useless useless judgemental chat operator

Hi @fkthis ! Welcome to the forums! 🙂

I can relate to your sentiments in many ways. I've never used a crisis line myself, but I have sought help in other ways. Sometimes the people on the other end just present perspectives that are so horrifying you just... well, as you say, it doesn't exactly bolster your desire to remain in a world with people like that.

I often find myself suspecting that training may be the problem, moreso then the solution. Like, they've been brainwashed with all these sorts of bad attitudes and misinformation by their training programs and training culture in general. Just my 2 cents...

Hey @fkthis welcome to the forums!

I'm so sorry to hear about your experience, you deserve to be heard and validated.

crisis lines and support services in general can sometimes take a bit of trial and error in finding someone you feel comfortable talking too, it sucks that today's wasn't the one.

i'm glad you were able to come here and talk to us about it, i know that feeling of not being understood and you deserve to be supported in a way that makes you feel heard. we're here for you.

i've also sent you an email to just check-in with you so once you've read it, send an email back to let me know how you're going 💗

Hi @fkthis

I have used a few different chat operators. Actually I used one this afternoon. Both chat line and phone line.

I can understand where you are coming from. Sometimes I have had really helpful people, sometimes not so much. I think it a bit of a hit or miss sometimes.

I also find it differs depending on why I have reached out for support.

Perhaps you could use this platform to chat about what is going on for you and how we can support you.

Snowie

@fkthisSo sorry to hear your experience with the helpline was so terrible. It must be so incredible difficult, not to mention thoroughly disheartening to reach the point you call them and have that kind of experience. I would like to think you just got unlucky and most of the people on those lines are far better at the job. I'm not sure training can teach people empathy. It's not easy to reach out when you're feeling that low, so I feel like you showed a lot of strength to call them. I would urge you to try again, maybe with a different service and hopefully you get to speak to someone who can help you. You really shouldn't have to deal with the alone, and no one would expect you to... although I know it doesn't feel that way a lot of the time, but there are people who can help you through so please don't let this bad experience put you off trying again.

If you wanted to share why you're feeling so distraught, I, and people here are happy to listen and offer any advice and support we can. Even if you just want to have a massive rant, i'm sure we've all done that.

Hey @fkthis hope it's okay that I chime in. I am really sorry that you've had such awful experiences, it truly is horrifying how many folks here have experienced institutional trauma like that. I'm appalled that you've been told to 'go and do it then' - feels almost like something that ought to result in disciplinary action hey. The only thing I can think of as a reason for that is that this person is deep in the pits of compassion fatigue and taking it out on you - which is a failure of both that person to recognise and address within themself, and of the organisation that failed to provide enough support to their staff to prevent such things. That or they were just an a-hole - unfortunately like any industry, the mental health field got plenty of em.

I think in a lot of cases, it might be less to do with individual workers and more to do with the current laws about Duty of Care. I have had moments where I know that calling ES might end up being a traumatising experience for the person I'm supporting, but I am bound by policy to make the call anyway if I can't confirm whether that person is safe. I mean, if it saves the person's life then that's huge, and it is for this reason that I think it's better to have the Duty of Care laws than to have nothing in place at all. However, it's obvious that it is more effective in theory than in practice, and needs to be overhauled in a huge way.

My first change I'd make to the system would be to have a separate service entirely (police can be incredibly triggering and are usually not well-trained in mental health first aid, and the medical system is overloaded enough as it is), with skilled clinicians who can make house calls to provide some acute care and assist the person in regulating their emotions and building enough safety that they don't need to go anywhere, certainly not to hospital. I'm definitely not the only one who feels this way - many of us who work in mental health are acutely aware of these systemic problems, but feel powerless to be able to enact change. Alas... it just comes back to money - most mental health services are over-capacity and under-funded, so unless the govt is able to actually realise that prioritising our nation's mental health is the NUMBER ONE way to improve literally everything else in our society, and inject sufficient funding to make these changes, we're stuck with what we've got.

Just saw your other post - I am not surprised you're really feeling it at the moment with that dark cloud on your horizon. Are you talking about like, the legal services failing to answer your questions or some other organisation? Either way, that's really annoying! Kinda like... what's the point of asking the experts if the experts can't even answer? Ugh, big piles of systemic failures. You deserve better. Don't spose any of em are questions the forums community could help with? Do feel free to share (so long as it wouldn't compromise your anonymity).

Okay, wow, that ended up being a whole wall of text, my bad! Anyway, hope that you do find those good experiences along the way, with folks who do actually care and want to see you thrive, rather than seeing you as an inconvenience! And whilst stuff is extra stressy, if you wanted to you could share the date that you have court stuff coming up, so that the team and community know what's happening for you and can come surround you with some extra support in ya corner 😉