You’ve seen the signs for months: the spiraling texts, the ill-timed meltdowns, the same painful story on repeat. You care about this person. You’re exhausted by this person. And you’re starting to wonder: Can you tell them they need therapy?

The short answer is “yes,” experts agree. But the delivery makes all the difference. “It needs to happen in a very gentle and vulnerable way,” says Melissa Gluck, a psychologist in New York whose clients often ask her how to suggest that their boyfriend, best friend, or mom go to therapy. “Your vulnerability is the greatest asset you have when you’re trying to encourage someone else to be vulnerable.”

We asked experts how to suggest that your loved one try therapy without pushing them away.

Setting expectations

Almost anyone could benefit from seeing a therapist, but certain signs suggest it’s time to move from “maybe someday” to “sooner rather than later.” If your friend or family member is struggling to keep up with daily responsibilities, constantly ruminating about relationship issues, or expressing a sense of hopelessness, consider bringing it up, says Francesca Emma, a therapist in New York. The same is true if you’ve noticed a consistent shift in mood. “It’s not just having a bad day. When you see someone you love with either a really anxious mood shift or a depressing mood shift,” it’s time to urge them to seek help, she says.

Some people—especially those in older generations—aren’t sure what therapy entails; or, they picture a Freudian-like scene featuring a patient stretched out on a leather couch while a silent analyst takes notes. It can be helpful to explain exactly what to expect. Therapy isn’t just about talking through feelings; rather, it often centers on practical skill-building. Therapists teach their clients how to set boundaries, express their needs clearly, navigate conflict, recognize unhealthy dynamics, repair after disagreements, and much more. “We’re not fixing you,” Emma says. “We’re helping make you a better version of yourself.”

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Your friend might protest that they already have people to talk to—hello, aren’t they in conversation with you? When that happens, remind them that having supportive friends isn’t the same as having professional support. “Therapy isn’t the place where you’re just venting about all the things that are wrong,” Gluck says. While she’s happy to listen to people blow off steam when they need to, therapy is so much more than letting it all out to a sympathetic ear. “It’s about having a space where you have someone who’s in the driver’s seat who’s going to help guide you through whatever problem you’re going through, and help shift your perspective,” she says. “They’re going to ask you meaningful questions. They’re going to challenge you when you’re feeling really resistant, and they’re going to push you to get out of your comfort zone and grow.”

Finding the right words

When you approach your friend or family member, keep your tone casual yet straightforward. Gluck suggests wording your initial check-in like this: “Hey, I feel like we’ve been talking about X, Y, and Z a lot, and I’ve noticed you’re really struggling. I’ve struggled like this in the past, and I tried therapy and it’s really helped. Would you want to explore that?”

The more you open up about your own experience with therapy, the better, Gluck says. You don’t need to reveal the nitty-gritty of what your sessions focus on, but a bit of personal context can go a long way toward easing their resistance. For example: “I thought it would be scary, too, and it actually isn’t.” 

If you feel like your partner could benefit from therapy—and you’re having a tough time in your relationship because they’re not working on themselves—it can help to explain how their stress is affecting you, too. Gluck suggests leading with empathy: “You’ve been dealing with all that stuff with your family, and I’m feeling like it’s taking away from our relationship. That’s making me scared and sad. You know how much I love you and want to be with you, and it’s really important to me that you take care of yourself and have a space outside of our relationship to talk about this.”

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No matter which exact words you choose, focusing on “I” statements is key, Emma stresses. For example, you might say: “I hear what you’re saying right now, and it sounds really difficult. I think a therapist might be able to help with that.”

“You” statements, on the other hand—“You need help”—rarely land well. “The minute we use that word, it takes on more of a defensive nature,” she says. “To someone who can’t handle constructive criticism, it feels as though there’s something wrong with them, or they did something wrong.”

There are other harmful comments to avoid, too. “You definitely don’t want to say, ‘You’re crazy,’ or ‘You’re never going to get better if you don’t get therapy,’” Emma says. Ultimatums and threats don’t work. They’ll only drive the person you care about deeper into defensiveness.

