A short recorded conversation (dated in the title Nov 4, 2014) in which two speakers—one identified as a life coach—discuss how friends should respond to someone threatening suicide. One speaker strongly advises always treating explicit threats seriously and calling 911 ("pull the fire alarm"), shares a personal intervention anecdote involving a friend with addiction, and emphasizes that pain is temporary, help exists (therapists/coaches/mentors), and actions have wide ripple effects. The segment closes with a plug for Inspired Results Coach and the name Rebecca Silence.
Questions this video answers
911
InspiredResultsCoach.com
11-4-14 (November 4, 2014)
Check out inspired results coach.com and go from there. What happens if you are a friend and you get a message saying, I want to slit my own throat? It's, you know, obviously you don't want that other person to hurt themselves in some way, shape or form. And you know, that there had been, you know, thoughts or attempts beforehand. How do you, you know, as a friend, how do you gauge that? How do you. How do you handle that without. Without, you know, you know, pulling the fire Alarm and calling 911 and making it a bit, you know, what's. How do you handle that?
You absolutely pull the fire ALARM and call 91 1. That's what you do. You don't str in having empty threats, in having this life where they're feeling so sorry for themselves, they don't see the ripple effects of their behavior on other people. You pull the fire ALARM, you call 911, you tell them you're doing it because you care about them. And see, here's the deal. Someone who's saying that they're crying out for love and help, they're crying out for help and obviously don't know what to do to help themselves in the moment. Now, in my experience, most people who are blatantly saying, is my threat, this is what I'm gonna do, that they're most likely probably not going to follow through with it, and I don't care. I'm gonna take it seriously. So you gotta remember, you're always training people how to treat you. So if you are gonna be the person that they're going to cry wolf to over and over and over and learn that you will just roll over, say, I love you, it'll be okay. And then they get to keep doing the empty threats. It only gets louder and worse. So what I'm saying is pull the fire alarm, call 911, tell him it's because you care about him. I've had to do this. One of my very, very best friends for a while. This is probably about five years ago, six years ago. She was going through some addiction issues, and she'd be calling me in the middle of the night from the hospital. And I love her more than anything. And I just stopped answering the phone. And I told her, I'm not gonna answer the phone in the middle of the night. I'm a single mom with this little baby girl in the other room. I'm not quite sure what you want me to. If you're calling me in the middle of the night from the hospital, I'm Glad you're in the hospital. That's exactly where you need to be. And I love you. And when you want to get your life together, I'm so here for you.
But at the end of the day, if having to give the choice between your daughter or the friend, you're going to choose the daughter.
I'm choosing both. See, that's what I'm doing. I'm choosing both because I cared about the friendship. I didn't answer the phone. She's in the hospital. That's where she needed to be. So I'm not choosing one or the other. I'm saying this is the type of relationship I want. These are the types of friends I want. This is the life you deserve, whether you see it or not. So what I want everyone to take on is understanding you're not powerful enough to change someone from slitting their throat. Nothing you could do or not do would make them take that step or not take that step. They're gonna do what they're gonna do with or without you. And that's a hard pill to swallow.
Yeah.
But you can be the friend that says, whatever you decide, I'm gonna love you. And we were just talking about the hard truth in the last segment. Tell the truth. This is crap. This is bs. You're better than. If you tell me you're about to slit your throat, of course I will be calling 91 1. That's what you do. You call out the greatness you see in this person, and you let them know I'm gonna take you seriously.
Okay. So we've handled that from the friend point of view who just get rid of. You know what? If you are that person that said it.
Yeah. If you are that person that said it, I want you to understand that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. And this is what's really difficult for people when they're really in it. And I have been there. I have been there, looking at. Oh, my gosh, if I have to address this, you know, bulimia, this assault that just happened, whatever it was that I had been through, I really thought it was gonna kill me if I had to face it. And I thought it would be so much easier to stick my head under the pillow or drink more wine or whatever. And what I've learned is anytime I ignored the issue, it only got worse.
Absolutely.
And then there's a beginning and there's a middle, and there's an end to every pain, every suffering, every experience that you're. That's uncomfortable. There's the beginning, there's a middle and there's an end. And if you can get brave enough to get through the discomfort, you have freedom and you can get your life back. Just know that there's always a way out that doesn't have to include self harm. There are therapists, there are mentors, there are coaches, there are seminars. There are people out there who will support you. If you want to give up fighting for being in victim to your circumstances and take on what's the life I really deserve. I'm leaving all of these circumstances that have hurt me behind me and I'm moving forward. You gotta have a big goal is really what it takes, I think to get out of that dark place. You have to have a reason why you wanna do all the work to get through the pain, to get to something better. But you have to understand that this pain is temporary. And there's something better for you if you're willing to quit arguing for your limitations and why your circumstances were so bad. We've all been through darkness. Everyone can relate to that. And then the people that are ready to hurt themselves, what I believe is going on is they just. They've lost hope. And don't lose hope.
No matter what, no matter what you think and how hopeless you feel, there will be people that will be devastated if you do it.
There is such an amazing ripple effect to everything we do.
Oh, absolutely.
And what I mean by a ripple effect is you have no idea.
Positive and negative. Let's make that clear. Positive and negative.
That's exactly where I'm going with this. You have no idea how powerful. Everything you do, everything you say, even things that you think are. It makes a difference one way or another. And either your energy is giving back to the world, ripple effects of your behavior, or being of service and making the world a better place and making people's lives better. Or the ripple effects are what I call taker ripple effects. Where you're sucking from the world and people care about you whether you care about yourself or not, or whether you have hope or not. And your decisions impact so much more than you could ever comprehend. And all I want you to get is, yes, there's darkness for all of us. And I promise, if I can get through getting through darkness, anyone can. Anyone can get through that. You are more than your circumstances. You can rise above anytime you want. And that's what my business is all about. Creating from inspiration, regardless of what's happened to you. And use it as rocket fuel. Whatever would make you want to hurt yourself. I want you to use that as rocket fuel to step into being someone on the planet that makes a difference.
Local life coach Rebecca silence inspired results. Coach.com is the website. You can follow them on Facebook and also on Twitter.
