I've found that if I use "I" statements and speak from my experience, that can be helpful to another and doesn't threaten or demean or otherwise get tangled up in "their" stuff. I can't know about others and their lives other than from what they tell me and, even were I a professional, no one here, on the Internet, would be my patient with whom I'd been working in tandem for awhile.

I like hearing other's "stories" and get comfort and advice from what they have gone through or how they experience the world and what has worked for them. But I can't know if what has worked for me or what I've read or studied will work for them, I can only tell them "about" it and suggest they might like to try it as I have (which is the only way I can "know" it -- reading or studying something in not the same as experiencing it), not definitively say it will work for them.