Why Advice Doesn’t Help When We’re Hurting (and What Does)

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Couple Hugging

“Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. The friends who listen to us are the ones we move toward. When ware listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand.” ~Karl A. Menninger

I remember my first call like it was yesterday.

I answered the phone, heart beating out of my chest, hand firm on a sheet of local emergency phone numbers.

The voice on the other end was full of… meek embarrassment.

Not exactly what I was expecting.

“Uhh, I’m really sorry… I’m not, uhh… I’m not suicidal…. I just… I just had a huge fight with my girlfriend…. I just… I really need to talk to someone…. Is that okay?”

If you’re like I was before I became a volunteer in 2011, when you think about a suicide hotline you imagine and circumstances so traumatic and unbearable that they bring people to consider ending life.

But, I soon discovered that everything I expected to be true—everything from what the callers would be like, all the way up to how I would handle them—was completely wrong.

And what I learned forever changed the way I think about pain.

My First Big Surprise About Pain

I became a volunteer because I wanted to help people who were hurting.

But looking back, I realize that I…

What do you think?

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