I used to volunteer answering the phones of a Youth Crisis Hotline, so I have training and experience at this type of thing. Once I taught my daughter about suicide intervention when she was only in seventh grade, and she was able to talk a friend into quitting “cutting” herself, and to quit wanting to kill herself – it isn’t complicated, but you have to know what you are doing.
Recently I thought I might go back to it, but turns out they don’t use volunteers anymore; you have to be certified.
First, realize that the person you are dealing with may have had problems for years – maybe even their whole lives. Chances are, in an Internet post or two, or in a ten minute phone conversation, you cannot fix their problems. And you have to be mentally prepared to accept that they just might go ahead and do it, and if that happens you cannot blame yourself – such blame is destructive. One counselor actually saw an article in the newspaper a few days after she talked to a child in trouble. They call this the “Superman Complex.” You think it is Your Solemn Duty to save this child, and if you don’t then you have failed.
Second, realize that you may be the first person ever that is willing and able to hear them out. Telling you their story, in and of itself, may go a long way in helping them cope with their problems. Maybe you can’t fix their problems, but you might help reframe them. Understand their problems and how they feel about them, and then see if you can offer some different ways of looking at the situation.
DO NOT tell them that things will be OK, because that’s garbage to them. DO NOT tell them that it isn’t as bad as they think, or that suicide is a silly or a Bad Idea, or basically you are now calling them an idiot – and if they had confided in anyone before, chances are they’ve already heard this and if it worked they wouldn’t be calling you. They are looking for more than to be scolded or told they would be stupid to go through with it. Also, I almost never said things like, “don’t you think your family will miss you” UNLESS they brought it up first and I was just asking for clarification. They may have in their mind that if they kill themselves and the family misses them, it would actually make them realize what they have lost. Some of them go so far as to imagine what their epitaphs would be – besides, others’ loss serves them (and the rest of the world) right for whatever it is that is driving them to despair.
EMPATHY is the biggest tool you have. Notice I did NOT say sympathy. There is a huge difference. Empathy is that you feel their pain, or understand their feelings at least. Sympathy is if you feel sorry for them. Save the sympathy. There may be plenty of people who feel sorry for them already, and if they like the sympathy, you are rewarding them for being suicidal. Until we get into the conversation, I try to stay emotionally neutral, but actively listening. Here’s how to have empathy: when they tell you this or that happened, ask them questions about it. In some cases it might be useful to ask them to clarify details, but if you understand what they are telling you, the next step is to get how they feel about it on the table. Chances are, they’ve never talked to anyone who gets them to that point because most untrained people, when they hear a person is going to kill themselves, they get emotional or tell them what to do – and if they get so far as to hear the details of the problem, then at that point they will start jumping to conclusions, but if you don’t know how they feel about it (and don’t assume you do because you’ve never been in their shoes) then you may say just the opposite thing they need to hear.
So when they tell you, “my father/mother/brother/uncle/whatever said/did this and that, then this happened and I said that, and then this, blah blah blah.” When they stop to take a breath, OPTIONALLY if you don’t understand what they have said you might say, “I’m sorry, I wasn’t sure if it was your brother or your sister who said that you were stupid because of your bad report card?” Make it specific, so they know you were paying attention, or they have no reason to even talk to you. I put “optionally” in capital letters because you don’t necessarily have to understand and remember all the details. The most important thing is that they tell you enough for you to make a good “guess” as to how they feel. This is where the empathy comes in.
Once you understand enough about their situation, use your guess to find out if you “felt” their story. This is critical. It’s not enough to understand it. They want to know that you felt it. So here’s how you empathize. You say, “wow. When your dad said he was ashamed of you, did you feel angry at him?” Now they know you were listening, and that you’re trying to understand, and that you care enough to make sure that you do. They might say, “yes. I was angry, but I knew if I said anything he would hit me, so I pretended to be ashamed,” or, “not really. I just felt terrible because I knew what I did was stupid/wrong/dangerous and when he said that it made me even more ashamed of myself.” It doesn’t matter if you are right, just that whatever you ask has to have some logical connection to the story they just told and that you now understand. For example, you could just as well have asked, “when your dad said he was ashamed of you, did you feel ashamed of yourself?” Same thing. Maybe you were right, maybe you were wrong. But once they confirm or clarify it, NOW you can say something like, “I can see how you might be ashamed/angry/lonely/depressed in a situation like that.”
(continued in next post)
