Nancy Lublin, founder of Crisis Text Line, says, ‘What we need right now is physical distance and social connection.’
Photo: The Wall Street JournalFear of illness. Anxiety over potential financial strain or job loss. Concerns about closed schools and canceled events.
These are the issues Nancy Lublin is watching pour into Crisis Text Line, the nonprofit text-messaging organization she founded in 2013 and operates with funding from tech-industry billionaires and others. The volume of messages has surged during the coronavirus pandemic.
The service connects individuals via text message with volunteers who have completed an online crisis-counselor training program.
“What we need right now is physical distance and social connection,” she said.
Ms. Lublin, 48, wakes before 7 a.m. to examine the number of messaging threads volunteers completed the day before. On Tuesday, for instance, about 1,200 counselors at the organization participated in 6,362 text conversations in the U.S. Roughly half of those messages included the word “virus.”
“We are in a surge. The difference is I don’t have surge pricing to incentivize my drivers,” she said. “When it’s surge time, there’s more people in pain and that’s when they come running.”
Crisis Text Line is used to high volumes, having handled 141.8 million text messages since it began. The extra load, however, has Ms. Lublin working to double texting capacity in the next three weeks. She is adding volunteer-training slots and recruiting more volunteer coaches.
Ms. Lublin had been participating in conversations with people in need each day, juggling four or more live threads at a time. Now her time is primarily spent communicating with her roughly 100-person staff on Slack, shared Google spaces and phone calls. The organization now offers a 15-minute meditation session for its staff at noon each day.
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To help people cope with virus-related stress, volunteers try to validate the pain and anxiety on the other end of the text. They ask questions like “What things can you do tomorrow to stay strong?” And they focus on short, immediate time frames.
“Shrink it into something that feels more manageable,” Ms. Lublin says, adding that each volunteer’s approach is different. “It’s not a script and it’s not a robot; it’s an empathetic human being.”
Crisis Text Line’s users are typically under 17 years old, but their age has started to skew older as the coronavirus outbreak spreads.
“The kids are all right. The teenagers are less worried or less panicked than the adults are,” Ms. Lublin said. Yet about 80% of the users who mention the word “virus” talk about feeling anxious, she said.
“ ‘Shrink it into something that feels more manageable.’ ”
The virus-related anxiety in text-message conversations mirrors places where cases have swelled and where schools and workplaces are shut down, she said. The organization has also seen an increase in activity from Asian texters who say they are being bullied.
“If the first wave is anxiety, we are watching for a potential second wave that could possibly be child abuse, domestic violence, substance abuse. The side effects of being quarantined,” Ms. Lublin said.
The organization’s financial backers include LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, Melinda Gates and Intuit Inc. founder Scott Cook. Ms. Lublin, a lawyer by training, previously founded Dress for Success, a nonprofit that provides low-income women with professional attire for job interviews.
Crisis Text line suggests fighting anxiety and loneliness by:
- Going outside for a walk or hike to get fresh air
- Journaling or meditating to process your feelings
- Scheduling virtual hangouts to see friends from afar
- Turning off smartphone notifications to avoid feeling bombarded by news and social-media updates
- Text HOME to 741741 to reach a Crisis Text Line counselor
She co-founded Crisis Text Line after leading DoSomething.org, which connects young people with opportunities to advocate for and enact social change. That organization often used text-messaging and would hear from young people in need of counseling and social support.
More than 27,000 people world-wide have completed Crisis Text Line’s online training course, which can be done in 20 to 30 hours. Volunteers “have always been on their couch in their jammies,” she said, a style she has now adopted.
Ms. Lublin’s life since the coronavirus prompted remote work, “is spent without socks and shoes and pants optional,” she joked, “Although I am wearing lipstick and today I decided to wear hoops.”
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Write to Sarah Krouse at sarah.krouse@wsj.com
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