Category: Updates

Posted February 26th, 2021

By: Chelsea Carter

In the dim light of her desk lamp, Elise picks up her pen, hands shaking. She tried her best, but she just doesn’t see how things will get better. This pandemic isn’t going anywhere and all the adults keep saying it will get better if they follow the rules, but things just keep getting worse.

Once an honour roll student, Elise has fallen so far behind in her last year of high school that she wasn’t sure if she would be able to catch up. She’s sick of being confused and lost in class or handing in assignments late because of poor internet access at her house. At first, she tried using her phone to follow along instead, but she wound up going over her data limit. Her parents thought she was on TikTok and yelled at her for wasting money. She tried to explain but they wouldn’t listen. Elise broke down in tears.

Elise is sick of trying so hard and getting nowhere. She misses her friends, but she is worried about getting COVID-19 or bringing it home because her diabetic mom is high-risk. She hasn’t seen her friends at all since the summer. But, if she’s honest, she doesn’t really want her friends to know her family moved into a basement suite when her mom lost her job. Elise is sick of hearing her parents fight, the noise of her upstairs neighbours boots, and seeing the neighbour’s fence through the windows. She barely leaves their suite these days, and sometimes she thinks she’s forgotten what the sky looks like.

If this is what “living” is then living might not be for her.

She touches pen to paper but actually writing the note is a lot harder than she thought it would be. Her hand shakes worse as she thinks of her parents reading her final goodbye. She is shaking so much now she loses control of her hand and the pen. It falls and rolls to the edge of her desk over a pile of forgotten papers. A yellow flyer her school handed out back in October catches her eye under the pen. Most of the kids just threw it out but she had kept it just in case.

Elise sniffs and dries her eyes with the back of her favourite sweater; Mickey Mouse smiles mockingly on the front, a memory of their trip to Disneyland for Christmas, before the world shut down. She picks up the flyer and contemplates the number, looking between it and her phone.

It was past midnight. Elise couldn’t call her friends—they hadn’t been speaking as much lately. No one had even commented on her last Instagram post. They wouldn’t understand and she didn’t want to burden them with her problems anyway. Everyone seems to be struggling.

Instead of finding her lost pen, Elise picks up the phone and dials the crisis line number on the flyer. She starts thinking about hanging up when someone answers the phone, “Hello, Crisis Centre.”

At first Elise is unsure what to say when Jen asks her what’s going on with her tonight. Elise sniffs and responds, “I just didn’t know who else to call. I was just feeling really overwhelmed…” She is not sure what else to say. Jen kindly asks her questions, getting her to expand on what has made her feel this way. It’s the first time Elise has felt connected to someone else in a while like she is finally being heard without judgment. She looks at the note on her desk with Dear Mom and Dad written on the top. Something inside her bursts.

She begins to tell Jen everything she’s been feeling for the past few months. She is talking a mile a minute, and she’s not even sure if Jen can understand her through her tears. Jen tries to slow her down, gently interjecting to ask questions and getting Elise to take a breath. It helps. Elise starts to slow down and catch her breath. It feels nice to finally open up to someone; she feels like the weight she’s been carrying around for so long is getting a little lighter.

Talking to Jen isn’t how she imagined calling the Crisis Centre would be. It is a lot easier and less embarrassing she feels…relieved. Jen helps Elise feel like what she has been feeling is okay and helps her realize she isn’t the only one feeling this way—a lot of people are struggling. These are hard times. Jen asks Elise if she feels comfortable making a plan so that she can stay safe tonight.

Elise holds the phone to her ear, nods her head, and whispers “that sounds good.” Her shaking has subsided.

Elise looks at the small orange bottle of antidepressants she stole from her parents’ medicine cabinet. The ones she had planned on swallowing. With Jen’s help, she puts them in another room, out of sight. They decide she will talk to her parents and let them know what she was thinking and how she’s been feeling. She will ask them to keep the bottle hidden while they work on a longer-term plan. Jen offers to stay on the line, but they decide instead that Jen will call back in a bit to check-in with her to make sure everything is going all right. Even just knowing that Jen is going to check-in helps Elise feel better.

Calmer now, Elise puts down the phone and lets out a slow breath. She grabs the bottle and gets up, padding down the dark hall. She pauses outside her parents’ door, then slowly pushes it open. Her parents are shocked, and her mom even cries a bit, but they listen,. They believe her. Everything isn’t magically fixed, but Elise doesn’t feel as hopeless anymore. With Jen’s help, she has made a plan to get through tonight, and with some more help she can make a plan to get through the rest.

