Observing is the foundational skill. Expression is secondary and not what it is cracked up to be.<p>I&#x27;ve found that most of the time, people don&#x27;t want to know what you are feeling. They want to know that you are feeling what they are feeling. The most crudest form of that is mirroring techniques, but that&#x27;s actually not necessary and can be detrimental. It&#x27;s a bandaid because the person is ignorant or unskilled in healing.<p>There is a Sanskrit word called &quot;dukkha&quot; that doesn&#x27;t have an easy English cognate. The closest would be &quot;existential anguish&quot;, something that lies underneath every single experience.<p>There is a particular way of opening yourself up to someone else&#x27;s dukkha that I&#x27;ve found extremely effective. It&#x27;s at that point, you forget about yourself (&quot;this isn&#x27;t about you&quot;), and you drop all your psychological armoring, shielding, interpretations, etc. When I am mindful enough to remember to do that, people tend to walk away feeling better, even if I never say anything. Just listen.<p>Being able to do that requires meditation, and you first start with observing emotions as they come and go. It does not end there. At some point, you directly experience the insight that your self is an illusion, that this existential misery underlies everything and you cannot escape, and that the ground of being is emptiness. It&#x27;s at that point you can listen to the dukkha.