So how does this chat thing work, anyhow?
The secret of success is sincerity. Once you can fake that, you’ve got it made.
- Jean Giraudoux
“How does the chat work?”
It’s a question that gets asked often enough but for several completely different reasons. Some people want to know our purpose (“Can you give advice?”)… Others want to know if we’re “safe” to talk to (“Can I talk about suicide/sex/drugs/illegal stuff?”)… Still others want to know what we’re going to do once we hear something. (“Are you going to trace my IP?”) Let’s start with “What we do”.
Our role… YouthInBC.com is staffed by a pile of highly trained (and fairly awesome) volunteers, whose primary intention is to listen, try to understand how you’re feeling and talk about what you’re going through. If it’s something you can do something about, we can talk about your options or look at references to services that might be able to help you work through whatever brought you to us.
“Wait wait wait… but can you give me advice?”
It depends on what you mean by advice.
If you want for us to decide what you’re going to do for you…
… then no. Heck, we just met you ten minutes ago… how could we possibly know enough to make that decision? But if you’re finding a decision that you have to make is really difficult, maybe we can talk about that and you can get that off your chest. Or if you’d like to hash out pros and cons together, we can definitely do that.
If you want to know whether something is “normal” or “okay“…
… then maybe. We try our hardest to be non-judgmental, and that generally means hearing you out and not telling you whether your opinion is good or bad. That being said, if we think you’re describing a medical emergency we’ll probably tell you so… If it sounds like someone is abusing you, we’ll probably remind you that you don’t have to live like that and that help is available… and occasionally, we might sound off on what we consider to be generally accepted truths, for example, “you’re not responsible for your parents’ divorce… they make their own decisions.” But cutting, gender orientation, drugs, sex stuff that you think is odd, those are things we’ll just stick with discussing how you feel about it, instead of trying to tell you whether it’s good or not… besides, who are we to say?
If you want to know what your options are…
… then maybe. But it depends. If you ask us legal questions, we’ll probably suggest you consult a lawyer, legal clerk or legal aid worker… If you ask us medical questions, we’ll probably suggest you talk to a doctor or nurse. But if you’re not sure what to do with the loitering ticket you just got, maybe we can help you explore your options around that. Since we’re obviously not experts on everything, it’ll depend on what you’re asking about.
We’ve already touched on anonymity before, but I’ll come back to it next week to talk about confidentiality.