When to drop it

In order to benefit from therapy, somebody has to want to be there. Gluck has had plenty of clients shuffle into her office because their parents or romantic partner pressured them to make an appointment, yet they weren’t actually open to the idea. “If you’re not invested, you’re not going to get anything out of it,” she says. “Don’t force anyone.”

If your friend is adamant that therapy won’t help them, Emma suggests letting the conversation go. “You put it out there and let it simmer, because if you continue to go back and forth, it’s like you’re the expert in something,” she says. “We are not the expert in someone else’s life.”

Gluck, meanwhile, is partial to this phrasing when someone resists: “I totally get that—I used to feel the same way. Sometimes it’s nice to have a third party, but if you’re really not interested right now, I’ll drop it.” Or you could keep it short and sweet: “No worries, it was just a suggestion.”

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If a few weeks or months pass, and your loved one is still struggling, it’s OK to try again. Gluck recommends bringing it up like this: “I know we talked about therapy a couple months ago. It sounds like whatever you’re going through is still really intense, and I think it’s time we figure out a plan, because you shouldn’t have to live like this.”

“It’s all coming from, ‘This isn’t fair to you to be living with your head like this,’” she says. “There could be another path.”

When and where to bring it up

You don’t need to wait for the perfect environment to start talking about therapy. Whenever and wherever the topic comes up organically or feels natural is best. “As mental-health professionals, we’re really pushing toward destigmatizing therapy,” Gluck says. She wants more people to normalize mental-health care as part of everyday life. “If you’re at dinner and someone’s talking, you could just be like, ‘Hey, have you thought about therapy? I feel like you would really like it,’” she says.

If you dramatically pull someone aside, on the other hand, and tell them you need to have a talk, they’ll probably be freaked out by your serious tone—and are less likely to respond well to your suggestion. It risks turning a supportive nudge into a confrontation.

From childhood, honesty is framed as a moral north star. Tell the truth. Don’t lie. Say what you mean, no matter the cost. But adult relationships quickly expose the limits of that lesson. Instead of building closeness, some truths erode it—especially when honesty is delivered without care, context, or concern for the person on the receiving end.

“When honesty is just a mic drop, it doesn’t facilitate connection. It’s just someone monologuing at the other person,” says Jennifer C. Veilleux, a professor of clinical psychology at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, who studies emotion. Imagine, for example, that a woman tells her husband she’s happier when he’s not around. “That is honest, but it feels like an arrow to the soul—and it’s hard not to take that really personally and get dejected by those honest feelings,” Veilleux says. “People struggle hearing honesty from their partner, especially in relationships that are a little bit rocky already.”

We asked experts when honesty helps—and when it harms.

When honesty isn’t welcome

Trust is the No. 1 ingredient to a healthy relationship, says Dr. Terri Orbuch, a sociology professor at Oakland University and a research professor at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research, where she directed one of the longest-running studies of married couples in the U.S. You can’t have trust without honesty—yet some nuance is required. Your partner also has to have your best interests at heart, she says.

“You have to do the weighing act, thinking about how important the information is to your partner and your relationship,” Orbuch says. From there, “it’s how you say it and what you say. It’s thinking about the impact on the other person, and how it will make them feel. And that’s a learned skill.”

There’s a difference between meaningful honesty and unbridled self-expression, says Kate Engler, a marriage and family therapist in Evanston, Ill. Honesty rooted in a genuine place “usually, if not always, involves some level of self-reflection, vulnerability, and the goal of improving, deepening, or repairing the relationship,” she says. The problematic kind, on the other hand, is typically “some form of venting, driven by dysregulated or reactive emotions, and is harsh or retaliatory.”

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Veilleux thinks of the struggling couples she works with as two medieval castles that have been at war for a long time. Sometimes, one person might decide that because their kingdom has been under attack, they’re going to weaponize their honesty, hoping it takes out the other side. That tactic might take the form of an honest but cutting and unnecessary remark. “A lot of people have this tit-for-tat attitude, like, ‘Well, you hurt me, so I’m going to hurt you back,’” she says.

