How to help someone you love who is struggling, without trying to rescue them

The Short Version

The three voices here agree that the instinct to step in and fix a struggling person usually backfires, and that stepping back in frustration does no better. Psychologist Lisa Damour says to first work out whether there is a problem at all: painful feelings that fit the situation are healthy, and the real warning signs are a mood that gets in the way of living and coping that comes at a cost [1]. When those signs are there, she says to side with the part of the person that wants help instead of fighting the part that doesn't [1]. Addiction doctor Sarah Wakeman says threats, ultimatums and waiting for someone to hit bottom do not work, and that love, safety and hope do [2]. Mel Robbins adds the everyday version for a child who keeps calling home: validate the feeling, then ask "what do you think you should do?" instead of solving it for them [3].

Table of contents

What They Said

Lisa Damour: first decide whether this is a problem

Damour is a clinical psychologist and the author of Untangled, Under Pressure and The Emotional Lives of Teenagers [1]. Robbins went back to their conversation because someone close to her and her husband Chris had been struggling for months, and she describes the trap she wanted out of: "My attempt to help just makes things worse." [1] You ask questions because you are anxious, she says, and give advice because you can see a disaster coming, and the person barricades themselves in their room [1].

Damour's first move is to correct what she thinks the culture has backwards. Being mentally well does not mean feeling calm or happy [1]. Psychologists do not ask whether someone feels good. They ask two questions: "Do the feelings fit the circumstance? And are they managed well?" [1]

Her examples are ordinary. If a kid gets dumped, we expect distress, and its absence would be concerning [1]. If a teenager has a huge test tomorrow and has not started studying, we want to see some anxiety: "The absence of anxiety is more concerning than the presence of anxiety." [1] If someone is really mean to you, whether you are a teenager or an adult, we expect hurt and then probably a self-protective anger [1]. All of these are unpleasant, unwanted emotions, and all of them are evidence that the person works exactly as they should [1].

The cost of missing this, she says, is that people spend their normal, healthy days feeling like something is wrong with them [1]. In her words, "for far too many people, uncomfortable feels like unmanageable" [1]. She treats emotions as data: if you always leave lunch with a certain person feeling diminished, that is useful information [1]. She adds that there is no single right feeling for a situation, because feelings are shaped by who a person is and what has come before, so she takes a curious stance toward emotion instead of a judging one [1].

For a helper, the consequence is that a loved one's sadness, worry or anger is not by itself a reason to intervene [1].

Damour's two red flags

Since distress is normal, Damour watches for two other things [1].

The first is mood that interferes with life: sadness that has become a depression casting a pall over everything, or anxiety that has become paralyzing [1]. Robbins offers her own list of what that looks like, such as opting out of seeing friends and dropping the routines of showering, exercising and eating [1].

The second is what Damour calls "costly coping": managing feelings in ways that bring relief but come with a price [1]. Her examples are abusing substances, being incredibly hard on the people around you, and turning it against yourself, whether by running yourself down or by self-harm [1]. The cost may not be immediate, but it arrives over time [1].

Then comes the point Robbins says she had never heard put so plainly. People do these things because they work. "People only do things that actually work for them, but they come with a price tag." [1] Damour's training rests on the idea that humans are rational actors, so even destructive behavior serves a purpose, such as numbing pain [1]. Her job as a clinician, she says, is to understand why someone is doing the thing that is damaging their life, so that they can then feel they have some choices [1].

Damour: stick up for the part that wants help

This is where her advice turns into a method. If you simply demand that someone stop, you create a conflict between you and the part of them that knows the behavior is helping [1]. If you acknowledge that it is working for them at some level, the conflict moves inside the person, between the part that is doing it and the part that does not want to be [1]. The job of the helpful outsider, as she puts it, is to get that conflict going and to stick up for the side that wants to be healthier [1].

She learned the language from a senior clinician, for the most frightening case, a client talking about suicide. The clinician would say that clearly part of you is really thinking about hurting yourself, but part of you wants help, and that is the part telling me about these thoughts, and "I'm going to stick up for the part of you that wants help" [1]. Damour adds: "And that's how you don't turn it into a fight." [1]

Robbins asks what to do when the person has not told you anything, because these behaviors are often hidden, and you find out by smelling weed from the bedroom or noticing that a young person has harmed themselves [1]. Damour's first step is about the helper. Get to a place where you feel a bit centered, because "Reacting strongly in those moments does not go well." [1] Sometimes you do have to confront a person about their behavior, she says, and the way to do it is to team up with what she believes all teenagers and all adults have, "that growth-giving, health-seeking side" [1].

