I not an expert in this, but I work with patients who often need help calming down. In the beginning I tried to say a lot of things, offering a different perspective or trying to fix a problem. But now I just try to be there and listen. And not try to fill the silence. Sometimes a calming hand on the shoulder helps, sometimes not. Affirm the feeling and don’t argue facts. Last week a patient was upset because she was hallucinating an injured angry dog outside. Instead of telling her she’s wrong, I can only say that I myself cannot see a dog, but it sounds scary, and that she’s safe here. Another patient said she wanted to die. I think I just said “is that how you feel?” and so but the important part is to be there, just being, without rushing, letting someone feel seen and heard.
Is there perhaps an opportunity here for a hybrid model? OnlyFOSS? We could involve the unixsocks community, and either we subscribe to see them code (free) software, or, we pay with free code to get access to someone talking about mechanical keyboards and minimalist tiling wms etc. Or, there could be a platform like gofundme where projects could have wishlists of what they need, programmers can name a price, and people can fund it. There’s a risk that the “boring” parts get ignored though, like infrastructure maintenance or code review, in favor of flashy new features like quarter tiling in gnome or wobbly windows?