Radmacher
- “Surviving is enough. You don’t have to be thriving.”
- “Getting through this is not about being strong. It’s about being human.”
- “Falling apart is not the opposite of strength. Sometimes it’s the whole point.”
- “There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” — Leonard Cohen, “Anthem”
- “You don’t have to be brave about this.”
- “You may shoot me with your words… But still, like air, I’ll rise.” — Maya Angelou
- “You don’t have to hold this together. Let it be heavy for a while.”
- “There is no performance required. None. Not for me.”
- “Being in pain is not weakness. It’s honesty.”
- “Only people who are capable of loving strongly can also suffer great sorrow, but this same necessity of loving serves to counteract their grief and heals them.” — Leo Tolstoy
Bucket 6: Words That Name the Feeling
These are perhaps the most important bucket of all — quotes that say the thing the person can’t say yet about grief, loss, fear, or exhaustion. When we’re inside the acute experience of pain, we often can’t language it. These words do the naming for us. They hand back a mirror. They say: This specific thing you’re feeling has a name. Other people have been here. You’re allowed to have it.
- “Grief is the price of love.” — widely attributed to Queen Elizabeth II, originally to Dr. Colin Murray Parkes, psychiatrist and grief researcher
- “What you’re feeling is proportionate to what you’ve lost. Don’t minimize it.”
- “Exhaustion is not laziness. Please rest.”
- “Fear is not a sign that you’re doing it wrong. It’s a sign that it matters.”
- “I felt a Cleaving in my Mind — / As if my Brain had split —” — Emily Dickinson
- “What you’re carrying is real. All of it.”
- “This is grief. It doesn’t follow rules. You’re allowed to feel it however it comes.”
- “It’s okay to be angry. It’s okay to be sad. It’s okay to be both at the same time.”
- “You’re allowed to miss what you had, even when what you had was complicated.”
- “There is no wrong way to grieve.”
- “You’re not overreacting. You’re reacting.”
- “What’s broken in you right now is not a flaw. It’s evidence that you loved something.”
- “The thing you’re afraid to say out loud — you’re allowed to say it. Especially to me.”
- “Surviving is enough. Existing is enough. Breathing is enough.”
- “I love you. Full stop. Not despite this. Including this.”
- “Healing begins, sometimes, with just naming what hurts.” — from the framework of Fixing the Foundations
- “I see you. I hear you. I believe you.”
- “You don’t have to be fixed to be loved.”
- “And still, you get up. And still, you try. That is not nothing. That is everything.”
That’s 99. If you want more depth on quotes specifically organized around resilience and keeping going, the related collection at uplifting quotes for hard times covers complementary ground. And for words specifically about strength and moving forward, words of encouragement and strength (QS04) goes deeper into that particular bucket. For quotes about hope, quotes about hope in hard times (QS09) and inspirational quotes to keep going (QS12) are both worth bookmarking.
Both/And: The Text Matters and It Isn’t Enough
Here is something I want to name directly, because it’s the tension that makes this kind of article hard to write and hard to use: the words you choose to send your friend tonight genuinely matter, and they are not a substitute for showing up. The text and the presence are both necessary. Neither is enough alone.
I say this because I’ve watched driven, ambitious women who are good at words and know how to communicate clearly — use the perfect text message as a way of completing an obligation. They find the right thing to say, send it, and feel that they’ve done the thing. The box is checked. And sometimes, especially when geography or timing makes physical presence impossible, a thoughtfully chosen message really is the most that’s available. That’s real. That counts.
But other times, the text is a way of managing our own discomfort with someone else’s pain from a distance. It lets us stay in our kitchen rather than driving over. It lets us be supportive without letting the grief touch us. And the person on the receiving end, who can feel the difference between witnessed and managed — will know. Maybe not consciously, but somewhere under the skin, they’ll register that they received words but not presence.
Elena, a therapist in private practice in Chicago, described reading a long, beautifully worded message from a friend after her father died. “It was exactly the right things to say,” she told me. “Every line was kind. And I cried. And then I put the phone down and I was still alone in my apartment, and she was still at her dinner party, and the words were still just words.” The message wasn’t wrong. It was insufficient — but then, most things are, when someone is grieving. That’s not a failure of the sender. It’s a fact about loss.