In a role-play, with Robbins playing a teen smoking weed in his bedroom, Damour models staying centered, not reacting in the moment and giving the kid room to respond [1]. Her favorite phrase is "what you're doing isn't working," followed by a commitment to find another way to address the pain [1]. She passes on a supervisor's rule to keep responses to eight words or fewer, because longer responses go into someone's head and bypass their heart [1].

Robbins says she wishes she had known this when her husband's depression came to a head, instead of being the one pounding on the door [1].

Damour: vent or help, and the garbage bag

Robbins describes her daughters calling in tears, unloading, and then moving on happily while she lies awake worrying [1]. Damour says this is normal and has a name, externalization, a defense that is especially common in adolescence [1]. She did it herself: she called her mother from college in Connecticut saying she had no friends, then went out and had a great time while her mother nearly drove across the plains to get her [1].

Her advice is one question: "do you want my help or do you just need to vent?" [1] Most of the time they just need to vent [1]. Then picture opening an emotional garbage bag, let them fill it, and dispose of it when the call ends instead of carrying it to bed [1].

She also describes how distress tends to come out differently. With caveats about overlapping and understudied groups, she says a consistent finding is that "girls are more likely to discuss and boys are more likely to distract" [1]. Both are healthy in moderation, like venting to a best friend or shooting hoops to blow off steam [1]. The trouble is at the extremes. Endless discussion can spread distress to friends and turn into rumination, which she likens to picking at an emotional wound [1]. Constant distraction means a boy gets no social support and falls behind in putting feelings into words [1].

For rumination, she suggests saying that talking usually helps, but the more you talk the worse you feel, then setting a time to come back to it tomorrow and taking a "mental vacation" in between; by the next day it has often shrunk [1]. For distraction that has become costly, like eight hours of video games instead of homework, she acknowledges the need to decompress while asking whether there is another way to feel better [1]. She reminds parents that boys express emotion in many ways besides words [1].

Damour: the steady presence

Asked for the bottom line, Damour says: "Our job is to try to be a steady presence." [1] That means not getting as agitated as the person you are trying to help, and listening and offering empathy, which is often all they want [1]. Teenagers watch adults' reactions. If the adult hits the ceiling, the teen concludes that a "15-year-old size bad" day is actually "52-year-old size bad" [1]. A two-word acknowledgment that something stinks shows you are present without panicking [1].

She closes with the finding she considers most important: the single most powerful force for protecting teenage mental health is strong relationships with caring adults, more than medication or therapy alone [1].

Sarah Wakeman: love, safety and hope, not tough love

Wakeman is senior medical director for substance use disorder at Mass General Brigham and an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School [2]. Her subject is alcohol, but her advice to families is about how any hard change happens.

She starts with the facts she thinks families most need. Alcohol use disorder, defined as losing control over drinking, compulsive use and using despite consequences, affects about 15% of people at some point in their lives [2]. It is treatable, and most people get well [2]. The belief that it is hopeless feeds stigma and shame [2]. She wants it treated as "a health condition like any other" and not a moral or willpower issue [2].

She calls tough love, enabling and hitting bottom some of the biggest fallacies [2]. Her reasoning has two parts. First, the definition of alcohol use disorder is being unable to stop despite bad things happening to you, so adding more bad things is not a treatment [2]. Second, many people drink because it is a powerful coping mechanism, and the things that put a person at risk are traumatic life experiences, untreated anxiety and depression, and not feeling good about yourself [2]. Having the only people you love and trust cut you down to size, tell you that you are doing something terrible and set an ultimatum is not going to help you get well [2].

Her general statement of it: "None of us make hard changes when we feel threatened or sort of punished or not supported." [2] What people need instead is this: "We do want to feel loved and safe and have hope that our life could be better." [2] As a loved one, she says, "that's probably the greatest gift you can give to the person" [2].

For a spouse or family member, she advises sharing your worries lovingly, without blame or judgment, the way you would about any health concern, and exploring what the person thinks [2]. What matters most for change is whether the person believes their own life will get better [2]. So a partner can act as a mirror, connecting the drinking to the person's own goals, such as a promotion put at risk by sick days [2].

She gives the words. It does not matter how many times you have ignored the problem or had an unproductive conversation, she says; in that moment the most important things to communicate are "I love you. I'm worried about you. I'm here for you. I know that treatment works." [2] Then say how you can support them [2]. She points out what those sentences have in common: you are talking about yourself, your care and your concern, rooting everything in how much you love the person, and offering to be a partner in finding support and treatment [2].

