CFC Blog #24: We Can All Walk With Strangers
Lauren, thank you for this. I loved it. Your writing reminded me right away of the social experiment my sister Jaime thought of to do. She said, "What if I sat on a street corner or park in New York City holding a sign that simply read, 'Just here to talk...'"
- Amanda
We Can All Walk With Strangers
The power inside every single human being never ceases to amaze me. And despite a world that appears increasingly divided and argumentative, every Monday night my hope that people lean towards good and not evil is strengthened.
On Mondays, I volunteer as a crisis counselor with an organization called Crisis Text Line – a crisis hotline where people text, rather than call, to talk to a counselor. I have no credentials to do this; I am not special in anyway. I don’t know anything about psychology or therapy. I am not a social worker skilled in referrals and crisis intervention. In fact, besides the elementary training I did before volunteering, I have absolutely no skills or experience when it comes to counseling (and many other things in life).
But every Monday, I sit at my computer and talk to strangers who text into the service (hotline number: 741741) with opening sentences like “I am worried about my girlfriend,” “I am so stressed out about school right now,” or “I want to hurt myself.” And somehow, those conversations frequently end with sentences like “I feel better now,” “I am going to talk to my girlfriend about how I feel,” and “I’m going to be okay, thank you.” Little do they know I’m sitting on my couch in my pajamas downing a box Oreos, sometimes with my pet rabbit on my lap to keep me calm, probably not that much older than they are, and highly unqualified.
Yes, sometimes those “I want to hurt myself” conversations get a little scary, and that’s when the actually highly qualified supervisors on the Crisis Text Line platform come in for the rescue. But 95% of the time, essentially all I am doing - along with the 30 other counselors who share my shift and are just as normal and unqualified as me - is reminding people that every emotion they are experiencing has value, they don’t deserve to be hurt by anyone, and that they are stronger than they think to get through whatever it is they are going through.
I am reminded of Brynne's story about being DL's pen pal: just being present can go a long way in walking with a stranger - or a friend - through a rough period. As I like to think about it, all my fellow counselors and I do is just be a listening and affirming human to other humans that are in pain. That’s it. Anyone who can tap into their inherent empathy can do it. And to me, the beauty of this really lies in the simplicity and universality of it.