I said hi to a guy in San Fransisco. We were in a convenient store when he’s buying rat poison. Now, I can just immediately thought he was going to… You know, kill rat. But he just looks at it in a resisting way. Either he is going to kill his pet mouse, or he’s gonna kill himself.
I don’t know what it is but still, I don’t have a good feeling. So I bought him coffee and asked him to chat with me.
We talked about really stupid stuffs like football (soccer), money advice, etc. Then at the end, he said, “Thank you, without u, I don’t know what I would do, I might hang myself rn.” He put the rat poison back and walk out.
Never ask ‘are you ok?’ But instead ask ‘how are you?’ It opens up that line of communication. It is also important to follow that up with actually listening to them, not diagnosing them. If they’re in immediate danger, try to guide them toward getting immediate professional help, but also try to make sure there isn’t anything around them that could be used as a tool for self-harm.
Don’t tell them to hang in there, learnt the hard way…
Be there for them. Make sure you give them time to vent/talk. Try to reach out to them as much as you can without being annoying. Encourage them to seek some form of counselling. Just be a soundboard for the most part unless they get to the point that you think they might be planning/attempting.
Be his friend