The best way to aid someone suffering and in pain is this:
Join Them
Not in a masochistic way, but in a loving one.
This is the way that a soldier risks his own life and walks through fire to help a fallen brother.
A parent can comfort a child in the same way.
Loving parents don’t watch their children struggle with homework, or figure out swimming on their own.
They jump in with both feet.
If you want to love someone, step in and be with them where they are.
This is one of the things I like about Christianity.
First, Jesus came to do one of the only things that can make a difference to someone in the midst of terrible suffering: to join them in their pain and suffer alongside them.
-Ravi Zacharias and Vince Vitale, Why Suffering?