Working With Difficult Interactions
HOW TO BE AN EFFECTIVE CHRONIC CALLER
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- Expect Inappropriate Services or Help.
- Make Outrageous Requests for Help.
- Be Hesitant, Silent, Resistant, And Untrusting.
- Don’t Listen To A Word They Say.
- The Pity Party.
- Dazzle Them with Boredom.
- “reflective”
HOW TO BE AN EFFECTIVE CHRONIC CALLER Being a Chronic Caller is not an easy task. The Crisis Workers expect to hear from you regularly and you have other things to do in your life. They can be very inconsiderate in this manner. They can be short and abrupt. They can seem to try to ignore you. They will try to limit and focus you. But you know your duty; your goal in life is to be the best Chronic Caller you can be. It’s not something you consciously chose. It’s your destiny. In short, it’s a dirty job but someone has to do it. So what can you do to be an effective Chronic Caller. The answer is to train and practice. After all, someone has to mold and nurture crisis hotline workers to be receivers of chronic calls. Why shouldn’t that someone be you? What follows is a basic training manual to start you on your way to Chronic Caller stardom. To begin your training let’s see how the theory and skills for a Chronic Caller compare with those of the Crisis Worker. Crisis Workers are taught about the rules of Client Centered Counseling. They are:
This may work for the Crisis Worker but you want to be a Chronic Caller. What exists as basic rules for you? Actually, there are rules you can adapt from the ones used by the Crisis Workers. We will refer to these rules as the rules of Self-Centered Client Counseling. As you will see, it closely parallels the theory the Crisis Workers use. This means they it should not be hard for them to adapt to your style. According to the rules of Self-Centered Client Counseling the following applies:
Coupled to the Client Centered rules the Crisis Workers are taught about the Four Fundamentals of the Client Centered Counseling are:
Acceptance maintains the Worker will interact non-judgmentally with a Caller. Regardless of what they think or feel about a Caller or the Caller’s actions or situation they will make no determination of good or not good.
This means the Caller, at all times, will be treated in a respectful, dignified manner.
In order to establish an objective view of the Caller’s situation and actions the Crisis Worker will interact on a feeling level that creates an emotional “mirror” which enables the Caller to interact with and problem solve with the Worker.
This is the belief that another person can survive, regain control, and thrive following the setback of crisis. As with the basic rules followed by the Crisis Workers the Fundamentals of Client-Centered Counseling can be adapted to field of Self-Centered Client Counseling as follows:
Acceptance maintains the Chronic Caller will assume (judge) that most Crisis Workers are incapable of assisting in creating meaningful change. While there are some few good Crisis Workers most of them only answer phones at crisis hotlines because they can’t do anything else.
Holds that the Crisis Workers are to treat all Callers with respect means they have to respect the Chronic Caller’s right to call whenever and as often as they want. The Workers also have to respect our right to talk about whatever trivialities we feel like discussing.
This fundamental provides that we can induce our own feelings of frustration, helplessness, and hopelessness in the Crisis Worker. This is considered the effective use of the Parallel Process.
While the Crisis Workers may buy into the ability to survive, regain control, and thrive we, as future Chronic Callers, see that there is really no hope, just the promise of another phone call. The Crisis Workers follow a five step Model that allows for:
The purpose of this Model is to both physically and psychologically orient the Worker and Caller. It allows the Caller to understand they have the undivided attention of the Worker and allows them to use their precious Active Listening Skills. The Model also invites Caller openness and trust enabling the exploration of the issues at hand. That the Model facilitates a focused, cohesive method of crisis resolution with a clear beginning and ending means the Chronic Caller must resist being involved in the process. However, The Model can be adapted to our use in the following manner:
With this in mind you can see how easy it is to engage the Crisis Worker and bend them to your will. Step Five allows that the process, once started, can become never ending. It should be sustainable for hours, days, weeks, months, and even years. Crisis Workers have seven listening skills they use to interact with Crisis Callers. In this instance you as the Chronic Caller have them beat. There are ten time proven techniques (skills) you can use to engage Crisis Workers in what will be, for them, frustrating, difficult, unproductive calls. Employ these techniques and you to will attain Chronic Caller stardom. Manipulate. This is a proven technique. Remember that it is you who called them. It’s your phone call. They may have their “Model” but you extend yourself to reach out to them. You have to direct the call and make it impossible for them to enforce their “Model” on you. There are three ways to do this:
Blackmail. You want to draw the Crisis Workers into your web of frustration, helplessness, and hopelessness. Being frustrated, helpless and hopeless is no fun on your own. These feelings were meant to be shared. There are three surefire ways to engage a Crisis Worker by using blackmail.
