How to Sit With Someone: Peer Support Skills for Connection & Mental Health is a short and accessible guide by John F. Gerrard on the often-overlooked craft of being there for someone in distress. Drawing on his training as a peer support worker with the Canadian Mental Health Association, as well as his own lived experience with mental health challenges, this book offers a thoughtful introduction to what it really means to show up for another person. The book is primarily aimed at peer supporters, counsellors, mental health workers, and anyone in a role that involves supporting others, though it has plenty to offer the general reader too.
The book is organised into a series of short chapters, each little more than a couple of pages long, which makes it easy to get through. You can pick it up, read a chapter, put it down and reflect, then return when you have a moment. This structure feels deliberate, and in fact it mirrors the practices the book itself teaches. It is the kind of book I could easily imagine finding tucked away on a shelf in a school library, a university counselling office, or a community centre. In other words, somewhere people are doing the important work of supporting each other.
Gerrard covers a wide range of topics with a light but considered touch. He writes on listening without trying to fix, on the importance of active listening and curiosity, on self-compassion and reducing shame in conversations, and on the cumulative power of our thought patterns. One of the early chapters that really stuck with me was on the difference between black-and-white thinking and the more nuanced, neuroscience-informed view of how our mental habits form. Gerrard uses a wonderful image of walking through fresh snow to describe how repeated thought patterns wear themselves into us. I feel this advice could be especially helpful to a lot of people, for example those suffering with OCD.
“In a garden, what we water will grow. The same is true of how we think and act.”
What I appreciated most about the book is that Gerrard does not write from a clinical distance. He shares his own experience with mental health, and this personal openness is what gives the writing its warmth. He writes about how psychosis shaped his understanding of certainty itself, and the humility it left him with about his own perceptions. It keeps the book from feeling too much like a textbook.
“Because I have experienced psychosis, I know how far our judgments and beliefs can drift.”
There is also a particularly memorable chapter on the distinction between isolation and solitude, which I found genuinely thought-provoking. Gerrard draws a clear line between disconnection that grows from pain, shame, or exhaustion, and the healthy solitude that allows people to rest, reflect, and return to themselves. He writes that he used to confuse the two, and that long stretches of what he framed as preferring his own company were actually periods of isolation deepening around him. It is a small chapter, but undoubtedly a useful one for anyone struggling with loneliness, not just those working in peer support.
Equally valuable is Gerrard’s clear-eyed treatment of boundaries. Peer support, he reminds us, is not about absorbing other people’s pain at the cost of your own wellbeing.
“Peer support doesn’t require self-sacrifice. A peer supporter is not a punching bag.”
That kind of plainspoken honesty runs throughout the book, and it is one of its real strengths. The book closes with a section of further reading and help numbers, which is a nice touch for anyone wanting to go deeper or needing support, and there is also a brief introduction to the Western Canada Peer Training Society, the organisation Gerrard’s work is connected with.
The book is professionally put together throughout. The writing is clean, the editing is careful, and I did not notice any spelling or grammar issues whatsoever. Whatever production work went into it has clearly been done thoughtfully.
One of the most useful sections of the book is on presence and dialogue. The author reminds us how much of communication happens beneath the words, in tone, posture, pacing, and even silence, and how easily a perfectly worded response can fall flat if it lacks warmth. He shares a humbling moment of sitting with someone in pain and being so fixated on saying the right thing that they finally asked him to just let them finish.
I like to think of dialogue as a game, something like a recreational racquet sport. The goal isn’t to hit the ball at the other person, but to keep it in play. The point isn’t to win, but to sustain the exchange.
If the book has limitations, it is both that it is a bit short and sweet and its primary audience is somewhat specific. It is most directly useful for those working or training in peer support, counselling, or mental health adjacent roles, and a general reader looking for a self-help book may find some sections less immediately relevant to their daily life. That said, even outside that context, there are plenty of small nuggets of wisdoms here for anyone trying to be a better listener, a better friend, or a kinder presence in someone else’s hard moment.
All in all, How to Sit With Someone is a short, sincere, and useful book. It does not try to be more than it is, and that is part of its charm. For anyone who works with people in difficult moments, or who simply wants to learn how to do that better, Gerrard offers a steady, human guide.
Final verdict: For fans of Lori Gottlieb, Bessel van der Kolk, peer support workers, counsellors, teachers, youth workers, mental health advocates, and anyone seeking a guide to peer support, How to Sit with Someone is well worth your time.
You can get your copy of How to Sit with Someone here!
