The river is high this morning, swollen with the week’s rain. Silt-brown water moves past us in broad, quiet currents, carrying branches and debris from somewhere upstream. We walk the gravel path that traces the bank—two figures moving at the pace that difficult conversations require.

She is a director at a healthcare organization, someone responsible for dozens of staff, and she has been talking for ten minutes about an employee who frightens her. Not physically. Emotionally. The employee’s distress fills every room she enters, and my walking companion doesn’t know what to do with it. She doesn’t know what to do with her own response to it either—the tightening in her chest, the urge to fix or flee, the guilt that follows both impulses.

I listen. The path curves away from the water, then back. A heron lifts from the shallows ahead of us, unhurried.

What she is asking, underneath the questions about strategies and scripts, is simpler and harder: How do I stay steady when someone else is falling apart?

I have been asked this question many times, in many forms. Leaders come to me wanting to know how to help their struggling colleagues. It’s a good impulse. But it’s the second question, not the first. The first question has nothing to do with other people. It has to do with the terrain we carry inside us—the inner geography that determines whether we can walk alongside someone else’s difficulty or whether we will stumble on our own unexamined ground.

Your ability to accompany someone through emotional distress depends almost entirely on how well you know your own landscape: the places where you lose footing, the weather patterns of your reactivity, the territories you have learned to avoid. This isn’t a platitude about self-care. It’s how nervous systems actually work. If you haven’t walked your own interior terrain, you will not be able to walk with others through theirs.

The path beside the river is not the river. But you cannot walk the path without knowing the water is there—without understanding its pull, its rhythms, the way it rises and falls with seasons you didn’t choose. Leadership that supports mental health begins here: not with techniques for others, but with honest cartography of the self.

The Inward Foundation

When most people think about empathy or supporting others in distress, they imagine it as an outward-directed skill—something you do for someone else. But empathy is an inward skill first. It is a way of being, not a technique or action. Before you can create a steady, trustworthy presence for someone else, you need to know the ground you’re standing on. This means noticing what happens in you—the internal weather that shifts when difficulty enters the room.

Consider what happens when an employee comes to you visibly distressed. Before conscious awareness catches up, your nervous system has already begun responding. You might notice:

  • Tightening in your chest or stomach
  • An urgent need to fix the problem immediately
  • Discomfort with silence or emotional expression
  • Subtle irritation, impatience
  • A desire to redirect or minimize
  • Your own memories surfacing unbidden

These reactions are not wrong. They are how nervous systems work. But if you are not aware of them—if you haven’t learned to notice your own internal weather—these responses will drive your behavior in ways that may not serve the person in front of you. You will be responding to your own discomfort rather than to what they actually need.

The path beside the river requires that you know your own footing. Otherwise, you are not walking with someone; you are stumbling alongside them, distracted by terrain you cannot see.

Where Your Reactions Come From

The landscape of our reactivity was not formed in adulthood. It was carved earlier, in the slow erosion of childhood experience—paths worn by repetition, territories marked unsafe, drainage patterns that still carry the runoff of old storms.

When children grow up in environments where they don’t feel consistently safe, where emotional needs go unmet, where there is unpredictability or neglect or harm, their nervous systems adapt. They develop strategies to survive those conditions:

  • Hypervigilance to threat or danger
  • Difficulty regulating emotional intensity
  • Challenges with trust and vulnerability
  • Patterns of withdrawal or defensiveness
  • Trouble reading others’ emotional cues accurately
  • Tendency toward over-responsibility or learned helplessness

These are not character flaws. They are adaptive strategies that made sense in the original terrain. The difficulty is that they persist into adulthood, shaping workplace dynamics even when the original threat is long past. The path you learned to walk as a child—avoiding certain ground, scanning for danger, moving quickly through exposed places—becomes the path you walk automatically as an adult.

The statistics are sobering. Research on Adverse Childhood Experiences shows that roughly two-thirds of Canadian adults report at least one category of childhood adversity. About one in eight report four or more. These experiences correlate strongly with adult mental health challenges, chronic health conditions, and difficulties in relationships and work.

