Yay glad you were able to get poor Pumpkin to sort out and articulate what they were feeling, stuff that upsets them more than their vocabulary/understanding knows how to deal with can be really challenging DX
JJ is similar to you, sometimes he gets stuck on the "what's bothering you/what's wrong" and just wants to pull the problem/s out so he can fix it and then everyone gets frustrated because they can't tell him and he can't fix it. He's been getting better.
I've actually been doing surprisingly better than him (surprisingly because my social skills suck) but definitely wish I'd had some of your ideas for dealing with the harder things that come up. Kind of been learning in a hurry to try to keep on top of this teenage thing x_x