Expect Inappropriate Services or Help. You know that you know what services are available to you. You know that you know what things you have tried to bring change to your life. What’s really great about making calls to a crisis line is that the Worker doesn’t know what you know. Use this to your advantage in the following ways:
Make Outrageous Requests for Help. The more outrageous or unreasonable the better. Telling the Worker you’re hungry and want them to send emergency services to take you to the restaurant up the block is a reasonable outrageous request. Asking how do people go about making meaningful relationships is another example and is really effective if you then go into, “Yes. . .but. . .” mode. Chat. The crisis worker is probably some lonely, maladjusted person who really can’t get a better job. Couple that with the fact you are a really kind, interesting person and you have the framework for a nice chat session. Let the Worker know you are concerned about them by asking them about themselves, their lives, and the place where they work. They will cherish your attempts to be friendly and eagerly await your call each day. It’s like a Koffee Klatch without the coffee since the Workers shouldn’t have coffee at their desks. Be Hesitant, Silent, Resistant, And Untrusting. You are taking valuable time out of your day to call the hotline. As compensation, make that Crisis Worker work. Otherwise they would not call them workers. Make them beg you to cooperate with them and don’t give up until they do. Don’t give in a single inch on this one. Although it shouldn’t have to be said, you must remember that once they beg, you must refuse to comply. Don’t Listen To A Word They Say. Who are they to assume they have something of value to offer? If they did they would have a column in the newspaper, a book deal, or their own talk show. You’re only calling because they need your call to keep their statistics up. Don’t forget you are helping them. This means you don’t have to listen if you don’t want to. After all what’s more important? Being heard or solving a problem? Breathing exercises that enable you to talk non-stop for minutes at a time can be really helpful here. The Pity Party. Pathos is the operative word here. “No one else cares. So why should you?”, “It’s no surprise you want to hang up because my life is so sad/empty/lonely/etc.”, are two basic examples. A nice touch to use in this technique is to employ blackmail by throwing in a little guilt such as, “I’m not surprised you hate me. My family, pastor, pet hamster, and the last 17 hotlines I called today all brushed me off”. Dazzle Them with Boredom. Anyone can change their situation and thereby their story. It takes a real professional Chronic Caller to bore the Worker into oblivion. Tell them the same story, every day, week, month, & year. The rule here is once you have a tale that works don’t change it. The right story can be repeated word for word for decades. Some basic tears and whining go a long way here also. Above all don’t let the Worker get a word in at all. Hey, you know the story. You’ve rehearsed and rehearsed. You presented to innumerable hotlines innumerable times. Don’t let them ruin you’re performance. It really gets to them if you recite the story in a manner that indicates you could care less about what they think. Persevere. Rome wasn’t built in a day. Neither are star quality Chronic Caller skills. The operative word here is practice. Being and staying on the phone is the only way to gain the attention of the Crisis Workers of the world. When you’re finished with one, call back and talk to a different worker. Then another and another and another. If at first you don’t succeed try, try, try again. If you can’t achieve Chronic Caller stardom at your choice of hotlines take out the phone book and look for others. If you have Internet access all the better as there are literally thousands of hotlines that can be found there and they are all ready, willing, and able to take all of your calls. Happy hunting! Remember Crisis Intervention Specialists are like potato chips. . .”Bet you can’t frustrate just one”. If you are lucky you’ll catch the agency after a training and they will have new people who don’t know you. Such days are legend among the ranks of Chronic Callers. Once you have the basics how do you attain the ultimate goal of getting a helpline Limit and Focus? It’s just like getting to Carnegie Hall. . .Practice. Start small. . . Practice. . . and one day you too may have a Limit and Focus Policy at the helpline. John Plonski Database Coordinator Covenant House International President NYS AIRS jplonski@covenanthouse.org Voice: (212) 727-4040 Fax: (212) 727-4964 Hotline: (800) 999-9999 TTY: (800) 999-9915 1 Adapted from The ABC’s of I&R: An Introduction to Information and Referral. Published by The Alliance of Information and Referral Systems, Inc. 2006 2 The concept of mirror addresses the action of the Crisis Worker enabling the Caller to objectively view their situation by allowing them to identify, and therefor objectively experience, the feelings engendered by the situation. 3 Maintains that regardless of what we think or feel about the Caller we will not judge them, their situation and actions, or their ability in any way. Acceptance maintains that people, situations, actions, and abilities are things to be acknowledged, not judged. Without the risk of judgment people feel safe and become able to communicate freely. 4 Once we accept the need to be non-judgmental we can then embrace the idea of respect. Acceptance means we will respect each person’s unique individuality. It maintains that the worker will respect the Client enough to accept they can, with appropriate facilitation, resolve the crisis at hand. 5 When we become accepting and respectful of the Client we can then communicate with them on a basic feeling level. This is a powerful fundamental because we seldom communicate with others on an empathic level. Once a person experiences communication on this level the novelty of the “reflective” experience, within the perceived safety of the accepting, respectful environment, a bond is produced which permits open interaction and effective problem solving. 6 The fundamental of hope has its basis in the concept that each person has, within themselves, the power to change, survive, thrive, and regain control of their situation. 7 It is important to remember that “firm” does not mean being angry or punitive. Firm means we are stating our observations with the intent of clarifying that which we don’t understand for both the Caller and ourselves. 8 Barry Greenwald, Ph.D. http://www.uic.edu/orgs/convening/resistan.htm 9 Actually the equation to the right is normal. 
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