This means that in any workplace, most people—including leaders—are carrying unresolved impacts from early terrain. I carry my own. The question is not whether the past has shaped us but whether we have taken the time to understand the shape.

When you recognize your own patterns of reactivity not as personal failings but as strategies that once served a purpose, something shifts. Curiosity replaces self-criticism. You begin to see the map you’ve been walking without knowing it—and that seeing creates the possibility of finding new paths.

Where Emotions Live

One of the most important insights from trauma research is this: unresolved emotions do not reside primarily in your thoughts or memories. They reside in your body. The terrain is not abstract.

Your nervous system records experiences as patterns of sensation, arousal, and response. When something in the present reminds your system of past distress—even if you are not consciously aware of the connection—your body responds as if the original threat is happening now. This is what it means to be activated: a state in which the nervous system shifts into alert or defense mode, often without conscious awareness. The past floods into the present through channels that bypass thought.

I have felt this in myself more times than I can count. A certain tone of voice, a particular kind of silence, and suddenly I am not in the room I thought I was in. The body remembers what the mind has filed away.

For leaders, this has practical implications. If you haven’t developed awareness of how distress shows up in your own body, you won’t recognize it when it arrives. You’ll find yourself reacting—becoming defensive, shutting down, getting sharp—without understanding why. And because you are in a position of power, your unmanaged reactivity has larger ripple effects. The weather you bring into a room does not stay with you alone.

Developing somatic awareness—attention to the body’s sensations and signals—means learning to notice:

  • Where tension gathers in your body
  • How your breathing changes under stress
  • What sensations accompany different emotional states
  • The subtle signals indicating you’re becoming activated
  • The difference between feeling grounded and feeling dysregulated—overwhelmed, reactive, off-balance

The body is the ground beneath your feet. If you cannot feel the ground, you cannot walk steadily. And if you cannot walk steadily yourself, you cannot offer that steadiness to anyone else.

A Companionable Relationship With Difficulty

One of the most important shifts in developing emotional awareness is moving from an adversarial relationship with difficult feelings to something more companionable. This does not mean difficult feelings go away. It means you stop fighting them.

Most people’s default stance toward uncomfortable emotions is resistance: I shouldn’t feel this way. I need to get rid of this feeling. This is unacceptable. The resistance creates additional suffering—you are not just experiencing the original discomfort, you are also at war with it.

The companionable approach means developing the capacity to think: This is uncomfortable, and I can be with it. Or: This feeling makes sense given what I’m experiencing. The shift—from resistance to acceptance, from judgment to curiosity—creates more room for whatever you’re feeling. Paradoxically, this makes those feelings less overwhelming.

Difficult feelings are part of the landscape. They carry information. You can walk through territory that includes them without being consumed by them. When you are not desperately trying to escape your own discomfort, you can be present with someone else’s without needing to fix it immediately.

The river flows. You do not have to stop it. You only have to know it is there, and keep walking.

Empathy Is Not Outward Action

Here is where many well-intentioned leaders go wrong: they believe empathy is something you do—a set of techniques you apply when someone is struggling. They attend a workshop, read some articles, learn about trauma, and conclude they now know how to help people in distress.

This is dangerous territory. A little knowledge can cause harm.

I have watched leaders with surface knowledge of trauma inadvertently wound the people they were trying to help. They approached empathy as a conversational skill—what to say, what to do—without cultivating the inward steadiness that makes genuine presence possible. They read the manual and thought they could fly the helicopter.

True empathy is not an outward action; it is an inward state that you cultivate first in yourself. Only then can it extend into your interactions with others. It requires humility—recognizing how much you don’t know about another person’s experience. It requires self-awareness—understanding your own triggers, biases, patterns. It requires personal work: walking your own difficult terrain, not just reading about it. It is not a certification but a continuous orientation, an ongoing capacity to hold discomfort without rushing to resolve it.

Empathy is learned through exploration and practice, through walking the path yourself—not through memorizing what to say or following scripts. There are no shortcuts across this terrain.