She sets expectations about timing. It may not happen that day, and it usually doesn't [2]. "Often the journey to recovery is the circuitous journey of a thousand small steps." [2] It is very rarely the dramatic moment seen on TV, and "those small moments of kindness and support actually are progress" [2].

Wakeman: boundaries are for you

Wakeman does not pretend this is easy for families. As a doctor, she says, whether a patient keeps drinking does not affect her personally: "I can just be their partner, their champion" [2]. She has been on the other side with family members, and it is a different experience, because the family is directly affected by the behavior [2].

So she makes room for boundaries, with a distinction. There are times when the behavior becomes so unsafe that people have to keep themselves safe and set boundaries, and that is okay [2]. But it is not done for the other person's benefit: "if you kick someone out of your house, it's not going to necessarily help them get better" [2]. A boundary is for your own emotional safety or well-being, and it is not a treatment strategy [2].

She also changes what a setback means. When people are not meeting their goals, it signals that the support or treatment is not enough, not that the person is failing [2]. And anyone dealing with trauma, depression or anxiety needs help with those too [2].

For parents of college-age kids, she recommends starting young and staying pragmatic instead of using scare tactics, noting that DARE-style fear messaging can actually increase drug use [2]. Talk about risks that matter to a 19-year-old, such as unsafe or sexually vulnerable situations and missed classes [2]. Make sure your child feels safe coming to you about small things, so they will come to you about big ones [2]. It is never too late to start [2].

To the person on the receiving end, the one whose worried relative sent them the episode, she says: "take this as a message of love" [2].

Mel Robbins: support their problem solving, don't do it for them

Robbins speaks as a parent in the middle of it. Days after dropping her youngest son, Oakley, at college, she addresses parents whose kids call home constantly, homesick and wanting to transfer [3]. She knows the script: I hate it here, everybody has friends, nobody likes me, this is not the place for me [3]. Her guess about what such kids are doing between calls is that they are spending a lot of time alone in their dorm rooms on their phones, looking at what their high school friends are doing [3].

Her question is how to handle an adult child who is "using you as a human life raft" [3]. Her answer is that supporting a kid as they learn to fly is different from leaping out of the nest to catch them in midair: "Some little birds need to hit the ground in order to take flight." [3]

She cites Harvard psychiatrist Dr. Robert Waldinger's advice to her: "do not shield the people you love from the consequences of what they choose" [3]. The kids chose to go to college, she notes; nobody dragged them there [3]. The problem is that parents care so much that they try to solve the problems themselves, and "Every time you do that, you're training them to expect you to rescue them." [3] Her correction to herself: "I'm supposed to support them in their own problem solving." [3]

Her example is deliberately small. Oakley called her and Chris over and over about immunization forms he needed to submit [3]. The old Mel would have spent hours handling it. Instead she asked, "what do you think you should do?" and guided him to walk the email over to the student health center [3]. Kids usually know what to do, she says; they just do not want to do it, and colleges are full of people whose job is to help [3]. She calls this untraining them from treating you "like a human Google." [3]

On anxiety she quotes Harvard's Dr. Luana Marques: "The more you allow someone to avoid the things that they're anxious to do, the bigger their anxiety gets." [3] Constantly talking about problems becomes rumination, which digs people in deeper [3]. She puts the parent's part bluntly: "every single time you entertain that call, you're making them feel like their emotions and their fear are correct" [3].

Her own story is the evidence she offers. In her first semester she had a full-blown homesickness panic and called her mother collect from the dorm pay phone every day for two weeks [3]. Finally her mother told her to "stop calling me and go make some friends," and warned that if the calls continued she would be coming home at Thanksgiving to stay and go to community college [3]. Robbins says: "It was the tough love that I needed." [3] By that afternoon she was a different person, because she no longer had her mother as an outlet for avoiding what she knew she needed to do, which was to put herself out there and introduce herself to people [3].

Her practical advice is gentler than that story: validate their feelings, then ask what one thing they could do right now to feel better, which shows you believe they can handle it [3].

She also turns the question on the helper. A parent's urge to text a child to fill a quiet house is the same pattern in reverse, and her line is "Your kid is not the solution to your emotional discomfort." [3] Her experiment for the first 30 days is to wait 30 minutes whenever you want to text your kid just to fill time [3]. If the kids are not texting, she says, that is good, because they are out making their own way [3].

