what do you do when you cannot offer good advice to someone who is feeling down?

one of my online friends was feeling a bit down tonight (he said he has had the odd suicidal thought e.t.c) just come offline after he has gone to bed (i suffer with insomnia).

i did try and help offer him advice (don’t keep it inside,talk to one of your family members/friends e.t.c) tbh though i just felt i didn’t help him at all (i have major bouts of depression myself,as some of you may know from my previous threads?)

i just felt like i didn’t help him at all tbh. at moment i have been feeling very low myself so i didn’t think my advice was much help.

it just sucks when you just feel that you cannot help someone,no matter what you try and say/do e.t.c.

i hope he will feel a bit better after some sleep.

sorry for the rant here btw.

Sometimes you just can’t say anything – and that’s not why they are talking to you anyway.

My advice would be to give him something to look forward to – arrange a trip to a trail centre next weekend or something. If he doesn’t MTB, even better. This might be completely bogus advice, but it’s what I would do.

thanks for the reply batfink,the trouble is he lives in america and i live in the uk (also don’t ride anymore either,but would like to do something about that).

i did tell him how happy i am to have met him online and the laughs we have e.t.c (all true).i also said that most people would go through similar thoughts at some point in their life and things would get better.

it did feel like i was reading from a leaflet though (if that makes any sense/my mindset is closer to his than i care to think about/am not actually going to do anything rash myself i’d like to add).

With this kind of stuff it’s pretty hard (you know better than most). Personally I don’t always want advice. Whilst I don’t know your friends situation, the times in my life when I have felt like this I needed a distraction. But it’s more than just a shoulder if anything it’s better to have someone who actually doesn’t know what you’re maybe feeling but is just entertaining. Just my experience.

Some days folk just need to let it out and then be told they’re OK to feel like they do.
You’ve probably done exactly what was needed.