Where to begin? The entry points vary. Some people find their way through therapy or counseling—working with someone skilled at helping you see the patterns you cannot see alone. Others begin with contemplative practices: mindfulness, breath work, body-based awareness training. Journaling can help, particularly the kind that tracks emotional responses and their triggers over time. Leadership coaching that includes emotional intelligence work offers another path. The specific method matters less than the commitment to honest self-examination. Start somewhere. Stay with it.

The Skills That Follow

Once you have begun developing self-awareness—noticing your patterns, understanding their origins, sensing them in your body, moving toward a companionable relationship with difficulty—you can begin building the specific skills that allow you to support others effectively.

These skills are not techniques that replace the inner work. They are capacities that grow from it.

Congruence

Most people become emotionally distressed when there is a gap between what someone says and what they do. In situations where emotions might already be running high, consistency between words, body language, and actions is crucial.

People are exquisitely attuned to mismatches. Any gap—saying “I’m here for you” while checking your phone, expressing concern with an irritated tone, claiming to have time while visibly rushed—undermines trust immediately.

Congruence means bringing your words, body language, emotional expression, and intentions into alignment. This is difficult. It requires that you actually be present rather than performing presence. You cannot fake the path. You must walk it.

Presence

Presence is an active skill, not a passive state. It is not nodding sympathetically while someone talks. It is the practice of maintaining your own groundedness while remaining open to another person’s experience.

Staying with discomfort: Most people want to move away from emotional intensity quickly—fixing, minimizing, changing the subject, offering reassurance. Presence means tolerating the discomfort of not knowing what to say while someone is in pain.

Managing the impulse to intervene: When someone is upset, you will feel urges to advise, solve, redirect. In situations of emotional distress, a listener who immediately pivots to solutions can cause harm by short-circuiting emotional processing. Lead with presence. Solutions come later, if at all.

The practice of pause: One of the most powerful interventions is also the simplest. When someone shares something difficult, pause. Notice the sensations in your own body. Take a breath. Then respond—or don’t. Sometimes continued presence is the only response needed. This sequence—pause, sense, breathe—creates space for genuine connection rather than reactive problem-solving.

Attending to what’s underneath: People often present with surface-level concerns when what’s actually happening is more complex. Presence means being curious about what might be underneath without interrogating or diagnosing.

You are walking beside someone. You are not leading them, not directing them, not carrying them. You are simply walking, at their pace, on the path they are walking.

Holding Space

Holding space—sometimes called containment—is the capacity to remain steady and available while someone else experiences intense emotion, without absorbing their distress or deflecting it. It is the skill of being a sturdy presence that can hold someone’s experience without being shattered by it or refusing to receive it.

This requires knowing where you end and another person begins. You can care deeply about someone’s suffering without making their feelings your responsibility to resolve. Many people in helping roles struggle with this distinction, either becoming enmeshed in others’ distress or maintaining such rigid distance that genuine connection becomes impossible.

The path beside the river is not the river. You can walk close to the water without falling in. You can feel the spray, hear the current, respect its power—without being swept away.

Practical strategies for containment: grounding techniques that help you stay present in your own body, breath awareness that maintains your own regulation, mental reminders that this is their experience not yours, clear understanding of your role boundaries, and knowing when to bring in additional support.

Authentic Language

Supportive conversation works best when you are able to be yourself—when you use your own forms of speech and feel comfortable with what you’re saying. This does not mean saying whatever you want. It means that whatever words you know, whatever styles of speech you use, have within them the possibility to be used in helpful ways.

Research shows that people learn relational skills faster and more effectively when encouraged to explore and experiment in their own ways rather than following scripts. The skills that matter—noticing your reactivity, staying present with distress, maintaining congruence—cannot be learned formulaically. They require practice, reflection, and ongoing adjustment.

Find your own way of walking the path. The path is the same. The walking is yours.

Recognizing When to Stop

One of the most essential skills is recognizing when not to continue a conversation. If certain conditions are not present, the most helpful thing you can do is pause or seek additional support:

  • The person is willing to engage: They are responding, showing some openness to connection
  • They have capacity to process: They are not completely dysregulated, not in active crisis requiring immediate intervention
  • You have capacity: You are grounded enough to maintain presence, not triggered or overwhelmed yourself
  • The setting is appropriate: There is enough privacy, time, and safety
  • You are clear on your role: You know your boundaries and are not trying to be their therapist

If these conditions are not met, acknowledge the limits honestly: “I can see this is really difficult. I want to support you, but I think this might need more than I can offer right now. Let’s figure out what kind of support would help.”