Other times, however, people are simply oblivious about how their honesty will land. “They don’t know that they’re hitting on someone else’s emotional sensitivity, and that the honest thing they’re saying is going to be hurtful to the other person,” Veilleux says. “It’s not always intentional, but sometimes it is.”

How it causes harm

No-filter honesty can cause deep hurt and shame. It also diminishes connection and trust in a relationship. “Why would someone want to be vulnerable or open with a person who weaponizes honesty?” Engler says. “It would be unwise to do so.” 

Engler points to Gottman’s Four Horsemen—criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling—identified by psychologists John and Julie Gottman to describe what they call the four destructive communication patterns that often cause a relationship to break down. Contempt, criticism, and defensiveness go hand-in-hand with harsh honesty, she says. “Those things will wear somebody down to the point that they’re ready to leave,” she says. “You really can’t underestimate the damage they can do.”

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Blunt-force honesty isn’t good for the person being honest in a harmful way, either, Engler adds: It keeps them from getting what they need in a relationship, and creates a dynamic in which that’s the norm.

What to do when you hear it

If you’re on the receiving end of harshness dressed up as honesty, there are ways to stick up for yourself.

“One thing I tell people is to acknowledge the hurt in the moment, even by saying, ‘Ouch,’” Veilleux says. “It’s a simple little statement,” but it helps the other person understand the impact of their words. Plus, you can gauge their reaction: If they say, “Oh, yikes, I didn’t mean that,” that opens the door to a productive conversation. But if they come back with, “Well, yeah, because you hurt me first,” that’s telling, too. “Are they trying to take power?” Veilleux says. “Or are they able to receive the insight that they hurt someone unintentionally?”

Engler recommends calmly telling your partner that you’re open to hearing their feedback—but not in that way. Let them know that when they’re ready to have an actual discussion, you will be, too.

How to be honest in a tactful way

If you’re considering withholding the truth, Orbuch suggests asking yourself: “What’s the reason for being dishonest? Is it because it protects you and makes you feel better or look better, or is it because you’re protecting or thinking about your partner?”

If you have a bank account you never mentioned to your wife, for example, you’re being dishonest by concealing it. “That leads to betrayal and distrust,” Orbuch says, and you need to come clean. If you think another person in the restaurant where you’re having dinner is attractive, on the other hand—but would never act on it—bringing it up would likely feel unkind. “That’s protecting your partner,” she says. “It’s editing information, and omitting non-important information that’s only going to hurt them.”

When it becomes clear you need to tell the truth, there are compassionate ways to do so. 

For example, it’s helpful to frame what you say as opinion, not fact, Veilleux says. You could use phrases like these: “From my perspective,” “My impression is,” or “Well, my take is…”

“That takes ownership of the thought,” she says. “Like, ‘It’s my thought, it’s not a fact, and you can disagree with it, and that’s OK.’”

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The most effective honesty is buffered, not blunt, experts agree. For example, if your husband said something to one of your kids that you didn’t like, don’t lash out: “You’re a terrible parent!” Instead, Engler suggests, preface your honest feedback with something positive: “First, I want you to know you’re such an amazing dad.” Then, ask him if he’s open to a little feedback. “It’s such a small thing, but you establish buy-in from someone when you do that, and you’re setting the stage to say, ‘I’m about to say something that might be hard to hear.’” That’s better than simply dumping on them, she says, which is more in line with unbridled self-expression.

Four words have echoed across every boardroom, dating app, and city street in the world: You should smile more.

Anastasia Ryan has heard it her whole life, but perhaps never more than in a role where the people she was speaking to couldn’t see her at all. “The majority of what I did was over the phone, and I still had my supervisor coming through and making gestures that I needed to smile while on a call,” she says. “And then eventually, I was told that my facial expressions weren’t appropriate in the office.”

After being let go, Ryan channelled her rage into a novel called You Should Smile More, a workplace revenge fantasy about a telemarketer who’s fired for her neutral expression. Through its protagonist, Ryan was able to say all the things she wished she’d been able to say when those smile directives were lobbed at her.

