Therapeutic communication
Helpful: open questions, silence long enough for the person to speak, reflection, clarification, naming the emotion, offering your presence. Unhelpful: false reassurance ("everything will be fine"), advice too early, "why" questions that require justification, changing the subject when it becomes uncomfortable, minimizing, arguing with a delusion. With a hallucination: do not confirm it and do not argue. Acknowledge the experience and state your own reality: "I do not hear those voices, but I believe that you do, and I can see it frightens you."