Roleplays are designed for Helpline Volunteers to practice their peer counseling skills in realistic call scenarios, designed by our Helpline Trainers and written by our Roleplay Writers. Roleplays range from 15 minutes to 1 hour, and focus on a variety of topics and peer counseling skills described above. We source our roleplay prompts from the lived experiences of LGBTQIA+ individuals holding diverse identities, drawing from a mixture of previous SQSH calls, our personal experiences, clinical case studies, published compilations and anthologies of queer stories, scenarios shared by our community partners, and interviews with guest speakers and community members.
Example of Roleplay:Source: Queering the Map
Caller’s Tone: Depressed, Upset, Lonely, Worried, Hurt
"You, a Latinx nonbinary woman who uses she/her pronouns, just experienced an unexpected breakup with your partner (a White lesbian woman who uses she/her pronouns) and you are very distressed about this. Your ex-partner’s family had been saying some very racist things in your presence lately, and also made repeated references to not believing that non-binary people exist, and you believe your ex-partner may have broken up with you because of her family’s feelings about Latinx people. Part of the tensions that led to this perception is that your ex-partner did nothing to defend you when her family made these comments.
You are nervous about calling SQSH because you don't know if they are equipped to discuss relationship issues, and anyways, it seems like something that you should just handle yourself. You were raised to be strong and independent, and you feel that’s how you should react after this breakup. However, today (the day after the breakup) was a really bad emotional day for you, and you need someone to talk to who can listen to your emotions and help you understand the emotional ups and downs of this recent experience. You’re also concerned because you’ve had issues with overuse of alcohol and benzodiazepines in the past and your ex-partner was your accountability partner, and you’re concerned that in your current emotional state you may be tempted to use these substances."