Beyond self-awareness—which really is the foundation for what follows here—we can learn a host of specific skills when engaging with someone in emotional distress. The suggestions which follow are offered as general guidelines, notes, and overall recommendations. However, everyone is unique, and individual responses to these strategies and tactics vary widely depending on many factors, most of which are at least somewhat unpredictable. People are not automatons, and their behavior does not follow deterministic rules. At the same time, these guidlines provide a solid framework for anyone seeking to be useful in moments of turmoil.
Pacing and Rhythm
Watch for dissociation, freezing, anxiety, anger—these are trauma responses that signal the nervous system is overwhelmed. When you see these signs, adjust your approach. Slow down. Create more space. Check in about safety.
Know when to engage. Not every emotional expression needs intervention. Sometimes people need to feel what they feel without someone trying to help. Timing is difficult. Outcomes are unpredictable.
Follow their rhythm, not yours. Let them lead the pace. Your agenda about what should happen next is less important than their actual experience in this moment.
The Trauma Vortex
The trauma vortex is a metaphor for describing emotional states—intense, overwhelming, overpowering—that are beyond conscious control. In these situations, the body takes over. The thinking mind loses its capacity to regulate experience.
Helping someone in the vortex requires a calm, attentive presence. Talking may not reach them. Explanations won’t help. What matters is physical safety and comfort—creating conditions where the nervous system can gradually settle.
The body needs to feel safe enough to yield control back to the thinking mind.
The Pause
The trauma vortex doesn’t arrive all at once. Emotional activation builds over time. Typically there is an observable moment when the activation shifts—this almost always involves slowing speech, then a pause.
Not all pauses in speech are trauma signals. But signals of the impending trauma vortex almost always include a pause. It’s the moment when the nervous system is deciding whether to tip over into overwhelm.
If you engage at any time up to the pause, you can often help someone avoid the vortex. A simple intervention—grounding, a gentle question, a reflection of what you’re noticing—can interrupt the cascade.
The pause is the last moment at which talking alone can help bring a person back to emotional safety.
When someone moves beyond the pause and into the trauma vortex, the nature of your assistance changes. This article offers practical strategies for those moments—and for the broader work of supporting others in distress.
Beyond the Pause
Once that moment has passed, the nature of your assistance changes from conversation to physical action. Talking to someone deep in the vortex often doesn’t work—they can’t process language in that state.
Instead: escort them to a safe space. Encourage movement—walking helps discharge activation. Reduce stimulation. Create quiet. Stay present without demanding interaction.
The window after the pause is brief. Use it with care.
Integration happens when the nervous system settles.
Guide by Walking
The discharge of emotional activation is often facilitated by movement. Whenever possible, ask a person to walk with you—especially if the walking leads toward a place of safety.
Sometimes, just walking around a contained space works just as well. The bilateral movement of walking activates both hemispheres of the brain and helps integrate overwhelming experience.
Movement creates space for both parties to regulate.
Trauma-Informed Language
Certain phrases support someone who is struggling:
- Please take care of yourself.
- You decide how much to engage.
- If you need a break, let me show you where to go.
- Strong reactions are normal.
- Your reactions are unique to you.
- It’s OK to be emotional. I will stay with you.
- Do what works for you.
- Tell me what you need.
These phrases communicate safety, validate experience, and return agency to the person. The last one, however (Tell me what you need) can be tricky. Often people don’t know what they need, or they suddenly feel pressure to answer a complex question, or come up with a positive direction, or any number of things that all have to do with the fact that what we need gets to the very root of human suffering. So, if you’re going to ask that question, be sure that the other person wants to give a clear answer. (Sometimes I say Do you know what you might need? See further down for more on asking questions in general.)
Stay Until Safe
When a person is emotionally activated, it takes time for the body to cycle through—typically five to fifteen minutes. Whenever possible, stay with them for at least this long.
You don’t have to talk the whole time. Just being with a person, in companionable silence, can be enough. Your grounded presence communicates safety even without words.
Stay present, grounded, attentive, positive, and open—all at the same time.
Signals of Safety
Before leaving someone who has been activated, watch for these signals of settling:
- Body settling (eyes focused, breathing quieted, skin flushing resolved)
- Eye contact returning (though cultural factors affect this)
- Boundary setting through body language
- Adjusting, stretching, shifting position
If these signals are not present, stay longer or get additional help.
Advanced Skills
Several additional skills support effective helping. They also require quite a bit of practice.
Minimize Self-Disclosure
Your story is not their story. Your solutions are not their solutions. Self-disclosure is hard to resist—especially when their experience resonates with yours—but it makes the conversation about you.
Sometimes self-disclosure can be useful, particularly among people with shared experience (veterans, survivors of similar traumas). But usually it shifts focus in unhelpful ways.
You can’t put your disclosure back in the bag. Once shared, it becomes part of the relationship and may be difficult to set aside.
If someone asks directly about your experience, you have options:
- Happy to talk about it later; let’s get you safe first.
- It’s complicated… (and redirect)
- I don’t talk about that in this setting.
All options redirect focus back to them.
Difference and Advocacy
Culture is not monolithic. Assumptions based on background often miss the individual person in front of you. Watch for your own activation when encountering values, beliefs, or lifestyles that differ from yours. Choose when and how to respond—not from reactivity.
Decide when to advocate or educate—and recognize that the moment of crisis is usually not the right time. Effective advocacy is grounded in empathy. Leading with argument before connection often backfires. Lead with empathy, follow with action.
Questions and Advice
Almost invariably, people ask too many questions and give too much advice in situations of intended support. Questions make the conversation about you (and your needs; what you need to know, or where you need to steer the conversation). Advice derails the self-awareness exploration required for personal growth.
Solutions to real human problems are always unique to the person. The process of finding those solutions can be harmed by well-meaning listeners who are uncomfortable with the messiness of feelings. In the midst of that discomfort, many people turn to questions and advice. Try not to do that. Avoid questions and advice. Instead, make statements (like those outlined above) that focus on the feelings and experiences of the person you are trying to support.
If you must ask questions, consider: Does this deepen their process or yours? Questions should clarify and deepen the experience of the other person, not satisfy your curiosity.
If you can get there without a question, do it. Reflections and observations usually work better.
If you do ask questions, maintain a rough ratio of five reflections to one question.
Some useful questions:
- What do you need? (about which, more above)
- What do you want to do?
- What happens next?
- How are you feeling?
Questions to avoid:
- Would you like some feedback? (sets up unsolicited advice)
- Have you considered…? (advice disguised as a question)
- Are you OK? (invites a non-answer)
It’s OK to tell people where to look, but rarely helpful to tell them what to see.
Continue to The Practice of Empathy to learn the skills of empathic listening and genuine presence—a lifelong practice.