The same remarks might have inspired a rewarding career turn, but that doesn’t negate the damage they caused. “It is absolutely infuriating because it’s being singled out for your appearance and for the way you’re presenting yourself, in a way that’s not equal across gender standards,” she says. “It’s frustrating because we’re so much more than that.”

Why it happens

People (usually men) have been advising other people (almost always women) to smile more for as long as anyone can remember. “Men feel that it’s OK, if not entirely required, to tell women to smile, which is a really interesting assumption,” says Marianne LaFrance, an emerita professor of psychology and of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies at Yale University, and author of Why Smile? The Science Behind Facial Expressions. “The gender status quo is that women should smile more.”

That stems largely from a sense of entitlement, she says. “Men laugh it off, as though it’s a male prerogative to tell a woman what to do with her body,” LaFrance says. People in certain industries, like health care workers and service workers, are especially likely to be told that “they need to constantly display their femininity. And one of the best ways to do that is to smile.”

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Another reason people deploy this line is because they feel uncomfortable when someone else’s face isn’t easy to read. Neutral expressions can be unsettling to people who expect emotional reassurance. “It’s less about me, and it’s all about your comfort, because you want to see me smile,” says Minda Harts, an assistant professor at NYU’s Wagner Graduate School of Public Service and author of Talk to Me Nice: The Seven Trust Languages For A Better Workplace. “It’s not about me being joyful.”

Comments like these do more than create momentary discomfort. They send a subtle signal about whose feelings matter—and whose don’t. “Being told to smile sends a message that ‘you’re inconveniencing me,’ and over time, that erodes trust—not just with others, but with ourselves,” Harts says. “I used to internalize when people would say, ‘Oh, you need to smile more,’ and I’m like, ‘Is there something wrong with me? What’s going on with my face?’”

When saying nothing says enough

Figuring out how to respond when someone tells you to smile more can be complicated. The truth is, experts agree, that it’s not always practical to respond the way you’d like to.

It’s sometimes easiest to address the comment nonverbally. Some people opt to just flash a smile, because they want the interaction to end quickly. “They feel awful for having done it, but they feel that they have no choice,” LaFrance says. “Unfortunately, it reduces the woman in some small way. She’s been caught not being appropriately feminine.”

Another option is to remain stoic and hold your expression, letting your eyes do the work of signaling that the request isn’t welcome. Or you could do what LaFrance defaults to: offer a fake smile. “We all have a bunch of those, and it sort of looks like the smile is plastered on the face and it’s held too long—because the key to a genuine smile is that they’re very brief,” she says. 

Will the person on the receiving end be able to tell? “It depends how good the fake is,” LaFrance says. “There are fakes that look like the real thing, and then there are fakes that look like it’s a satire. It’s a put on. It conveys a, ‘You want one? I’ll show you one’ sort of attitude.”

That’s almost irrelevant, though, LaFrance adds. What matters is the way it lands internally. “I know that what I’m doing inside isn’t obeying the premise that he gets to call me out on something,” she says, “but that I get to decide in what form.”

Redirecting without rewarding the comment

Different scenarios call for different responses. Say a family member or someone else with good intentions phrases their remark like this: “You seem so serious lately—you should smile more.” It can work well to acknowledge their intent without changing your behavior, says Tatiana Teppoeva, founder and CEO of One Nonverbal Ecosystem, an organization that teaches business leaders how to decode nonverbal behavior, communication patterns, and personality dynamics. You might say, “Thank you for caring,” or “I appreciate you checking in.” You’re validating their intentions, she says, without accepting the idea that your expression needs correction.

When people tell their colleagues to smile more, it’s often an attempt to redirect attention, minimize authority, or interrupt momentum, Teppoeva says. For example, you might be making a point in a meeting when someone interjects: “You’d come across better if you smiled more,” shifting focus away from whatever you were saying. In that case, neutral redirection or ignoring the comment entirely usually works best. You can continue your point without responding or calmly redirect: “Let’s stay on topic.” “Engaging emotionally or defensively reinforces the power move,” Teppoeva says. Continuing calmly, on the other hand, “signals authority and shows that your presence doesn’t require external approval.”