The Both/And here is this: send the words, and show up when you can. Don’t wait until you have the perfect thing to say, but don’t use the perfect thing to say as a substitute for your actual presence. A bag of groceries left on the doorstep with a text that says only “I love you” may accomplish more than eleven deleted drafts of exactly the right paragraph. If you’re unsure how to offer support in person, the resources at therapy with Annie include frameworks for exactly this kind of relational work.
The Systemic Lens: Who Is Saying These Words to You?
Women are socialized to be the encouragers. We know what to say to everyone else. We send the texts, make the soup, organize the meal trains. We track who is struggling and what they need, and we deliver it with specificity and care.
This article is built around the assumption that you are the one searching for words to offer someone else. And that’s beautiful. It’s one of the most caring things a person can do. But here’s the question I want to leave with you: Who is saying these words to you?
Because the same women who can reach into this list and extract exactly the right phrase for their friend often have no equivalent practice for themselves. They’ve built a robust infrastructure of outgoing care and a nearly nonexistent infrastructure for receiving it. When their own hard times arrive, and they always do, they find themselves sitting alone at 2:14 in the morning, unable to ask for the thing they’d drive across town to give.
This is not a personal failing. It’s a cultural inheritance. Girls are rewarded from early childhood for emotional responsiveness to others. We’re taught to notice when people are struggling, to respond, to comfort, to minimize our own needs. We become expert at the outgoing direction of this particular river and largely untrained in the incoming direction. Then we wonder why we feel depleted.
The systemic question this article quietly raises isn’t whether you’ve found the right words for your friend. It’s whether you have people in your life who would sit at their own kitchen table at 2:14 a.m., wrestling with eleven deleted drafts, trying to find the right thing to say to you. If the honest answer is “I haven’t let them” — that’s worth sitting with. Not as a crisis, but as an honest assessment. The Strong & Stable newsletter addresses this pattern regularly, as does the work inside Fixing the Foundations. You don’t have to be the sole provider of care in every relationship you’re in. That’s a role, not a requirement.
If the women in your life are the ones who always show up for everyone else and find it nearly impossible to receive, the work at executive coaching with Annie specifically addresses the relational dynamics that make receiving feel so threatening for driven women.
How to Use This List Without Feeling Like a Script
Here’s the practical question: you’ve read through these 99 words of encouragement and identified four or five that seem right. You’re still not sure how to send them without it feeling scripted. A few things worth knowing.
It’s okay to use something from a list. Sending a quote from Leonard Cohen or Brené Brown is not inauthentic — it’s curation. You’re selecting words that carry something true and offering them as a gift. Don’t disqualify yourself from using language you didn’t generate. No one writes their own funeral music.
Add one line in your own voice. The quote plus your own sentence is almost always more powerful than either alone. “This made me think of you” or simply “I don’t have better words than this” — your voice, however imperfect, is the whole point. The quote gives you scaffolding. Your sentence is where you actually show up.
Match the bucket to the moment. If your person is in the first twenty-four hours, go to Bucket 1. If they’ve been in the long middle for months and everyone has stopped checking on them, Bucket 2. Timing matters. The same words that would feel premature on day two might be exactly right on day sixty.
And let yourself be moved by this. If a quote lands somewhere in your chest while you’re reading it — if you feel something shift, trust that. What’s true in you has a much higher chance of landing as true for someone else. The words that cost you something to send are usually the ones that do the most work on the receiving end. If you think your friend might benefit from professional support, connecting with a therapist is something you can gently offer alongside your presence.
Sarah eventually sent her roommate three words: I love you. She pressed send at 2:31 a.m. Her roommate responded with a single heart. They talked the next morning for two hours. Neither of them remembered exactly what was said. But her roommate remembered the timestamp — knowing someone was awake with her, in the dark, trying. That’s what words of encouragement at their best actually do. They don’t fix anything. They make the dark a little less solitary. They say, unambiguously: I’m still here. And that, it turns out, is everything.
For ongoing support as you do this kind of relational work, the resources at Annie Wright Therapy are here for you.
Q: What’s the difference between words of encouragement and toxic positivity?
