How do I comfort people?

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I am getting real sick and tired of seeing people going through hard times and not being able to do something about it! It makes me feel frustrated, helpless, useless, and ashamed.

How do I comfort people? How do I talk people through their problems? What am I doing wrong?

I feel you because it's really hard to comfort somebody you feel sorry for when they always get mad at you and tell you to leave them alone.

I feel like no matter how nice I try to be to somebody when they are upset they always take what I try to say or do to be nice to them the wrong way.

well i am trying to do what i think is right. i dunno if it works, tbh. i like to think it does. knowing out of myself, that the "convential" way of comforting quite often doesnt work, i try different things. like explaining mechanisms, sugesting solutions, even if subpar ones, distracting them from a problem. sometimes asking them what they would like to be done does the trick. what can i do to make it easier? get me a tea, please. that, it. ya i am maybe not the best person to comfort anybody, ya. but trying counts, no?

Yes, it does count; it is moral support just for them to realise that you care, even if there is nothing you can really offer any practical help with.

The most important two things that I have learned are...

1) Ask. There are people who will snap back that you should just know what to do; but hey, they're upset, so might not be thinking all that straight, so forgive that. It's still better to have offered than not to have tried. Just ask if there is anything you can do to help, whether they want to talk about it (don't be offended if they don't), and whether they would prefer to be left alone or for you to stay, even if in silence.

2) Listen. It may not seem like listening to someone is very much help with the actual problem, but it is often what people need in a moment of upset.. I had a friend once who claimed I was the best counsellor he knew (I never trained to do that kind of thing.) I realised that most of the time, all that happened was that I let him talk until he was done, then just summarised it back to him, to make sure I'd understood. He reacted to my summaries as if they were profound insights, but I realised that the repeating made sure that he understood, even if I couldn't. We all speak sometimes without truly listening to our own words or thoughts, so having our thoughts repeated back to us can help to give us the clarity to see the answers which are already there, or that a problem is less severe than we think.