I've never been great at it I'll admit. One time I delegated that task to someone else because I didn't know what to say. I saw a friend of mine crying, and I thought "Well, this isn't good, I should get one of your other friends to handle this". So I walked around the building we were in, I knew that her other friends were about somewhere. I found them, told them about my friend being upset, and led them to her. Then they comforted her. Afterwards, when she had collected herself we came up with a plan to help solve an issue she was dealing with. Don't get me wrong, I cared about her and wanted her to feel better, I just wasn't such how to approach it and thought that it might be best if I trusted someone else with such a responsibility. From personal experience, I have found that offering motivational pleasantries hasn't helped. I'm not much of touchy-feely person. However, I am gradually becoming more comfortable with physical contact again. Previous traumas have left me a little wary over close contact. So I'm rather out of practice with comforting someone physically. Do I pat you on the shoulder? Hug you? Would you prefer me to just listen? It can be difficult to know what I should do since it can be hard to understand someone who is currently sobbing. Usually I'm better at offering advice or simply listening to someone complain. I tend to feel a bit awkward when someone starts crying. What's your usual approach? Do you also feel awkward around crying people?
So, this is something I've had to pretty much learn how to do on the fly since in the past few weeks I've been teaching since I've had several kids start crying about various things. I've always been super awkward with crying people but you kind of can't be when you have crying students. My advice? Be there. Try to comfort. And listen. Adapt as needed. I'll give some examples (6th grade boys). One of my boys came into my class one day very visibly upset. I have him for math, he just came from ELA. We needed to get class started but I kept an eye on him and let him be. When the bell rang for lunch, I had him stay back and just flat out asked him what was wrong. At that point he pretty much burst into tears (it wasn't the first time he had cried in front of me) and told me about how he failed something in ELA. I let him cry, I let him vent about how much he didn't like his ELA teacher, and reminded him to breath because he was sobbing pretty hard. He had been holding it in and I knew I just had to be there for him, that was all. I talked to him, gave him some tips (since I'm actually an ELA teacher) and reminded him that he could do better next time. Him and I also have good rapport, so I got him to laugh a little before sending him off to lunch. Another one of my boys started sobbing in class after I graded a quiz of his (he got a 50%). I got down to his level and just asked him to talk to me. He wouldn't, he was sobbing, classroom full of kids. So, I stayed like that and just tried to tell him encouraging, comforting things until I got him to talk. It took about 10 minutes of reminding him it was one quiz, he would have a chance to fix his grade, etc. before I got him to actually take a breath and listen. Then we talked a little, I showed him his quiz and we just talked. While I pointed out what he did wrong, I also comforted him. Kid thinks he's destined to fail everything and thinks his parents are going to beat him over one low grade, so I knew I just had to continually comfort him. By the time he left my room he was better. I'm super awkward around crying people, always have been, but I also willingly am going into a career where...I'm going to have to at some points. My main advice is to just be there, be present for the person. Everyone has different needs so figure those out and adjust accordingly, but also do what YOU are comfortable with. For example, if I had a very touchy feely student who was upset and wanted a hug but I wasn't comfortable with that, I'd figure out what I could do while also maintaining my barrier.