Where They Agree, and Where They Don't

Agreement: you cannot do it for them

All three place the change inside the struggling person. Damour moves the conflict from between you and them to within them, and backs the healthy side [1]. Wakeman says what matters most is whether the person believes their own life will get better, and has the partner act as a mirror for the person's own goals [2]. Robbins asks the child what they think they should do [3]. In each case the helper asks or reflects instead of deciding. As Robbins says of any hard change, "Nobody can do it for you." [3]

Agreement: your own state is part of the help

Damour tells the helper to get centered first and warns that teens size up a problem by the adult's reaction [1]. Wakeman tells families to speak from love and worry, without blame or judgment [2]. Robbins sat on her hands instead of texting her son, and tells parents not to use their kids to manage their own discomfort [3]. Each of them is saying that a panicking helper makes things worse.

Agreement: avoidance and endless talk make anxiety grow

Damour and Robbins make the same point from separate sources. Damour calls it the most important and least publicized finding: "avoidance feeds anxiety" [1]. Robbins quotes Marques to the same effect [3]. Both warn about rumination, and both think more talking is sometimes the wrong medicine [1][3]. Robbins even recognizes herself in Damour's account: she remembers her childhood homesickness at camp, which she escalated until her parents came to get her [1].

Disagreement: is tough love a fallacy or what some people need?

Here the sources differ. Wakeman calls tough love and hitting bottom fallacies and says ultimatums from loved ones do not help people get well [2]. Robbins says some little birds need to hit the ground, repeats Waldinger's advice not to shield people from consequences, and credits her mother's ultimatum with turning her around in an afternoon [3].

Each holds the view for a reason tied to the situation in front of them. Wakeman is talking about alcohol use disorder, which by definition means being unable to stop despite consequences, and which often rests on trauma, anxiety, depression or low self-worth [2]. A person in that position cannot simply choose to act differently once the price goes up, and being cut down by the people they trust adds to what they are drinking to escape [2]. Robbins is talking about a capable young adult who is avoiding a discomfort they are able to face, with a parent whose availability has become the means of avoiding it [3]. In that case the parent's rescue is the thing keeping the problem going [3].

Read closely, they are less far apart than the labels suggest. Robbins's actual script begins with validating the feeling and ends with a question that expresses confidence in the child [3]. Wakeman allows firm limits, as long as the family is honest that they are for its own well-being [2]. What Wakeman rules out is punishment as a strategy for making someone change, and nothing in Robbins's immunization-form example is punishment [2][3].

Disagreement: take the call or end it?

Damour's response to a tearful call is to ask whether the person wants help or just needs to vent, receive it, and let it go afterward [1]. Robbins warns that entertaining the daily call confirms the child's fear, and her mother's cure was to stop taking the calls [3].

The difference is in what the call is doing. In Damour's account, externalization works: Robbins's daughters unload and move on happily, and Damour herself hung up and went out with friends [1]. In Robbins's account, the calls went on every day for two weeks while she stayed in her room [3]. Damour has her own answer for that second pattern. When talking makes someone feel worse, she says so, sets a time to revisit it, and prescribes a break [1]. And for avoidance she prescribes small steps of exposure, not more listening [1].

Why It Works

Harmful coping works, so attacking it fails

Damour's explanation of why demands backfire is that costly coping does its job. It brings relief [1]. A person told to stop is being asked to give up something that works, by someone who does not seem to understand that, and so they defend it [1]. Acknowledging the function removes the reason to defend it and leaves the person facing their own mixed feelings [1]. Wakeman describes drinking in the same terms, as a powerful coping mechanism for pain that predates it [2].

People change when they feel safe and hopeful

Wakeman's mechanism is motivational. Hard changes do not happen under threat or punishment, and they do happen when people feel loved and safe and believe their life could be better [2]. Her evidence about fear-based messaging supports this: DARE-style scare tactics can increase drug use [2]. Robbins makes a similar observation about marriages, that people only change when they feel like changing, and that you cannot change a spouse, only yourself [3].

Avoidance is rewarded immediately

Damour explains the loop. Skipping a feared party brings instant relief, which teaches avoidance, and the imagined horrors never get tested against reality [1]. Avoiding school also puts a teen behind socially and academically, which gives them more to dread [1]. The agreed answer across psychology, she says, is exposure in small steps, such as going to the party for 20 minutes with an easy way out [1]. Breathing and reframing help, but "avoidance is anxiety's best friend." [1] This is the same mechanism Robbins describes in her own story: once the outlet for avoiding was gone, she did the uncomfortable thing and felt different by the afternoon [3].

Rescue is a kind of training

Robbins's mechanism is learning by repetition. Each time a parent solves the problem, the child learns to expect it [3]. Asking what they think they should do reverses the lesson and tells them the parent believes they can handle it [3].

