Please Do Not Become A Listener If You Are Not Able To Handle It

So, you joined this website for some help, you realized how beneficial it could be, and decided to become a listener to give back to the community. Sounds swell, right?

Not exactly.

To be a listener, you need to be extraordinarily patient. People are coming to you with their problems, and require a great deal of attention and focus. You are a rock for these people; they depend on you. They are offering you their trust and emotions, which can be very, very hard to do. Being a listener requires a lot of hard work and extraordinary control of your own emotions, and very few people are really capable of handling it. Choosing to remain a member is an excellent choice, and there are plenty of ways to stay supportive in the community without becoming a listener. I used to be a listener on a separate account, but I quit because I realized I was not capable of giving users the support they needed. I am now taking care of myself and feel a whole lot better.

As a user, I have had many bad experiences with listeners that were clearly not in control of their own emotions or capable of giving me the help I needed. I have had listeners become angry towards me, insult me, offer unsolicited advice, offer unsolicited psychiatric evalutaions after a single conversation, judge my morals, shame me for my decisions, go off on a tirade about their own issues, tell me that my problems are nothing compared to their own, ask me extremely personal questions that were frankly rather disturbing, make accusations, tell me my problems were falsified, accuse me of trying to trigger them, tell me "I can't handle this" and disconnect, block me without cause or warning, disconnect without a word after only a few minutes of dialogue, mock me, degrade my sexuality, and force their religious views onto me. Yesterday, when explaining my relationship problems to a listener I had never spoken with before, she told me I was too young for a serious relationship and told me to break up with my boyfriend of six months for this reason, which was extremely unhelpful but unfortunately quite typical of many listeners I speak with these days.

It's made me afraid to use the service. I want to be able to talk to someone, but this isn't really a safe space anymore. I can't open up in the real world without being judged, ridiculed, invalidated or generally having my vulnerability taken advantage of. It needs to be different here. So please, I beg you, don't become a listener unless you are really capable of carrying out the responsibility it entails.