Don't interrupt silence unless you can improve on it. And you start giving advice, You have not done what I asked. When I ask you to listen to me, And you begin to tell me why I shouldn't feel that, Way, you are trampling on my feelings. When I ask you to listen to me and you feel you have to do something to solve my problem, you have failed me, strange as that may seem. All I asked was that you listen, Not talk or do, Just hear me.
Advice is cheap.
A quarter will get you both Dear Abby and Billy Graham in the same newspaper. And I can do for myself. I'm not helpless, maybe discouraged and faltering, but not helpless. When you do something for me, that I can and need to do for myself, you contribute to my fear and inadequacy. But when you accept as a simple fact, that I do feel what I feel, no matter how irrational, then I can quit trying to convince you and can get about the business of understanding what's behind this irrational feeling, and when that's clear, the answers are obvious and I don't need advice.