Psalms for a Troubled Boy
When a desperate father brought his tormented son, Rav Eliyahu took the boy's hand and recited Tehillim with all his heart.
It is told that one day in Greiditz a father rushed into Rav Eliyahu's beis midrash, begging for help. His young son was in a terrible state. The boy's body was swollen and he cried out with sounds like a barking dog, and the family believed that some foreign spirit had taken hold of him.
Rav Eliyahu did not reach for anything unusual. He took the boy by the hand, sat close, and began to say Tehillim, word by word, with deep kavanah. He kept on, steady and unhurried, while the father stood by and the room grew still.
Those who tell the story relate that in the end the boy grew calm and the affliction left him. Word of it went out through the region, and more and more people began to arrive with their own burdens.
Rav Eliyahu himself never presented this as a gift of his own. He described what he did as ordinary means, mostly prayer, and wrote that he was compelled to act because he could not turn away parents who stood before him with weeping children.
Source: Retold in Glenn Dynner, 'Brief Kvetches: Notes to a 19th-Century Miracle Worker,' Jewish Review of Books; his own remark on being compelled to help is in Tzafnas Pa'aneach (Brody, 1875).
When someone you know is going through something frightening, you may feel you have nothing to offer. Today, do the simple thing Rav Eliyahu did: sit with the person, hold their hand if that is natural, and say a few chapters of Tehillim quietly for them, or beside them if they welcome it. You do not need special words or powers. Presence and sincere prayer are within your reach, and they often matter more than anything else you could bring.