A: The difference is direction. Words of encouragement move toward the person’s current experience, naming it, witnessing it, sitting with it. Toxic positivity moves away from it — redirecting the person toward a better feeling before they’ve finished having the current one. “This is so hard and I’m here” is encouragement. “Everything happens for a reason” is toxic positivity. The test: does this phrase require the person to abandon where they are in order to receive it? If yes, it’s probably doing harm.
Q: Is it better to say something imperfect or say nothing?
A: In most cases, something imperfect. Silence often registers as indifference, even when it isn’t. Most people don’t need perfect words — they need evidence that someone is thinking about them. An awkward “I don’t know what to say but I’m thinking of you” is more healing than careful silence. The exception is when the “something” is actively minimizing or redirecting; in that case, less is more. But pure absence almost never helps.
Q: What do you say to someone who keeps saying they’re fine when they clearly aren’t?
A: Don’t argue with “fine.” Instead, offer a door that doesn’t require them to walk through it immediately. Something like: “I believe you. I also want you to know that if ‘fine’ ever stops being true, I’m here.” Or simply: “I’m not going to push. I just want you to know I see you, really see you — and I’m not going anywhere.” The goal is to make yourself available without forcing the confrontation. Many people say “fine” because they’ve learned that not-fine has social costs. What shifts that calculus is a person who keeps showing up without requiring performance. Over time, that kind of presence creates safety that permission-giving alone can’t.
Q: Are there words that can make things worse?
A: Yes. The most harmful tend to fall into a few categories. First: unsolicited advice, which implies the person has a problem to solve rather than pain to witness. Second: comparative minimization (“at least you have…” or “some people have it so much worse”) which doesn’t ease suffering; it just adds shame. Third: premature silver linings (“this will make you stronger,” “everything happens for a reason”) — which require the person to perform gratitude for their own pain. Fourth: centering yourself, as in “I can’t imagine how you feel, I’ve been so worried about you,” which shifts the emotional labor back to the person who’s already struggling. None of these are said with malice. But they all ask the person in pain to take care of the person trying to help.
Q: What if I’m going through something hard too — can I encourage someone else without depleting myself?
A: Yes, with honesty. You can say: “I’m in a tender place myself right now, but I want you to know I love you and I’m thinking of you.” What you can’t sustain is the performance of unlimited availability when you’re depleted. Naming your own limits, briefly and without making them the focus, models something important: that we’re all allowed to have them. You can hold someone in your heart without holding them up all by yourself.
Related Reading
Neff, Kristin. Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself. New York: William Morrow, 2011.
Siegel, Daniel J. The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are. 3rd ed. New York: Guilford Press, 2020.
Nouwen, Henri J.M. Out of Solitude: Three Meditations on the Christian Life. Notre Dame: Ave Maria Press, 1974.
Brown, Brené. Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience. New York: Random House, 2021.
Worden, J. William. Grief Counseling and Grief Therapy: A Handbook for the Mental Health Practitioner. 5th ed. New York: Springer Publishing, 2018.
WAYS TO WORK WITH ANNIE
Individual Therapy
Trauma-informed therapy for driven women healing relational trauma. Licensed in 9 states.
Executive Coaching
Trauma-informed coaching for ambitious women navigating leadership and burnout.
Fixing the Foundations
Annie’s signature course for relational trauma recovery. Work at your own pace.
Strong & Stable
The Sunday conversation you wished you’d had years earlier. 20,000+ subscribers.
Annie Wright, LMFT
LMFT · Relational Trauma Specialist · W.W. Norton Author
Helping ambitious women finally feel as good as their résumé looks.
Annie Wright is a licensed psychotherapist (LMFT #95719) and trauma-informed executive coach with over 15,000 clinical hours. She works with driven, ambitious women in repairing the psychological foundations beneath their impressive lives — including Silicon Valley leaders, physicians, and entrepreneurs. Annie is the founder and former CEO of Evergreen Counseling, a multimillion-dollar trauma-informed therapy center she built, scaled, and successfully exited. A regular contributor to Psychology Today, her expert commentary has appeared in Forbes, Business Insider, Inc., NBC, and The Information. She is currently writing her first book with W.W. Norton.