The path does not require that you walk every mile with someone. Sometimes the most helpful thing is recognizing where your path ends and another’s begins.

Recognizing Distress

Most leadership training provides checklists of warning signs: changes in performance, mood, appearance, attendance. These lists are not wrong, but they miss the more fundamental skill: noticing patterns and changes specific to the individual in front of you.

This requires that you actually know your people well enough to recognize when something has shifted. It means paying attention not just to obvious crisis signs but to subtle changes:

  • How someone engages in meetings
  • The quality of their contributions
  • Their interactions with colleagues
  • Their responsiveness and tone
  • Energy and presence

You are not diagnosing. You are noticing that something has changed for this particular person. You are reading the terrain.

It is also important to recognize that high-functioning does not mean fine. Many people experiencing significant mental health challenges become skilled at masking their distress at work. They meet deadlines, attend meetings, present a competent front—while privately struggling. Your role is not to uncover hidden suffering but to create conditions where people feel safe enough to let you know when they need support.

The Conversation

When you notice concerning changes, the most powerful intervention available is a direct conversation. Many leaders avoid these discussions, fearing they’ll say the wrong thing. But silence and avoidance often increase isolation.

The structure of the conversation matters less than the quality of presence you bring to it. That said, how you engage makes an enormous difference in what becomes possible.

The Problem With Questions

Many well-intentioned leaders approach these conversations through questions: “How are you feeling?” “What’s wrong?” “Do you want to talk about it?”

These seem like natural starting points, but they carry a subtle difficulty. Questions—even caring ones—can shift the conversation away from the other person’s experience and toward our own needs as listeners. When we ask questions, we are directing the conversation according to our framework, our curiosity, our discomfort with silence.

The difference between “It seems like you’re carrying something heavy” and “Are you okay?” is the difference between offering presence and seeking information. The first invites. The second probes.

Prompts That Reflect

Instead of questions, offer presence through prompts that reflect and invite:

  • Just checking in…
  • It looks like…
  • It sounds like…
  • I get the sense that…
  • It seems like…
  • Help me understand…
  • What you’re saying is…

These prompts open space without directing it. They reflect what you notice without presuming to know what it means. They invite the other person to continue on their own terms.

“It sounds like today was difficult” leaves room for the person to say more, or nothing, or to correct your perception. “Was today difficult?” puts them in the position of answering your question rather than exploring their experience.

You are walking beside them. Not leading. Not interrogating. Walking.

Making It Your Own

These prompts must be adapted to your own voice. What sounds natural for one person may feel stilted for another. The specific words matter less than the orientation: reflecting rather than questioning, inviting rather than directing, being with rather than solving.

Instead of: “Are you stressed about the deadline?” Try: “It seems like the deadline is weighing on you.”

Instead of: “What’s bothering you?” Try: “I get the sense that something’s shifted for you recently.”

Instead of: “Do you want to talk about it?” Try: “Just checking in… you haven’t seemed yourself lately.”

The Shape of Presence

A simple framework:

  1. Name what you’ve observed specifically “I’ve noticed you’ve missed several meetings this month, which isn’t typical for you.”
  2. Pause and create space After naming your observation, pause. Don’t fill the silence. This pause signals genuine interest.
  3. Listen without rushing to fix When they begin to share, your role remains the same: to listen, to reflect, to stay grounded while holding space for them. You do not need answers. You do not need to fix what they’re feeling.
  4. Continue with reflective prompts as needed “So it sounds like…” or “Help me understand…” These keep you in the role of witness rather than director.
  5. Separate wellbeing from performance when necessary You can care about someone as a person while maintaining job expectations. But in these conversations, lead with concern.
  6. Offer resources without pressuring Most organizations have an Employee Assistance Program (EAP)—confidential counseling and support services available to staff at no cost. Mentioning this as an option, not a directive, respects autonomy: “We have an EAP that offers confidential counseling—would you like information about it?”
  7. Know when safety is at risk If someone mentions thoughts of suicide or self-harm, this moves beyond your scope. Know your organization’s crisis protocols.

