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In its historical development, crisis intervention has been a somewhat bastardized version of long-term therapy and counseling. In both New York and California, crisis intervention was initially conceptualized as “short-term therapy.” This book is about neither counseling nor therapy. It is about people like you and me helping people like you and me to cope with situations that arise if and when things get out of hand. We can use this approach to crisis intervention, crisis communication, and relationship building to help our students, patients, clients, friends, co-workers, family members, employees, and even to help ourselves when we are in crisis.
A cure for everything? Definitely not. Crisis with its concomitant intense social and emotional conflict is not an all-the-time or forever thing. It is something that comes up once in a while for most of us and frequently for some of us. When the boiler is about to blow, we can get it to cool down and can thus prevent the explosion. We, or the other people involved, may need help—a lot of help—to get things straightened out and working smoothly again. Ours is a first aid or emergency intervention. At times, that’s all that is needed. At other times, much more may be needed after things are cooled off. Even though what we do is limited and fairly specific, if we just let things blow or do not know how to keep them from blowing, there may be nothing left to work on later. We are talking about a limited kind of problem, a limited area of knowledge, and a limited set of skills. We are, nonetheless, dealing with an area of life that our very human interest in each other presses us to deal with. Whether it is part of our job, part of our volunteer work, or part of our trying to live with and deal with one another, knowing when to help and how to help is “where the action is” for most of us.
As you come to know the many people you will find in the pages of this book, you may get the impression that crisis just reaches out and grabs a person. You might also get the feeling that people in crisis always call the hot line, their minister, their family doctor, the police, or go to a drop-in center or emergency service. Both of these impressions would be wrong. Probably most people in crisis don’t seem unusually distraught and don’t turn to volunteers or professionals for help. They talk with their family or friends. I have tried to construct situation and develop realistic people you can relate to and remember. Crisis intervention is a conceptual thinking process but it is also a feeling, doing process. As you become involved (inevitably) in crisis and intense conflict situations. I hope you will remember the people you have met and will relate their problems and intense emotions to the situation with which you are dealing. That is, in part, why emphasis has been given to clearly picturing emotions and typical situations in a way that may make them seem a little unusual. To get you to relate the material to your own experience, your own life, and to situation with which you may come in contact, let me tell you about Bill and Linda Green’s quiet crisis.
I was at home one evening, when the dogs started announcing the arrival of a car in the driveway. It was Ed, my chess-playing buddy. He didn’t want to play chess that evening. Ed and his wife Judy had come to talk about their friends, Bill and Linda Green. Bill had been talking to Ed that afternoon on their way home from work—they sometimes ride together. Ed had asked “How’s the family?” and was shocked to hear Bill reply, “Linda and I are getting a divorce.” Ed thought Bill was kidding and made a few of those wisecracks guys make to each other when marriage problems are mentioned. “No, it’s true. Linda was going to call our attorney this afternoon to see about a dissolution,” was Bill’s rather matter-of-fact reply. “We still love each other and all that, but we just don’t have anything to talk about. I talk to everyone else but not to Linda, and she talks to everyone else but not to me. Last night we got to talking about our not talking. Somehow a divorce came up, and we decided we might as well, since there seems to be nothing left of our relationship.” Ed fumbled and stammered the rest of the way home and hit Judy with the news as soon as he got in the door. She immediately called Linda to see if it were true. Linda told her that it was and that she had an appointment with the attorney the next day.
Ed and Judy went over to Bill and Linda’s house later on but hadn’t gotten very far. Bill and Linda seemed quite willing to talk with Ed and Judy about the situation but no better solution than a divorce had developed. Ed and Judy had now come to me to see if I had any ideas about how they could help with what they perceived to be a real crisis. Of course their perception was accurate. Bill and Linda were in the process of making a life-altering decision in a most quiet and highly civilized way. Ed and Judy really wanted to persuade me to talk with Bill and Linda. I didn’t know them at all but agreed with Ed and Judy’s conclusion that my going to talk with them wouldn’t make things any worse and had at least some potential for helping.
After some awkward introductions and letting Bill and Linda know that I knew they were having problems, I asked Bill, “Do you really want a divorce or is it that you really want for Linda to talk with you more?” The dam broke, and a flood of emotions came out. There was a real mix of fear, anger, frustration, desperation, love, affection, hate, and about every other emotion you can imagine. Bill didn’t want a divorce; he wanted Linda. Above all, he wanted to be “civilized” about it. If a divorce was what she really wanted, then that was what he really wanted for her. “Me want a divorce? You’re the one who brought it up. I just want us to be happy and for us to live together and talk with each other like normal people.” Linda’s emotions were as intense and as varied as Bill’s. So did they kiss and live happily ever after? No. They are fighting, arguing, and really trying to negotiate a relationship with which they both can live and be comfortable. Will they successfully build this new relationship? I don’t know, but at least they canceled the appointment with the attorney and haven’t scheduled another one yet. Are they seeing me or someone else for marriage counseling? No. They are both fairly strong-willed and self-reliant people who figure that if they can’t work it out between themselves, no one else can help them work it out. They are even closer friends with Ed and Judy, though, and I haven’t heard from them since that evening.
However, things turn out with Bill and Linda, Ed and Judy did not make the mistake I had made with Jerry back in my undergraduate days. Their friendship with and concern for Bill and Linda was strong enough and mature enough for them to run the risk of losing the friendship, get themselves too involved, and expose themselves to a possibly uncomfortable and embarrassing situation. Caring is a commitment to try to understand, to feel, and to do all we can to help….