Crisis

No counsel is more trustworthy than that which is given upon ships that are in peril.
Leonardo da Vinci

I fell into someone’s crisis by default. Newly ordained as an assistant pastor, I was sitting in my leather chair in my expansive office feeling rather pastoral when my intercom buzzed. “Jim, I’ve got someone on the phone who wants to talk to Toby. Do you want to take the call?”

“What’s it about?”

“She won’t say. When I told her Toby had gone to another church, she just asked for any pastor. I think I recognize the voice. She called Toby sporadically for a number of months.”

“Thanks. Put her on.” I tried not to sound too eager.

The voice on the other end of the line came across drained and hesitant: “Hello? Uh, are you a minister?”

“Yes I am,” I replied, trying to sound as competent as my new title and office would have one believe. “My name’s Jim. What’s yours?”

“I better not tell you. But you can call me Cory. That’s what I told Toby.”

“Well, Cory,” I said smoothly, leaning back in my chair the way I’d seen executives do on TV, “what can I do for you?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think anybody can do anything for me anymore. I’m not even sure — I probably shouldn’t be wasting your time.” It sounded like she was going to hang up.

“Wait a minute, Cory!” By now I was sitting up straight. This wasn’t going as I’d expected. “What do you mean ‘wasting my time’? That’s what I’m here for. I want to help. Tell me what’s going on.”

“Okay,” she said after a long pause. “Look, I’m feeling pretty worthless right now, and I didn’t know where to turn. My parents kicked me out of the house. They told me I can’t be their kid anymore.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said, honest emotion showing in my voice. “Why would they do that?”

“It’s a long story. You probably wouldn’t want to hear it.”

“No, tell me. I want to know.”

“Well, promise you won’t tell anyone?”

“Of course, Cory, not without your permission.”

“It’s important, because if word gets out that I’ve talked with you, my parents are gonna be mad. Well, anyway, before I was born my mother had a little thing going with a delivery man, and that’s how I came about. My dad’s a big lawyer in town; I can’t give you his name, but he comes to your church sometimes. Well, he and my mom had a terrible time about me. When I was a kid, they sent me off twice to live in foster homes. I guess my ‘dear’ mom couldn’t bear the sight of me — reminded her of her big mistake. But both times they eventually took me back. I was back home through high school. I did really well. Got a scholarship to college. I really tried to do everything to please them, because I didn’t know why they’d sent me away. But everything seemed to be going okay finally. Now, this summer, it all falls apart. A couple of weeks ago out of the blue they kicked me out again. Just like that!”

I was stunned. “Cory,” I said, “what did they say?” There must be more to the story.

“They told me, ‘You’re a great kid, Cory, but it just isn’t working out having you as our daughter. You’re going to have to leave. It’s time for you to be grown-up and just accept the fact that you have to be on your own now.’ You know, they didn’t even have the guts to tell me the real reason. I had to get it out of my brother the other night. But that night I thought I’d shock them, so I told them, ‘Okay. I’ll move out tonight.'”

“What did they do then?” I asked.

“They helped me pack.”

All I could think of saying was, “Cory, I’m so sorry!” By now I was leaning intently over my desk. I’d thought this would be a routine troubled-teenager case. I was a youth director; should be a piece of cake. But this was something else. I searched for how to respond. “How are you getting along now?”

“Not very good. Look, I just want them to take me back! Aren’t kids supposed to be loved by their parents?” The last statements were spoken with pathetic vigor. “If they don’t take me back, I don’t know what I’ll do!”

“Whoa, Cory! What are you telling me? This sounds pretty serious.” Am I hearing veiled suicide warnings? “How about us getting together to talk? You could come to the church, or I could meet you somewhere. Where do you live?”

That final question bothered Cory, and she backed off. She’d already revealed too much. Her voice turned distant, wary. “Why do you want to know?”

“Hey, I just want to help, and I can’t help if you don’t let me.” Jim, you’re losing it! I thought.

“Uh, I’ve got to go now,” Cory broke in unconvincingly. “It was probably a mistake to call. You’ve got better things to do than talk to losers.”

