"Preventing suicide is a community effort," wrote Cassey Lottman of the Crisis Text Line. "We thank everyone who has helped others get the help they need by sharing us as one of the many resources available."

Since January, I have worked as a Crisis Counselor for the Crisis Text Line, a free crisis intervention organization that provides support through text. To date, I have volunteered 112 hours and 370 conversations to help with high demand.

But I started with the Crisis Text Line as an ongoing trend of supporting peers and making right with situations in my personal life. It was in early 2016 when I saw a flyer in the bathroom, soliciting volunteers for the Emory Helpline, a community hotline for my university for peer support and also suicide prevention. I filled out an application and then went through the interview process, where I laid out honestly why I wanted to volunteer on the Helpline:

"To be honest, I want to do this as a matter of self-interest, to become a better helper and listener to my friends and family. I feel deeply ashamed that I told my brother and friends to 'get over it' and didn't take the time or emotional energy to listen to how they were feeling."

And so, I began helping on our confidential college hotline, and the confidentiality clauses and the lack of ability to tell people about our role were explicit. I wanted people to know I was doing this good work to get support but to also showcase how much of a good person I was. I had to lie to my roommates about where I was going at night and make stupid things up about fake girlfriends and Tinder dates when my teammates and friends inquired about why I was going in a direction I didn't live at 10:15 at night.

But telling the truth about what I was doing was firmly against the rules, and the people I worked with were saintly people who received no credit and no recognition for their work. And that inspired me too and brought me to realize that there was something about the work and validation that just made me a better person and a better listener to people in my life, to friends and people on my cross country team.

On some level, it brought me closer to Christ and coincided with my conversion to Christianity in 2018. I was a fixer at heart. I thought I was so smart and had the answers and advice to everyone's mental health problems, and that I could provide quick-fix solutions to everyone's issues they were struggling with their entire lives.

It didn't take long for my mentors to tell me that that belief was complete hubris, that giving unsolicited advice was actually very counterintuitive. What people who sought out the support needed was a champion, not a savior, much like kids also need from their educators. And I sought out to be a savior to start, and I was completely wrong.

What people needed was a person to listen and support what they were going through, not someone who intervened and told them what to do.

And it was internalizing this belief that my life changed, I became a much better and more mature person, and I found Christ. Matthew 6:2 tells us to "sound no trumpet before you [when you give], as the hypocrites do...that they may be praised by others." The praise shouldn't have come from others, but from myself and from the person I was able to support. I learned quickly that I wasn't there to fix people but to listen and support people through issues like anxiety, depression, abuse, stress, poverty, sexual assault, and suicide. I learned quickly that even the people who seemed like they had it the most together had deep issues that they didn't feel comfortable expressing to anyone but a confidential hotline, and I learned quickly how great it was to have people who did the same work, sought out no credit, and genuinely just wanted to help.

I will be honest in saying that my first few calls were disastrous. I picked up a phone shaking, almost having a panic attack, and I felt like I fucked up completely and did a complete disservice to the person who wanted to kill themselves that didn't get the help they needed. But those same people would thank me profusely for my help and just being there and present during their time of need, and I was deeply thankful that, even if everything I thought was wrong about myself was true, I tried.

And I got better fast. I took the feedback to treat each call as a conversation with a friend where the friend did most of the talking, and I did most of the listening. And it worked like magic. I didn't even have to say much, because there wasn't much I could say to someone who just needed someone to talk to and get everything off their chest.

To this day, because of my experience with the Helpline, the quote on my phone background, from F. Scott Fitzgerald, has remained the same "to be kind is more important than to be right. Many times, what people need is not a brilliant mind that speaks, but a special heart that listens."

And so it was January of this year that I realized I wanted to continue the work and help out with people that needed support all over the country. It was through a friend that I got a referral for the Crisis Text Line and the service it provided. I went through a 30-hour accelerated training session and made it through the program quickly, using the knowledge and resources I accumulated as a volunteer on the Helpline.

I jumped right in. But it didn't take me long to realize that texting is a completely different beast than getting on the phone and calling. Both have their pros and cons, but it was clear that being on the phone is a much more intimate and relationship-building experience. I felt like I helped people much better on the phone, where I showed I was completely human, too, rather than through texting.

But it is a double-edged sword, too. Getting on the phone and calling about a deeply vulnerable issue is something that is incredibly hard to do. Texting may not be as effective, but it was more accessible. It was more comfortable for the texter. And although I felt like my support was almost robotic and not as effective, a lot of texters felt like it was. Here is some of the feedback I received from people I texted with:

"I am truly grateful for your recommendation. It's nice to have something to look forward to finally. I hope to meet people who have similar interests to me and don't discard me before even knowing me. Thank you."

"I really enjoyed talking with you, you're a very kind person. And when I turn (age), I want a job just like yours."

"Thank you for being there in my time of need. It makes me feel better knowing there are people in the world who do care."

I have talked with people through almost every issue, from general anxiety to homelessness to self-harm and suicide. I was trained in how to assess for suicide, and I have had six conversations where my supervisor had to call emergency services for texters imminently as risk for killing themselves (if you think "kill yourself" is a term too harsh, think about the connotation behind a term like "commit suicide" that makes it seem like a crime). These are conversations we call active rescues, and at times it took me a couple of days to recover from the fact that I literally had the power to influence someone's immediate life and whether they survived.

And although I couldn't be of best help sometimes, there were resources I have provided that have been. The 54321 grounding technique is an incredible resource for people facing panic attacks and anxiety. Rise Above the Disorder is a great resource for people without the means to find a counselor or therapist to find one. 18percent is an online community I give out frequently to give those struggling with mental health issues to find support.

The company also uses these conversations for data to identify what problems are peaking, and when. "Although National Suicide Prevention Awareness Month is observed in September, data show that suicidal ideation peaks in April and May," writes David Bornstein of the New York Times. One in five conversations of users under 13 mention self-harm and 40% of conversations mention feeling "alone" or "scared."

According to Bob Filbin, the organization's chief data scientist, it means, to counselors, "these texters want to be heard."

I wish I could devote more time and emotional energy to helping on the Crisis Text Line, but I'm only human. And the times I do help, very late at night, I usually take 5-6 conversations at once, especially since demand is so high that there are almost 100 people on the queue at any given night around 1:30 a.m., and we don't have the counselors available to meet that demand.

That is why I implore you to apply and be a volunteer to be a Crisis Counselor because we need more help and more people to try. I'm no saint, and there are ways I don't help as much as I should, and if I can do it, you can do it too. Even if it's just for the experience and the help, organizations like the Emory Helpline and the Crisis Text Line remind me of what it means to listen, and that's a valuable thing for you to get better at, too.

Text HOME to 741741 from anywhere in the United States, anytime, about any type of crisis.