—

If you or someone you know is struggling, especially with thoughts of suicide, reach out:

• Vancouver Coastal Regional Distress Line: 604-872-3311
• Anywhere in BC 1-800-SUICIDE: 1-800-784-2433
• Mental Health Support Line: 310-6789
• Online Chat Service for Youth: www.YouthInBC.com (Noon to 1am)
• Online Chat Service for Adults: www.CrisisCentreChat.ca (Noon to 1am)

 

* This story is a fictionalized account based on call/chat reports. The identities of those involved have been changed to ensure confidentiality of our services.

Posted February 3rd, 2021

By Stacy Ashton, Executive Director

Things without arms and without legs by Liz Argall is one of my favourite web comics, and this strip is my favourite one of all.

“I would like to be angry, then sad, then comforted, then adventure for solutions, then giggles” is probably the best description of how to support someone in crisis, but more importantly, it’s what the person in crisis has asked for.

In this time of shared stress, we lean on our friends and family, but we are also aware that our friends and family are also struggling. Often friends and family think they need to solve problems to feel they’ve helped, even though many pandemic crises will be solved over time and we mostly need comfort from one another to help us get through.

On the crisis lines, we assume you want comfort first, and help finding solutions when you ask for it. When you are reaching out to loved ones for support or they are reaching out to you, the question “are you looking for comfort or solutions?” frees up the space to get and give the right kind of support.

Expressing painful emotions without the requirement to solve them can immediately open you up to feel unexpected moments of peace and joy—even the giggles. Ending a call with humour is not unusual on the crisis lines. There’s a reason why many of the “next steps” identified by callers as being helpful include watching comedy. “Then giggles” offers pathways to accept what you can’t immediately change, and energy to change what you can.

Posted November 4th, 2020

By Stacy Ashton, Executive Director

At some point in our 51+ year history, there were questions raised about what to call the volunteers who answered our phones. “Crisis Counsellor” was one of the options proposed. 

I thought that was a good idea when I was volunteering on the lines—mostly because I was applying to a Masters of Counselling program and figured the title “Crisis Counsellor” could only help my chances of admission.

Now, however, I’ve played both roles: the person answering the crisis line, and the counsellor working with clients who are experiencing suicidal thoughts or recovering from a suicide attempt. Now I understand what counselling is, and it’s not the same as crisis response. 

Here’s the basic rule of thumb: if you schedule it, it’s counselling. A crisis, on the other hand, can’t be scheduled; when you reach out in a crisis, counselling isn’t exactly what you need. 

When we are in a crisis state, our minds and bodies go into a reaction mode. You’ve likely heard this a million times—I first learned about it in grade school with a cartoon they showed in class. Fight, flight, or freeze—each option requires a lot of energy as your body gets ready to stop thinking and start reacting.

Acting without thinking can get us into a lot of trouble. When you find yourself overwhelmed by intense emotion— which can sometimes feel like intense numbness—talking to someone who will just listen is how you turn your reaction back into thought. 

Counselling is really helpful in sorting out what to do next in your life. If you are facing a choice, if past events in your life are still painful, if something has happened that changes everything, if you are stuck and beating yourself up over it, or if you feel stuck and angry at other people or the world, counselling can help you think the situation through and find a resolution. 

Crisis response is about getting you back into your thinking mind. Counselling is most helpful when you are ready to think. 

If you call the Crisis Centre of BC–anytime, 24/7–you won’t be talking to a “Crisis Counsellor.” You’ll be talking to a skilled, valued, and aptly-named Crisis Service Responder.

• Vancouver Coastal Regional Distress Line: 604-872-3311
• Anywhere in BC 1-800-SUICIDE: 1-800-784-2433
• Mental Health Support Line: 310-6789

Posted September 23rd, 2019

By Rudi Araujo

Raj picked up the phone in the middle of the night. On the other end was a struggling woman who needed to share her story.

New motherhood. A sense of distance from her partner. Fractured relationships with her family. A history of trauma. That’s a lot to handle in the middle of the night. With a previous suicide attempt in her past, she knew she needed to reach out for help. She was receiving professional support on a regular basis, but at 1 a.m. she couldn’t reach anyone.

In the middle of the night, only a Crisis Centre responder was available to help.

The caller was dealing with severe postpartum depression. She felt isolated and angry and depressed. She was afraid she could hurt herself.

Raj recognized how delicate this particular call was and focused on helping her find ways to cope better in the moment and make it through the night. Over the phone, Raj provided a safe space in which her fears, failures, trauma, and shame could be acknowledged. He validated her conflict, and also her hopes for herself and her child.

Raj started volunteering at the Crisis Centre in September 2015. For him, every call is unique. The experience of talking to a person in distress varies greatly from person to person. Even so, Raj knows that holding a safe space for callers to share their reality gets people through to the next day, and that’s a powerful thing for another person to do.