Despite this common belief, when talking to students in distress, we are more effective when we are active listeners. It is a path of less responsibility and greater effectiveness when we use active listening rather than the more commonly used approach of attempting to fix, make better, or solve.   Active listening helps students tell and expand their stories about their distress without our expectation that we will fix or solve the issues. Often students do not readily tell others about their struggles, so their stories largely reside in the vast, bottomless place of their heads, where they often grow to unreasonable proportions.