What to Avoid

  • Rapid-fire questions
  • Premature solutions
  • Minimizing (“I’m sure it’s not that bad”)
  • Making it about yourself
  • Forcing disclosure
  • Diagnosing

The goal is not to extract information or solve their problem. The goal is to demonstrate that you have noticed, that you care, and that support is available. Often, the most powerful support happens through simple, consistent presence—walking beside someone without needing to change their direction.

What happens after the conversation? Follow up, but lightly. A brief check-in a few days later—“Just wanted to see how you’re doing”—signals continued care without creating pressure. If they’ve connected with resources, you don’t need to monitor their progress. Your role is to keep the door open, not to walk through it with them.

When the Terrain Itself Is Hostile

Even the most self-aware, skilled leader cannot resolve systemic problems through individual conversations. If multiple people are showing signs of distress, if high performers keep burning out, if mental health struggles appear pervasive rather than isolated—the problem is organizational, not individual.

The path we have been discussing assumes walkable terrain. But sometimes the terrain itself is the problem.

Mental health emerges from the dynamic interaction between people and their environments. This ecological perspective means examining:

Workload and expectations: Are deadlines consistently unrealistic? Are people expected to be always available? Is there chronic understaffing?

Autonomy and control: Do people have meaningful input into their work, or is everything directed from above?

Clarity: Are expectations clear, or do priorities shift constantly?

Relationships: Do people trust each other enough for difficult conversations, or is there toxicity and undermining?

Recognition: Do people feel valued, or are contributions taken for granted?

Psychological safety: Can people speak up, admit mistakes, ask for help without fear?

These systemic factors shape workplace mental health more than any wellness program or individual intervention. If the environment is chronically depleting people’s resources, your empathy skills will not be enough. You cannot walk a path through a landscape that keeps washing out beneath your feet.

This is where leadership has the most leverage: not just in responding well when people struggle, but in changing the conditions that create struggle in the first place. Your self-awareness must extend to organizational awareness—noticing patterns, questioning assumptions, being willing to change structures that harm even when they are convenient.

If you are a mid-level leader, you may read this and think: I see the problems, but I don’t control workload expectations or staffing decisions. This is real. You cannot single-handedly fix a broken system. But you can advocate upward, naming what you observe and its costs. You can protect your team from what you can protect them from. You can be honest with them about what you can and cannot change. And you can refuse to pretend that individual resilience is the answer to structural harm.

The Long Practice

Supporting mental health as a leader is not a competency you acquire and then possess. It is an ongoing practice that requires sustained attention to your own patterns, continuous learning, and genuine commitment to creating workplaces where people can bring their full humanity.

The river keeps flowing. The path continues. There is no destination where you arrive and the walking is done.

The most important thing you can do is commit to your own ongoing journey—understanding your emotional patterns, managing your reactivity, developing authentic presence. Everything else follows from that foundation.

When leaders engage this work genuinely—not as performance but as real investigation of their own terrain—the effects ripple outward. People feel safer, more seen, more able to do their work. Not because the leader has become everyone’s therapist, but because the leader has become more present, more aware of their own geography, and therefore more capable of walking alongside others through theirs.

We finish our walk, the director and I. The river has curved away behind us, hidden now by trees. She is quieter than when we started, but it is a different kind of quiet—not the constriction of anxiety but something more settled. She hasn’t solved anything. Neither have I. But something has shifted in how she is carrying what she carries.

That is often what walking together does. Not solving. Not fixing. Just walking, side by side, until the path ahead looks different than it did before.

Questions for Reflection

  • What is your own inner terrain like? Where do you lose footing?
  • When someone else’s distress enters the room, what happens in your body?
  • What strategies did you develop in childhood that still shape how you respond to difficulty?
  • Can you be with uncomfortable feelings without fighting them?
  • What would it mean to walk beside someone rather than trying to lead them somewhere?