Entering New and Scary Territory
Trigger Warning: Suicidal thoughts
Once I get to know someone pretty well, I can tell how they’re feeling through the written word. Some people use a lot of emojis when they text, and others aren’t sure how to turn off all caps; some people end every sentence with a period while others avoid punctuation like it’s a disease. But one thing remains consistent: each person has a pattern, and when that pattern is broken, something is wrong.
For myself, I know that I can fall into one of two patterns when I get upset: I either start ranting (usually in gramatically-correct paragraphs), or I get unusually terse and then disconnect. I’ve come to notice these breaks from normal patterns in my friends, and last week, it was the first sign something was wrong with one of my close friends.
Olive (as I’ll call her here) usually peppers her messages with plenty of smiley faces and heart emojis stacked on top of each other, and she never completes a sentence. I thought it was very unusual when she started writing in full sentences, punctuated as she usually never does, telling me that I should take some of her special pokemon in Pokemon Go.
Ordinarily, I’d say yes to an offer like this, but this deal sounded too good to be true. She told me I could go through her account and take everything I wanted, something that no one who planned to play the game again would ever offer. (For context, I was given one of these special pokemon for my birthday, and could barely believe my good fortune; Olive was offering me large quantities for no reason.)
I tentatively poked around the files she sent me, but I started to get worried. Shortly after we started texting that day, she told me that not only was she quitting Pokemon Go, something she genuinely enjoys, but she also didn’t want to go out for dinners or board game nights with any of our friends anymore. The little red flag I saw in my head quickly multiplied as I thought back to some of the things I’ve learned about mental illness.
No Shame On U says that some of the risk factors for suicide are someone suddenly changing their personality, giving away personal items as gifts, and quitting things they enjoy. I saw all three of these in my friend, and suddenly, I felt overwhelmed.
I recognized a lot of the things she was telling me - the feelings that her depression and panic attacks weren’t getting better, the numbness and coldness combined with extreme stress and nothing going right - from my reaction to my medical trauma. Five years ago, I was saying and thinking a lot of the same things as her, and to top it all off, she recently had a major medical crisis as well.
I wanted to spring into action, to instantly come up with the perfect thing to say or do, but I found that I was lost. It confused me - how could I know so much about mental illness in my own life but be unable to help a friend in need? I just stared at the screen where she’d typed what her depression was telling her, and I couldn’t think of a way to fight back.
I ended up calling Miriam for advice. She directed me to one of the resources on No Shame On U’s website, a crisis text line where I summarized the problem in a chat box (although it was my lunch break, I was at work, and I couldn’t find a quiet place to talk on the phone). It took a little while to connect to a counselor, but I was very glad I did.
I’d always been afraid to contact places like this, and had only done it once in the past - and never for myself, no matter how bad my thoughts got. At that time, I was on a Skype call with someone who expressed a wish to kill himself and had a gun handy, which was far more of an emergency. This new thing with Olive was subtler, and I wasn’t quite sure how to ask about what she was feeling.
I’d like to share with you some things I learned from my conversation with her this week, in the hopes that they’ll help you if you’re contacted by a friend in need:
First of all, it can be hard to tell if someone is struggling with negative thoughts in any form unless they explicitly say it. It’s easy to miss clues or assume the worst. The counselor on the hotline advised me to ask Olive if she was thinking of hurting herself at a lull in the conversation, and although I was nervous, I borrowed some of her wording and asked. The question helped my friend open up - she quickly wrote back that although she was not considering suicide, she was trying to punish herself by giving away things she loved, like the special pokemon.
Another important takeaway is how to display empathy in this situation. I wanted to reach through the phone and give Olive a huge hug, but in lieu of that, I had to figure out a way to make her feel heard and cared for, especially when she told me she felt like people were just pretending to care. I’ve felt that way before, but how is it best to let her know that?
The counselor told me to look at the exact words she’s using and say something like “I hear you’re feeling like…” to show that I understand the feeling, and then build on that foundation with a new thought. For example, when Olive said that she was feeling unloved, I had to push past my inclination to just write “but I love you!” and acknowledge that she was feeling unloved in that moment, a sentiment that just can’t be brushed away. By saying something like “I understand you’re feeling unloved, it can be really hard to live far away from your family and support system,” I used her thought and built on it with another fact I knew about her, continuing the conversation and giving her the space to share more with me.
Personally, I might have preferred a “but I love you!” in a bad moment, and that was another big lesson from the counselor: this conversation is not about me or any of my past knowledge about mental illness. Throughout my conversation with Olive, I found myself making assumptions about what she must be feeling based on my own experiences, and although this can help with empathy, it also meant I was projecting my own feelings, flaws, and fears onto her. Focusing on the exact words she said helped me get past that and make her feel heard and appreciated.
I could tell the moment things started to change - for the first time in this incredibly lengthy conversation, she used the stacked-hearts emoji in an incomplete sentence. She asked me if it was okay for her to keep the special pokemon after all, and if she could still come to our planned pizza dinner over the weekend. It wasn’t a perfect fix, but in that moment, she got pulled out of the spiral of negativity and got a little bit of herself back.
This conversation had a happy ending, but not all of them go this way. The counselor reassured me that if Olive hurt or killed herself after our conversation, it would not be my fault. I did everything in my power to help, and I can’t fix other people, no matter how much I want to. As the person on the outside, this was a very important message for me, as I was definitely feeling responsible for Olive at this point. The counselor repeated this over and over, drilling it into my head that no matter how much I want my friend to be happy and healthy, I am not a trained therapist, and it’s not my job to make anyone’s brain well again (except my own, but that’s another story).
I disconnected from the counselor shortly after, and returned to work. Olive and I had pizza together over the weekend, and I got her a little stuffed pokemon to have a tactile reminder of a friend who wants her to be healthy and safe. Now, all I can do is wait, hope it helped, and hope that she can fight past her demons, and if she or anyone else in my life needs help, use these tools help me connect and push past negative thoughts into progress and healing.
Ellie, a writer new to the Chicago area, was diagnosed with OCD at age 3. She hopes to educate others about her condition and end the stigma against mental illness.