Turn all lessons into absolutes.

Offering suicide support is nuanced and individual, because people are individual!

So the best way to offer terrible support is to treat everything you learn like an absolute rule. If it works in one situation, make sure you apply it in absolutely all situations! The more you can ignore the grey and make everything black and white, the more successfully you’ll apply this.

This an excellent way to dehumanise your work and make it feel like you’re processing barcodes, not supporting complex, nuanced humans.

Focus more on your own opinions, judgements and assumptions than on the other person.

This will exceed all expectations in making people feel like they don’t matter.

Remember to really drive the point home that you’re not listening by reframing really aggressively, ‘No, you’re not a bad person at all! You just can’t see what I can see!’.

Sharing your opinions is an excellent way of breaking those pesky professional boundaries.

Take everything personally.

When everything feels like it’s your fault, you’re in the best position to offer the worst support.

Personal responsibility is one thing but if you want to excel in offering abysmal support, make sure you blame yourself for everything. Especially stuff out of your control.

Just remember this key: everything is about you.