Or consider this scenario: A colleague instructs you to smile more because it helps other people feel more at ease. Teppoeva suggests light acknowledgement without commitment: “That’s an interesting perspective,” or “I’ll think about it.”

Occasionally, when she was still working in an office, Ryan would respond to comments suggesting she smile more like this: “Would you say that to a man?” You could even follow up with something like this, she adds: “It’s not your job to provide me with any sort of feedback on my appearance.”

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Though LaFrance prefers to respond nonverbally, she can think of a few effective comebacks. One of her favorites: “I will if you will.” Or, if you’re walking down the street and someone shouts at you—“Come on, honey, I want to see you smile”—you could say: “I wouldn’t if I were you, because it’s not pretty.”

Some people feel best keeping their response light and defusing the tension with humor. You could make a joke like this, Harts says: “Smiling costs extra.” Another favorite: “I save my feelings for after meetings.”

Couples ask each other countless questions over the course of a day, a year, an entire relationship. Many are trivial: Chinese or Thai for dinner? Need anything from the store? Few probe how each person is actually feeling.

Yet taking the time to ask thoughtful, intentional questions can deepen connection. Laura Todd, a therapist in Silicon Valley, thinks of relationships as vines that either grow together or apart; the goal is for them to intertwine so they become stronger and fuller. “Just because you’ve been together for a long time doesn’t mean that the vines always grow together,” she says. “You have to be mindful of making sure they don’t start growing apart, and part of that is asking really deep questions or having really meaningful conversations that continue to strengthen that relationship.”

We asked experts which single question they recommend starting with.

A deceptively simple check-in

The No. 1 question Todd recommends couples ask each other is a simple way to take the temperature of where they stand: “If you could describe our relationship in three words, what would they be and why?”

“It gives a really quick summary snapshot of where you and your partner are at emotionally,” she says. “We don’t always know how to verbalize what we’re feeling or thinking—we just know that something’s off, or maybe some things are good.”

Articulating your feelings in just three words—rather than jumping straight into a long, emotionally charged conversation—can make it easier to open a conversation about what’s working and what isn’t. Todd recommends doing this low-pressure check-in once a year, or more often in difficult seasons, like when you’re navigating a major change. “You’re encouraging that open dialogue without feeling threatening, or like it’s attacking anybody or you’re trying to do a ‘gotcha’ moment,” she says. “You can bring it up any time and just be like, ‘How are things going? Are we feeling aligned right now, or are we not feeling aligned?’”

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When Todd’s clients do this exercise, they report hearing a range of words: disconnected, heavy, supportive, pressure, caring, connected. If it’s clear you need to talk something through, aim to follow up as soon as you have the space and time to do so, she says. If it’s 9 p.m. and you’re both exhausted, it’s probably a good idea to save the conversation until another day. Consider, too, whether you’ve both had the opportunity to digest the words you shared with each other.

When you start talking, aim to use “I” statements and make it clear you’re open to feedback. “It’s so easy to take things personally and to be accusatory and be like, ‘You did this, you did that,’” Todd says. “At the end of the day in a relationship, you want to be able to meet each other’s needs, but in order to understand what the other person’s needs are, you need to communicate that to that person, and they need to hear it.”

A bonus question

Another question can help you build on what you’ve already learned from your partner: “I love the life we have together—but what do you want more of?” 

It often helps people realize that, even if they’re generally content, there are still things they’d like to do that they’re afraid to bring up. “There’s a hesitation around asking for what you really, really want, and there’s a possibility that your partner could let you down,” says April Lancit, an  assistant professor of marriage and family therapy at La Salle University in Philadelphia. Yet it’s better to ask than to keep your feelings quiet and risk feeling regretful and resentful down the road.

Some of the couples Lancit works with have told each other they’d like to be more spontaneous, go on special trips together, try new restaurants, have more conversations, or simply sleep in and watch Netflix on a Sunday morning instead of sticking to a tight schedule. “It’s a wonderful thing to be able to explore,” she says, “especially if you’ve gotten a little stagnant and are used to the monotony of what you’ve been doing.”