I worked at Lifeline. Here’s a truth about ‘I’m fine’ and grabbing that oxygen mask

July 1, 2026 — 7:00pm

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“I’m fine,” he says down the line, then laughs.

I’ve learnt, answering phones at Lifeline Australia, that “I’m fine” is rarely the end of the story. Before I started volunteering as a crisis supporter, I would have taken that at face value. Or tried to smooth it over – made a joke, changed the subject, kept things easy. Now, I do something different. I stay. I let the silence sit. And more often than not, something else comes.

Working on the phones changed the way I hear people – not just strangers, but friends, family, everyone. Because once you start listening properly, you notice how often we deflect.

We do it at work, where being “not OK” can feel like a liability. We do it socially, because we don’t want to be a burden. We do it in families, where keeping things light can feel like keeping the peace.On the phones, I hear it in jokes, in minimising, in the inadvertently invalidating “others have it worse”. And I realised I’d been doing the same thing in my own life.

Before Lifeline, if........

© The Age