Here is the second half of my post about what is has been like so far
for me working with the MH Crisis Angels.
If you would like to catch up
by reading Part 1, I got a link right here
The first half of 2019 was to me the REAL beginning of the Angel
Experience. Up until then, we were all trying to figure out how to
handle certain situations and it took a lot of learning from mistakes
and trying new things out. But what kept it all together the most was
teamwork. We have to have the right people on the team, whether it’s
Crisis Angels or Angel Advocates whenever one of us needs help. This
includes sharing new ideas about promotion, ways to expand our reach
into other social media sites and also coming up with creative tweets
and online polls over a mental health subject that is being focused on
globally at the time. We spent all of Suicide Awareness Day doing this.
Getting together a number of mental health advocates who were not on the
team but were eager to help out our 24 hour campaign to raise awareness
on our end. All of this collaboration, teamwork, not to mention the
Sanctuaries for the service users expanded our services for supporting
people more than ever before. The Angel twitter page is getting closer
and closer to reaching 5,000 followers and we make sure to interact with
as many people as we can to assure everyone that this is about them,
not about our numbers or anything self serving. There have been long
periods in the beginning of this year when I felt like no matter how
many breaks I took, I would still be exhausted beyond belief because I
am the most available and active in chats, new ones and existing ones.
But that wouldn’t last much longer.
I am really glad we ended up collaborating with other mental health
advocates for Suicide Awareness Day and have been branching out in our
ways to reach people, because in the past few months (it’s currently
late July when I’m typing this) our team has grown a great deal, with
new members not only coming in, being good people dedicated to the work
we do, but also capable of being crisis angels themselves. When new
members join the team, it’s very important that they start out strictly
as an advocate, in other words, promoting our team and services on
social media. But if they want to become an Angel, they would go through
a training process with one of our long-time crisis angels. This set-up
that wasn’t fully realized until very late 2018, was finally paying off
in my eyes because now we have quite a few people, who are also really
good friends, and even great bloggers, who are able to pick up new
chats, spread light into people’s dark world with their daily tweets and
themes they came up with on their own, as well as show tremendous
enthusiasm for the work we all do that has helped improve the mental
health of lots of people in different parts of the world, but that also
includes me. I feel too privileged to be a part of this. I love the
positive impact of our simple and informal chats with people who reach
out to us feeling helpless. Not only does it make their day but it
always makes my day. And the same goes for us on the team when we
interact with each other, especially when it’s just us joking around
because you never know how much that can decrease one’s anxiety if one
of us is having a rough day.
I look forward to continuing what we’re doing until who knows how
long. All I know is,what we do is about something that is very important
when it comes to ending stigma, helping people cope with mental
illness, and even on occasion, help save lives. So I hope things just
keep getting better for all of us.
Here are the same links I posted at the bottom of Part 1:
Twitter Page of team founder @MySimpleMind
#MHCrisisAngels Blog
#MHCrisisAngels Instagram
#MHCrisisAngels Twitter page
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