Calm is information

Damour's point about reactions is that a young person uses the adult as a gauge. An agitated adult tells them the situation is as bad as an adult-sized catastrophe [1]. A steady one tells them it is survivable [1]. Robbins adds a reminder she uses on herself during hard transitions: "just because it feels bad doesn't mean it is bad" [3].

Asking about suicide does not plant it

Damour says thoughts of suicide are not rare, and the answer is to ask directly: explain why you are asking, then ask whether they have had thoughts of harming themselves or ending their life [1]. Asking does not plant the idea, and research shows that "if a teenager is thinking about suicide, they're glad you asked." [1] Robbins shares that her son revealed on an earlier episode that he had had such thoughts as a freshman [1].

Where It Applies, and Where It Doesn't

Much of Damour's material is about teenagers, and she defines adolescence broadly, from around age 11 to about 24 or 25, when reasoning is still more easily knocked offline under stress [1]. But she and Robbins both stress that it applies to partners, friends and adults too, and her suicide example comes from adult clinical work [1].

The no-rescue rule fits ordinary struggles that a person is able to work through: homesickness, a form that needs submitting, friendships that have not formed yet [3]. It does not fit Damour's red flags. A mood that has taken over someone's life, self-harm, substance abuse or thoughts of suicide call for stepping toward the person, directly and calmly, and for professional help [1].

Consequences are not a tool for addiction. Wakeman is explicit that kicking someone out will not necessarily help them get better, and that a relapse or a missed goal means the support is not yet enough [2]. Families may still need boundaries for their own safety, on the understanding that this is what they are for [2].

Venting is fine until it isn't. Damour's garbage bag is for the person who unloads and moves on [1]. When the same conversation repeats and leaves them worse, both she and Robbins treat it as rumination and steer toward a break or an action [1][3].

There are specific signs worth knowing for eating disorders. Damour says a teenager losing weight is unusual during development, and that dropping whole food categories is a warning: "Everybody who goes on to developing an eating disorder drops a food category." [1] She suggests gently asking whether they are taking good care of themselves [1]. She also believes social media feeds of ultra-thin, ultra-fit images affect real behavior, and Robbins shares that her daughter deleted Instagram during treatment for disordered eating [1].

Damour's test for bringing in a professional is simple: it is time when what you are doing is not working and you have run out of ideas at home [1]. Because teenagers often secretly worry that something is wrong with them, she suggests putting it this way: "listen, for what you are up against, you deserve way more support than you have." [1] To find a therapist, she recommends asking your pediatrician, who knows your child and the local clinicians [1].

If someone is talking about harming themselves, is losing weight or cutting out foods, or cannot stop drinking, involve a doctor or mental health professional; this article is not a substitute for that care [1][2].

What To Do With It

1. Ask Damour's two questions before you act: do the feelings fit the circumstance, and are they being managed well? If the answer to both is yes, your job is company, not intervention [1].

2. Watch for the two red flags: a mood that gets in the way of living, and coping that carries a price, such as substances, lashing out, running themselves down or self-harm [1].

3. Calm yourself before you say anything. Damour's rule is to get centered first, and to keep what you say to about eight words [1].

4. When someone unloads on you, ask "do you want my help or do you just need to vent?" If it is venting, listen, then let it go when the conversation ends [1].

5. If the coping has become harmful, name both sides and pick one. Acknowledge that it is helping them in some way, say "what you're doing isn't working," and tell them you are sticking up for the part of them that wants help [1].

6. For drinking or drug use, use Wakeman's words: "I love you. I'm worried about you. I'm here for you. I know that treatment works." Then offer specific help finding treatment, connect the change to their own goals, and do not expect an answer that day [2].

7. Drop ultimatums as a way to make someone change. If you need a boundary for your own safety or well-being, set it, and be honest with yourself that it is for you [2].

8. For a capable person who keeps asking you to fix things, validate the feeling and then ask "what do you think you should do?" or what one thing they could do right now to feel better [3].

9. Do not help someone avoid what frightens them. Agree on a small step instead, like Damour's 20 minutes at the party with an easy way out [1][3].

10. If you are worried about suicide, ask directly, after explaining why you are asking. And when you have run out of ideas at home, bring in a professional, starting with the person's doctor or pediatrician [1].

Sources

1. Dr. Lisa Damour on How to Help Someone You Love Who Is Struggling · The Mel Robbins Podcast
2. What Happens to Your Body and Mind When You Stop Drinking Alcohol · The Mel Robbins Podcast
3. Mel Robbins on the Empty Nest: How to Handle Big Life Changes and Launch Your Next Chapter · The Mel Robbins Podcast