“I know exactly how you feel.”
It’s one of the most well-intentioned sentences we offer another human being. In my view, it’s perhaps one of the most inaccurate.
While working with a Gen Z for a one-on-one session recently, she shared, “The moment someone says they completely understand me, I stop believing them.” It sounded harsh. But the more I thought about it, the more layers of truth and psychological depth I discovered. Each one of us has a different compass and map navigating our mental and emotional state.
Can two people ever experience the same pain?
We often compare grief as though it follows a universal scale. Yet every emotion is filtered through a lifetime of experiences, including our childhood, the beliefs we were raised with, our environment, personality, emotional threshold, relationships, fears, resilience, and the stories we’ve quietly lived through. The same event can leave one person shaken for years while another walks through it with remarkable composure. Neither response is right. Neither is wrong.
I’ve heard people comforting someone who has lost a parent with, “Don’t cry. Be strong.” But why are tears seen as weakness? Why do we rush to silence emotions instead of making space for them? On the other hand, there are people who stand through a funeral without breaking down. They return to work after profound loss. They continue caring for others even when their own world has changed forever. Does that mean they loved less?
Or does it reflect years of inner work, emotional discipline, spiritual practice, or simply a personality that processes grief differently? Strength doesn’t always look like tears. And tears don’t always mean someone is falling apart.
Perhaps emotional maturity isn’t measured by how visibly we express pain but by how gently we hold space for someone else to express raw vulnerability without judgement or the inner chatter of logic. Crossing a dark tunnel, sometimes all that is needed is a reassurance that ‘I am not alone. I will sail through’.
Maybe a more honest response in action could be, “I may never fully understand what this feels like for you, but I’m here.”
The more we understand our own triggers, fears, patterns and resilience, the less likely we are to judge someone else’s response to life. We begin to realise that emotional intelligence isn’t about having the right advice; it’s about creating enough psychological safety for another person to experience what they are experiencing without them feeling hurried, compared, or corrected.
Is every conversation about a solution?
I do not think so. Most of the time, deep conversations are more about listening, pausing, reflecting, and being fully present with the person. In a world obsessed with instant responses, perhaps the greatest act of compassion is holding a safe space without trying to fix or meddle with their emotions, neither justifying nor negating.
Give them the space to unwind, talk and realign without owning their stuff.
“Your experience is yours. I honour it. And you don’t have to walk through it alone.”