One Thing you can do to prevent a friend’s Suicide…

ONE Thing you can do to prevent a friend’s SUICIDE…

Being involved in Youth Ministry many years ago gave me exposure to the dark side of teen suicides. My own family line are also victims to individuals who could not see any way out. We are faced with horror stories of high school pupils that took their own lives here in our beautiful town, Paarl, where we live and we frequently hear stories in our private consulting rooms of people who had lost loved ones who chose to end their lives. The same story continues of people in Christian communities. No one is exempt.

With Russia first in line, South Africa has the second largest suicide rate in the world, followed by South Korea and then the United State (Source: WHO, 2019). According to a (Global Health Estimates Suicide Worldwide) report by the WHO, 13,774 suicides were reported in South Africa in 2019. Of these deaths, 10,861 were men while 2,913 were women.

According to Statista, 11% of U.S adults showed symptoms of anxiety and depression in January – June 2019. The numbers rise to 33.9% in May 2020, followed by 42.4% in December 2020. (Sources: CDC, NCHS, U.S Census Bureau). If these numbers are true for the U.S who is ranked 4th in line with the world’s largest suicide rates, what do you think would be the numbers for South Africa who is ranked second?

Now on a lighter note, according to Statista, in 2012/2013, 146.98 million 60 kilogram bags of coffee were consumed worldwide. This has increased to 166.63 million 60 kilogram bags in 2020/2021!

These statistics and my experiences DO NOT make me an authority on the subject of SUICIDE. It only qualifies me to have much empathy and to have an opinion. There are many things you can do to help prevent a friends’ (or a colleagues’ or a family members’) suicide, but today I only want to focus on ONE thing you can do that can make a really BIG difference… But before I give it to you on a plate, I need to sketch some background…

Many people don’t greet you anymore with a “Hallo” or “Hi”; they immediately start off with “Howru” as suppose to a sincere, genuine “How are you?”. This and many other factors added fuel to me being ‘un’-vulnerable when people asked me how I am. So recently God challenged me (and my wife) to be a little bit more vulnerable to people when asked how we are. We’ve agreed to the challenge! We’ve decided to give people about 3 – 4 minutes of our “pearls” and then wait and see what happens… We’ve “experimented” with MANY family members, friends, etc. The results were both saddening and alarming!

We could not count on one hand people who were REALLY interested, meaning the absence off:

• Listening well (without formulating an answer, opinion or advice while we spoke);
• Deeply interested in what we had to say
• Asking questions to engage in deeper conversation

What we did experienced was that in ± 90% of our conversations (after we gave people some of our “pearls” in the 3 – 4 minutes), most then turned the focus back on themselves, sharing their own stories and problems. Some informal conversations lasted for more than 30 minutes where they would just talk about themselves… This taught us 2 things:

1. People don’t know how to LISTEN WELL +
2. People have a deep need to TALK/SHARE when a caring ear is offered

With this background in mind, I want to share two personal stories…

I was once working out in the gym on a Saturday afternoon. The Holy Spirit draw my attention to a woman, little overweight, really crunching it, working extremely hard on some of the equipment (not the woman in the photo though :-)). I sensed God prompted me to go and tell her how God the Father feels about her. I protested and reasoned with the still small Voice, but luckily He won the argument and so I went… What happened after a one-minute speech of obedience, was a sobbing woman whose life was transformed on that day…

The second story happened more recently where I was on the receiving end of this. A couple of Friday’s ago I’ve received an email from a client who turned down business out of fear of what’s going on in Europe with the unrest and war between Ukraine and Russia. We own two businesses, one being a Travel Company. I was devastated. Navigating a travel business through the past two years of the Covid pandemic was extremely tuff and now having to face another international event that could potentially stop business, was daunting.

With my recent experiments, I had few people I could turn to who would really care, listened well and offer encouragement. So, I sulked for about 30 minutes all by myself. Then, suddenly out of the blue, I received a Facebook video call. I did not know the person and thought it was a scam or someone trying to sell me something and I did not answer. I was intrigued though. It was someone from the Netherlands. We have 1 mutual Facebook friend. My suspicion was confirmed. The Holy Spirit convicted me otherwise. I replied with a text message saying, “Sorry I missed your call. Is there anything I can help you with?” The person called back and I reluctantly answered…

I soon found out he was just an ordinary guy who did not try to sell me anything. He just had an extraordinarily level of obedience to God as He felt lead to call me to offer encouragement, to “speak life” over my business and as a business owner himself, offered some sound, practical and really helpful marketing advice. He made no money out of this and offered none of his services. It only cost him obedience, but it ROCKED MY WORLD. I was on cloud 9 for several days. I felt God’s love. I felt noticed. I was deeply encouraged. And by the way, the advice he offered in the end, really made a big difference…

What have I learned from these two stories?

1. If the people around you are too self-absorbed and self-focused, God will (in His sovereignty) use a donkey to speak to you. In my case, a fellow Christian business owner WHO DID NOT KNOW ME AT ALL, thousands of miles away in the Netherlands.
2. Secondly, obedience changes lives! My obedience towards the woman in the gym, changed her life. The Dutch guy’s obedience changed my life. What is the ingredients of this type of obedience? Stop. Care. Listen. Ask questions. Listen more. Ask more questions. Then, offer yourself as a conduit of HOPE AND ENCOURAGEMENT.

Apart from owning a Travel company, my wife and I are also certified and practicing Life Coaches. Our studies to become Life-Coaches, was long, intense and very tuff. Of the many skills and tools that we’ve learned, one of the first was the skill to LISTEN. At first, I proudful thought by myself, “this module is really a waste of time”; BUT after digging deeper into this subject and practically applying this in assignments, I discovered that this was a LIFE-GIVING skill and tool: The ability to LISTEN WELL.

So, how does this tie in with the subject of this blog, “ONE Thing you can do to prevent a friend’s SUICIDE…”?

I personally believe and I’m of the opinion that apart from NOT putting people (especially Christians) on a guilt trip if they need to take anti-depressants or anti-anxiety meds (which is a whole new topic on it’s own), the next best thing you can do is to STOP and LISTEN WELL.

Here’s 5 tips:

1. Don’t listen to only formulate your answer to teach or to give your advice while the other person is speaking… Don’t listen to catch a word or phase to default away from the other person and to focus on yourself, to tell your story related to what they spoke about…
2. Listen to hear what the other person is saying OR not saying…
3. Listen with love and respect. Give the other person the time and day to verbalize and process their emotions and thoughts…
4. Ask questions instead of “telling”…
5. Listen to what the Holy Spirit is saying to you as you actively listening to the person in front of you…

So, what is the ONE Thing you can do to prevent a friend’s SUICIDE? The answer is simple: LISTEN WELL…

Sincerely,
Hennie Albertse

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Email: hennie@overflowinglife.net