How to Get Somebody to Open Up to You Without Any Effort
By: Brandon Bell
Tags: Friends, Relationships, Vulnerability, Helping Others, Friendship

Can’t you just tell when something is wrong with your friend? They give you the occasional “I’m good,” but you know something is up. It’s hard to get your friends to open up to you. As their friend, you don’t want to see them down in the dumps because if they’re not happy then you’re not happy.

You can’t expect your friends to open up to you every time something is going left in their life, either it can be too much to get into, or it’s too tough to explain. You know this feeling, there’s been times where you’ve been hurt before and didn’t know how to open up about it.

Even with my time in therapy, I had many appointments where the conversation was all small talk and nothing was solved. Even though I was there to see a therapist and talk to him about what was going on in my life, I couldn’t bring myself to it.

This is important to understand when it comes to your friends, no matter who you are to them, opening up may not be something that they want to do at the moment. There’s something that you’ll always not know about your friends, this isn’t a bad thing but it’s something that everyone in a relationship goes through.

You know something is wrong with your friends when the long and funny conversations start to become shorter and shorter with every phone call. It’s not a good feeling, you start wondering if you did something wrong or if they are really upset. You even begin to wonder how much longer your friendship will last with that person, it’s ok to have these thoughts because this is why you want to help.

As much as you want them to be ok, you also want them to still be your friend at the end of the day. Also, you don’t want their negativity to get to an extreme.

Match Their Mood

Matching somebody’s mood is the closest you will be to being in their shoes, this method allows you to get a similar perspective on how that person is viewing their life. This can be done by first looking at how someone is standing or sitting down, really take a look at their posture. If they’re feeling down then you might see them talking with their head down and constantly rubbing their forehead with their index finger and thumb.

When looking at this, try to casually act in the same way, you don’t have to copy their exact positioning but something similar so that you know how they may be feeling physically.

Next, you’re going to want to listen to the few words they say, it may be a couple of sentences or one-worded answers. Do the same when talking back to them except don’t use any condescending words directed towards them. Instead, say things like “I feel you” or “yeah that’s true.” What you’re doing in this instance is getting on their level of energy so that they can build a level of trust with you.

If you can’t do this in person then listen to the sound of their voice on the phone and try to match that tone. People have a harder time opening up to somebody who is not on the same energy level as them. One example of this that we’ve probably all experienced is when we’re going through a tough time in our lives and one of our friends starts to talk about themselves and their problems.

Of course, we should always be open to listening to our friends but what about how we feel. Talking to your friend about some of your problems can already be hard enough, if they somehow make the conversation about themselves then you are going to be even more upset than you were before talking to them.

Don’t ever try to force a conversation onto your friends when you know something is wrong, this can make things worse and you’ll be viewed almost as an enemy in the situation.