Thank you, Open Eyes, for such a thoughtful and detailed post. Everything you said is relevant to my essential question, which was "how shall we know how best to help the people in pain who come here for help?" You said, among other things, that

And I agree with you entirely. People in need are challenged to express themselves. The more in need one is the less capable one may be of expressing that need. So those of us who are here to provide answers of some kind have to pay close attention to what you say: "first and foremost is that they are not alone and someone else is experiencing the same kind of difficulty."

I'm sorry that you got the impression from my prior thread that I was urging people in need to "market" themselves. I was not. I was addressing myself not to people in need, but to those specifically not in need and just writing other kinds of posts here on PC, whether having to do with general questions or other kinds of inquiries that members post here. As concerns people in need, the burden is on us, the receivers, to figure out what best meets the needs of the person asking for help. And this thread is devoted solely to that question: can we improve our responses to those in need, and, if so, how?

And you've said, in that regard: "Sometimes a cry for help can be in a direct way or in a very indirect way. And it can even come from someone who may seem to be extremely intelligent and even scholarly by nature. And it takes time to set one's self aside and really think about what some people say."

That is true. It takes time to set one's self aside and really think about what some people say. To fit one's self into their frame of mind, to get even a basic idea of what they're asking for, or even what they need when they haven't asked for it. I'm sure most of us feel that there are many posts to which we're just not up to responding. Unless, of course, we have a rather mechanical and automatic way of responding. What do you do? Do you answer every post you read? Do you limit yourself in some way, answering only certain posts and not others? That's what I do and I wonder whether others do too.

This is a big topic. There's room for quite a number of points of view. There's no "right" or "wrong" when we're talking about such things. But it's very interesting to share points of view and insights into what may be best when helping others. Thank you for your post. Post again in this thread whenever you feel so inclined. Take care.