Working With Difficult Interactions

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  The Crisis Intervention Specialist must clearly understand the boundaries of Crisis Intervention, what they can reasonably expect themselves to accomplish and what is beyond their control.
  

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  Feelings of helplessness often result when certain types of calls occur over and over and over again, together with a sinking feeling that there is never going to be a long-term solution for certain inquirers. And that whatever you do, it is not going to be enough and that the inquirer is never going to feel it is enough.
  

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  Crisis Intervention Specialists must accept that there is not an ideal solution for every problem, and some problems may have no solution.
  

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  Crisis Intervention Specialists have no control over whether an inquirer follows through or whether they will eventually receive the help they need from an agency that they do contact immediately. It is important for Crisis Intervention Specialists to set reasonable expectations for themselves, and that those expectations relate to the aspects of their work that are under their control -- making accurate assessments and providing appropriate referrals.
  

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  Crisis Intervention Specialists must always be aware of their personal triggers – the types of problems and the types of inquirers that cause stress that may be out of all proportion to the situation.
  

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  Debriefing with colleagues and/or supervisors is an important mechanism in dealing with potential burn-out.
  

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  A Crisis Intervention service cannot “turn people’s lives around”; although it may help people take the first steps in this direction. An Crisis Intervention service listens to people, sometimes for the first time, and directs them to agencies that can turn their lives around. A Crisis Intervention program is a critical part of a system of services – but it is not the entire human services system.
  

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  Every day in every Crisis Intervention, there are numerous inquiries to feel very good about. With the help of the Crisis Intervention team, people are being helped. And that is the feeling in which to frame the memory of every day.
  

Every one of us working in the field has our list of Callers that have the effect of fingernails on a chalkboard when we hear them. We will term such Callers “Difficult Callers”, as some other appellations we have for them may not be acceptable in mixed company. While we may not freely admit it, this is the reality. Maybe Will Rogers never met a person he didn’t like but he wasn’t doing Crisis Intervention for a living.

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  Who call for purposes other than Crisis Intervention
  
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  Whose needs, conditions, or manner of presentation induces the Crisis Intervention Specialist to feel they lack the skills to address the situation
  
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  Whose contact is motivated by a problem they are unwilling or unable to identify or address
  
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  Whose behavior, lifestyle, or personality we find personally unattractive.
  

In addition there are definite differences in the way Difficult Callers interact with us as opposed to our usual Callers. The following chart delineates some of those differences.

In looking at the above definition and chart we must recognize that it is the behavior of the Caller and our reactions to that behavior which define the Difficult Callers. What this says to us is that Callers are difficult not only because of who they are but how we perceive and react to them. This means that in order to interact effectively with these Callers we need to not only understand them and their motivations but ourselves also.