Most people need to know that they have been heard. Listen to their body, their eyes, to the colors they are wearing. If you really want to hear someone, open your heart and listen to their soul.
If you are in the dark, it does not mean that you have failed and that you have taken some terrible misstep. For many years I thought my questions and my doubt and my sense of God's absence were all signs of my lack of faith, but now I know this is the way the life of the spirit goes.