In Distress Line training, we learn things in chunks: Loss. Domestic violence. Addictions. Suicide. Senior’s abuse.
In reality, many of these issues have a lot of common threads. Things that apply to one type of issue can also apply to others.
For example, You can use ambivalence on Domestic Violence calls. It’s still about avoiding pain, after all, the only difference is instead of being trapped between life or death, the caller is being pulled between staying and leaving, stretched between the pain of holding on and the fear of letting go.
You can apply the Cycle of Abuse to addictions calls. What is addiction after all, but a one-person cycle of abuse? There’s the shame of using followed by the promise to never to it again, the commitment that this time things will be different, even as the pressure to use again starts to build. Over time, the good times disappear as the substance or addictive behavior consumes more and more of the person’s life, it takes more and more of the substance to provide the addict with the same ‘high’; use becomes more frequent; the addict finds him or herself powerless to stop on his or her own.
Don’t believe me? Join an exercise class.
Ever try to hold a plank position for an extended period of time in a bootcamp, pilates session or yoga class? What goes through your mind? I can’t do this any longer (hopelessness). You want to be doing anything other than holding this position, but you feel completely at the mercy of this sadistic instructor who won’t let you rest (helplessness). You feel your arms burning (pain) and you find yourself torn between allowing yourself to collapse and quit or forcing yourself to keep going (ambivalence). There might thirty other people in the class, many of them going through the same inner struggle, but none of it means anything to you. In your suffering, you are all alone (perceived isolation).
The Big Lie crisis tells us is that we’re alone in our suffering. The truth we learn from answering the Distress Line is that crisis is actually something that happens to us all. Instead of dividing us, it‘s something that brings us together
Why does all this matter? Why is it important to start making these connections?
Because as we do, we stop seeing calls in terms of risk assessments and issues and start seeing the people behind them. We start to notice how universal crisis is to the human experience, We see the way we’re connected and the way we’re united by losses large and small and the way they us to make the choice between giving up and growing up.
In short, it helps us see ourselves and our callers as equals.
One of the dangers of the Distress Line is that it has a way of feeding both our pride and our inner control freak. We would never say it out loud, of course, but as we see our effectiveness improve, it’s easy to start seeing ourselves as better than our callers, maybe even better than some of the people in our personal lives. We might think that because we know how grief works, how domestic violence relationships develop, or how to pick up on suicide cues that we‘re immune to being touched by these issues outside the call centre.
Understanding that crisis touches everybody keeps us grounded. Remembering that we are no better or worse than our callers keeps us humble, makes us more effective on the lines, and builds our own resilience so we are better able to face the inevitable crises in our own lives no matter how shocking our unexpected.
Once we understand that, we can truly start to make a difference.
