Crisis Text Line has helped 70,000 people since it launched a year ago. Mastropaolo usually interacts with several texters at once, but he’ll stay with each conversation for as long as the texter wants or needs.
One of the most powerful recent interactions Mastropaolo remembers was when a girl texted saying she had been battling self-harm for over a year and was feeling tempted to cut herself again. He referred her to a website called the Butterfly Project. It encourages people considering self-mutilation to instead draw a butterfly over the part of the body they would have cut, and to name the drawing after a person.
“While we were texting, she drew her butterfly and she asked me what she should name it. And I said it should be for someone who really cares about you,” Mastropaolo said. “She asked if she could name her butterfly Darren. It was like … waterworks.”
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