How are you?

I just watched a quick video about approaching the conversation on mental health. You can find it here.

When you interact with someone, whether it’s a friend, family or stranger, you usually have an exchange of “How are you, good thanks, you?” etc. that varies slightly but that’s the general gist.

“How are you?” is one of the most important but most ignored questions. It bothers me so much when cashiers and other employees ask it and then don’t answer when you ask them back. This is only one of the communication gaps we have today.

When someone asks you, how are you? Here’s the thing. They don’t really want an answer. They want to look polite for asking, but you give them an answer any longer than “Good thanks”, and their eyes start to glaze over.

I used to volunteer for a couple different text-based crisis chat sites, and some people who would come there, specifically to talk to someone, would be concerned that the volunteers don’t actually care. They were convinced we got paid, or just did it to kill time, or they had heard that the place tries to recruit people to some religion or other. Some were impossible to convince otherwise. This is because they’ve had person after person ask them how they are, but not really care to listen to the answer.

So next time you have the opportunity to ask someone you care about “How are you?”, mean it. Look them in the eye. Sit down with them. And if they say, “Actually, not so good,” ask them if they want to talk about it. You don’t have to have the answers, you just have to actually care about their answers.