Two weeks later, I received a call at home from another counselor who said that he had just taken a call from H. I immediately feared that she had attempted to take her life again; however, it turned out that H. had called to thank us for saving her life. She said that she had been hospitalized for two weeks after that night that she called us and, in that time, had begun to receive counseling and joined a support group. She said that while she realizes that it won't be easy, she now has hope for her future.

It is calls like these that really demonstrate the teamwork and support of fellow Helpline counselors. The call is often credited to me, but the success was not mine alone that night; it also belongs to the other two counselors who were with me and to the three newly graduated trainees who were able to witness their training in action. I may have been the counselor on the phone, but the other counselors who were there were supporting me and working with the police to find H. before she took her life.

A question that I get a lot is, "How do you not take the calls home with you at the end of the day?" The truth is that sometimes I do. I think that it is difficult to be empathetic when someone is having a really tough time and not end up shouldering some of the weight that the callers put out there. It is especially difficult when getting off of a call without knowing the outcome. In the call that I mentioned above, I suppose that I would consider myself lucky, in a sense, because I knew that H. was getting help. Still, after this call, I talked to many of the other counselors about what had happened.

I think that talking about tough calls is probably the best way to manage emotionally the work that we do, and it is lucky for us that we are all trained to listen really well.

Be sure to check out our previous installment of "Stories from the Helpline" from volunteer Wing-Sum Doud.