“Wait, Cory! That’s not true.”

“Well, I’ve got to go. I may call you back later.”

Just before she hung up, I got in a final word: “Call me anytime, Cory. I care abou — ” Dial tone.

As I sat there, I felt anything but pastoral. A crisis call — this girl needs help! — and you can’t even keep her on the line. It’s a good thing Dr. Bower wasn’t grading you on that one! berkley flunks crisis counseling — I can see it now.

That was my first crisis call in my first pastorate. A couple of counseling sessions, and I expected Cory to be back in the loving arms of her family. And I’d feel good about myself and my validity as a pastor.

The crisis may have belonged to Cory, but I had become wrapped in it. Part of the attachment came because of my call into God’s helping profession, but part of it involved my need to be significant and show genuine human compassion. As time went on, and I matured in ministry, I began to sort those two intertwined motivations. Cory gave me a lot of opportunity.

A Strung-Out Crisis

Cory did call back — several times in that first week. In those subsequent calls, she warily parceled out bits of information about herself: she worked in a shop downtown, but she wouldn’t give the name; she lived nearby, probably in a residential hotel; she had no phone number, or wouldn’t give it to me; she described her parents as snooty, heartless socialites more concerned about appearances than her; her brother’s wife had just had a baby, and Cory feared she would never be considered the aunt or even see the baby.

One call followed an incident with her mother. Cory had dropped by to see her, but the mother had gotten mad. As Cory put it, “She was enraged about what the neighbors would think seeing me drop by dressed as I was. I just wanted to see her. I suppose I wanted some sign that she loved me. But she thought I wanted money, so she dug into her purse and handed me some. I was so embarrassed and ashamed.”

Cory had called me out of that shame: “What kind of person am I that they want to push me out of sight?”

Another day she called me after lunch. She was obviously distressed. She said she had been talking with her father. Then, quickly, she hung up. She called back later, but I was tied up. She then called me at home in the early evening, but again was hesitant to talk. She had to retain control, it seemed. One part of her desperately needed help; another part couldn’t stand becoming vulnerable, getting close to anybody. Finally, she called later. Need had conquered pride. We talked ninety minutes.

“Jim,” she said, “I got really sick last night. I didn’t know who to call, but I had to talk to somebody. So in desperation I called my dad and told him, ‘Dad, I’ve got to talk with you.’ I must have sounded desperate, because he came to my place — all dressed up in his three-piece suit.

“Then I made a real mistake. I guess I just fell apart — started crying and all. Dad can’t stand that. He never could take emotion. So he began to shake me and tell me to shape up. I got hysterical and finally screamed at him, ‘I hate you!’ That really made him mad, and he started shaking me violently, and then he slapped me.”

I was shocked. “Cory, he shouldn’t have done that!”

“Well, he did. Maybe I deserved it. I walked across the room and leaned against the wall. I couldn’t believe this was happening. I just sort of slid down the wall to the floor, covering my face with my hands. I cried for a long time. When I finally looked up, Dad was standing at the door, one hand on the doorknob and the other angrily on his hip. Know what he said?”

“What?”

“My own dad — he said, ‘You’ve got to handle this yourself. I hope you have enough self-respect not to go running to someone for help.’ I guess I believed him. I probably shouldn’t be telling you this now.”

She went on to say how her sickness wasn’t any better and she was worried. She was utterly hopeless, beyond any expectation of reconciliation.

I begged her to tell me where she was so I could pick her up. “Cory, you’ve got to let Debbie [my wife] and me help you! Let us come get you and bring you here. You need help; don’t play games with us.” She nearly capitulated, but eventually her defenses went up again. No, it wasn’t going to happen. Not that night. Not for some time.

Two days later she called again; she had to initiate the calls since she hadn’t so much as divulged a phone number where I could reach her. It’s 2:30 in the afternoon. She’s really sick. She’s afraid. I offer to take her to the hospital, and she almost goes. She sounds desperate. Then she abruptly breaks off the call.

