For friends who turn away in times of difficulty, putting distance between themselves and emotional pain feels like self-preservation. These are the people who see someone drowning in sorrow and then worry, perhaps subconsciously, that they will be dragged under too. Others get overwhelmed by a sense of helplessness; they feel there’s nothing they can say or do to make things better, so they choose to say and do nothing. But what we learn from the stress experiment is that the button didn’t need to stop the noise to relieve the pressure. Simply showing up for a friend can make a huge
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