Sometimes callers just want to feel someone is listening to them

Last week an article was published in the Zuger Zeitung with the encouraging news that there have been fewer suicides in the canton in recent years and that much is going on to prevent people from reaching this desperate stage.
 
This weekend a counsellor who works for an organisation which provides confidential emotional support for people who are experiencing despair gave an interview with a journalist of the Zuger Zeitung. In Switzerland this organisation is known as the Dargebotene Hand (DH), the Proffered Hand, the equivalent of the organisation known as the Samaritans in United Kingdom (not to be confused with the Samariter Association, German of the same literal meaning, but which is an organisation which administers first aid inter alia).
 
Last year, as many as 14,000 people dialled the free 143 number to get through to one of 53 DH counsellors in central Switzerland. The one interviewed, Angelika Meier (not her real name), comes from Zug and has worked for the charity for eight years. She explained how she and her team worked from offices in Lucerne, the whereabouts of which are not disclosed. Sometimes calls come in in quick succession, while, at other times, it can be an hour before someone else calls. When asked what sort of people call up, Meier said many suffered from a wide range of problems, from desperation about a relationship or burn-out to do with their job, to those who may have been recently bereaved or made redundant. Those with thoughts of suicide also call.
 
Has one particular call stayed in her memory?
“I once had a call from a woman who said she could see no way out and told me she was standing next to a railway line. I asked her to turn round and tell me what she could see, while at the same time I could hear a train approaching. In the end she went home and said she did not need my advice any more. I do not know what happened to her since,” she replied.
 
Some of those who ring up, and on a regular basis, too, suffer from psychiatric disorders and compulsive thoughts. “They have to put up with the same ongoing situation all the time, and struggle to come to terms with it, knowing there is very little possibility of any change or improvement,” she said.
 
Meier mentioned that sometimes it was particularly challenging to listen to callers to give them the impression she was listening to such a tale for the first time. “Should the time arrive when I can no longer do this, then I think it will be time to give up,” she said. “One other aspect is the fact that, in remaining anonymous in my role, it is not easy having to come up with an explanation to (family and friends) as to why I am going out late in the evening or returning early in the morning from my four or five-hour shifts.”
 
As to whether she had had problems with callers, she said that people who were mentally disturbed could easily be offended if one said the wrong thing. While she always did her best to remain calm, on one occasion, she (Meier) admitted to having indeed put the phone down.
 
When asked what strategy she used in dealing with people in despair, she said she made much use of her intuition and, in situations where she was not sure about what to say, would summarise in a calm way all the caller had said. “Sometimes I think such callers just want someone to listen to them,” she admitted.
 
As to whether she had had any feedback at all, she recalled how one caller once called her back and told her (Meier) how she had benefited from her holding up a mirror to her and, as a result, saw things differently and more in proportion. “It is naturally very good to hear such things,” said the counsellor.
 
And what qualities does one need to be a good adviser in this way?
“Above all you need to be a good listener and be able to distance oneself from the caller,” she said. “Then you do have to be able to empathise with people in the sad times they may be going through. For anyone with black and white ideas about what is right and wrong, this is not the job for them.”
 
Now a pensioner, Meier said she was still as intent on carrying on as a counsellor as she was when she first started. “No shift is the same,” she said, "and I notice through the course of my work that I learn a lot about myself, too, not least when I talk through all we have heard with my colleagues. Sometimes problems I have had to listen weigh on me, and make me sad; I notice how the experience of it all has made me much less judgmental, too.