Thirty minutes later she again calls. Again, she won’t let me take her to the hospital, although she’s scared to death. She fears her father will find out she went to the hospital and be ashamed of her. By this time, I’m getting desperate. She hangs up.

Now it’s 11:15 p.m. Cory is calling collect from twenty-five miles away. She’s nearly hysterical and often breaks down into sobs. Evidently she has committed some petty crime, but she’s frustratingly vague about it. Her blasted control! She’s terribly shaken, scared, alone, remorseful. Doesn’t know where she is, doesn’t have her coat or shoes, doesn’t have a shred of hope — and will not cave in to our pleas to let us get her! After a half hour of wrenching conversation, Cory says, “I love you and Debbie” and hangs up abruptly.

I hung up the phone and cried. And prayed. That, and telling her we cared for her, too, was all I could do.

Over the next several days I received a number of calls from Cory. She was okay again, she said. Now she was living in the wilds, literally under a tree not far from a highway. She got phone money by cashing in bottles she found. Sometimes we just chatted like friends. Other times she sounded petulant and petty, turning on me, accusing me of not caring, sounding hard and independent — “I don’t care anymore. I can take care of myself!”

She told of another minister nearby who tried to help her but gave up on her when she wouldn’t take money for food or a room. She felt she had failed in yet another relationship and wasn’t sure she’d ever succeed again. “If you give up on me,” she said solemnly, “I don’t know what I’d do.” Her control again. But yet it was understandable.

I tried once early on to talk about faith. Perhaps rather clumsily I spoke of God’s unconditional love, how he never forsakes his children. But she became almost mean in response. “I don’t want to talk about God ever again,” she muttered, rather bitterly. “It’s easy to talk about love when everybody loves you, but that’s not for me, so don’t ever bring up that stuff again, okay?”

I decided to be honest with her. “That hurt me, Cory. When I talk about God, it isn’t just words. There’s nothing more real to me than God’s love. And he loves you. I don’t want to go along giving you little handfuls of sawdust when my pockets are full of gold.” She seemed sorry after that, but I didn’t push the subject. I did tell her, however, that I’d leave my porch light on until she decided to come to our house — just like God does.

One time she said, “I’m getting weary with life. I’m not sure why I go on. What’s there for me to live for? Nobody wants me. Wouldn’t it be better if I just ended it all?”

I went into the suicide-prevention mode. “Do you know what you’re saying? Are you serious about it? I want you to know a lot of people care about you.”

“Oh, I’m not the suicide type,” she replied, almost jauntily. “My father has given me too much pride and strength to do something foolish like that.”

The next evening at 8:30 Cory phoned. “Your porch light is off,” she announced. It was the first time in a week I’d forgotten to have it on.

“You won’t believe this,” I confessed, “but it really has been on every other night. Where are you?”

“I’m down the hill at McDonald’s — but don’t come down. I just wanted to drop some things by your house.”

This time she was too close to let out of our grasp. After some nimble talking, I finally convinced her to let me meet her in the parking lot. Out behind the dumpster, sitting on concrete tire stops, we talked for ninety minutes. Then I coaxed her into coming to the house to meet Debbie. A half block from the house she panicked: “Stop the car; I want to get out. Debbie doesn’t want to see me. I look awful.” I finally convinced her to go to our house, but our conversation took place outside. She wouldn’t go inside. She insisted on giving us two large chocolate bars and three dollars “for the collect calls.” A half hour later, we stood under the porch light and watched her walk into the night.

Cory approached and walked away at odd intervals for the next eighteen months. We got cards and calls from Orange County, Washington State, Los Angeles, nearby towns. She aimed to get back into college, but she had neither the money nor the emotional energy to do it. For a time she’d be in an apartment or hold down a job. Then chronic health problems or another wave of misery would push her back into the street.

We gave her small amounts of money from time to time. We called, wrote when we could. Once she stayed a couple of days in our home. We told her over and over that she mattered to us. We did talk to her about God, and she began to respond. One day — unbelievably, just when I thought life was coming together for her — her fiancé died in a car accident. I had to help break the news to her.

The last time I saw Cory was in a Burbank hospital. As the culmination of a number of serious physical ailments, Cory had contracted what we thought was amyotrophic lateral sclerosis — Lou Gehrig’s disease. She was blind — temporarily, we hoped — but in reasonably good spirits in the hospital room. She’d come a long way in piecing life back together. She knew Christ and the love of his people, but her medical prognosis looked shaky at best.

My final entry in her file read: “4/7/77: Cory’s now blind and deaf. ‘There are two important things in life,’ she told me, ‘to be honest with somebody, and to know somebody loves you.'”

I didn’t see her again. She gave no forwarding address, and I didn’t know her real name.

The Heart of A Crisis

At the heart of any crisis, as I learned vividly those months, is someone who has lost control.

One analogy is driving an automobile. Put us on a winding mountain road or a spaghetti-like interstate interchange, and we expect to be able to handle it. When a deer darts suddenly into the road, without thinking we swerve or put on the brakes. The vast majority of times our learned mechanisms work, and we go on down the road feeling a little relieved but quite in control of our circumstances.

But other times something causes us to lose control. Take ice, for example. As a 16-year-old I braked to stop at a perfectly flat intersection — and our ’56 Chevy ignored my frantic corrections and veered diagonally into the curb. I’d hit a sheet of what Washingtonians call black ice.

The Chevy sustained no damage, but my sense of the orderliness and predictability of driving did. I learned that sometimes there is nothing you can do. All the routine coping mechanisms fail; the car is out of control. It’s an awful feeling.

It’s akin to what people in crisis experience. They know life brings difficult turns and unexpected hazards, but so far, they’ve found ways to steer their way out of them. But then comes the black ice. The brakes, their means of gaining control, don’t work, and their lives bash into a brutal curb.

At this point, when their coping mechanisms have been expended to no avail, people are in crisis. Life has gone out of control. They need help.

Such was the case with Cory. How can a child grow up with any sense of self-worth or basic security when she is shuttled in and out of her home at the whim of a disturbed mother? And then, just when life seems to be coalescing, just when her self-conscious pleasing behavior seems to be accounting her “worthy” to be included permanently in the family, she’s booted out and told to grow up — and not show any disgusting weakness.

Cory had obviously gathered some coping mechanisms before this final blow. She was an intelligent, capable girl. She had also learned to manipulate people, playing the game of “kick me” to see how much they really cared. That backfired on her when her parents helped her pack the night she tried to shock them.

She’d learned to be wary with people: If you open up and become vulnerable, you just may be rejected, so maybe it’s best to pretend to reject them before they have a chance to shaft you. She liked to control emotional distance. She longed for closeness but would back away before others would have what she perceived as leverage on her.

Cory also had an amazing strength and resilience. She reminded me of my childhood “Rolly Poly,” an egg-shaped toy weighted in the bottom: someone could punch it and knock it over, but it would always right itself.

But none of these coping mechanisms was enough when her parents shoved her onto emotional black ice. She hit a crisis point — several times — and that’s when my phone would call me into crisis.

The Components of Crisis

Many factors in a crisis either help or hinder a counselee’s ability to scramble out of it. One way to look at these is to ask a series of questions.

Is this crisis caused by real or imagined factors? In one way, this question is irrelevant, because it’s a bona fide crisis when someone perceives he’s in crisis, whether or not that perception has any basis in reality.

Albert Ellis, the sometimes controversial proponent of rational-emotive therapy, postulates that our perceptions of events affect our behavior more than the events themselves. In fact, our feelings aren’t products of the event; they’re products of what we tell ourselves about the event.

For instance, I had a class reunion last summer. I told myself it ought to be fun to see friends and reminisce about high school. Therefore, good emotions; no crisis. But what if I had put on seventy-five pounds and just been released from jail? The reunion would be the same event, but I might tell myself, You’re a failure. If you go, everybody is going to be shocked at how you’ve turned out. But if you don’t go, people will think the worst. That perception — what I tell myself about the event — could well provoke a crisis.

This helps explain why an event that hardly touches one individual may knock another for a loop. Much depends on the inner interpretation the person gives the event. Understanding this, we know not to make light of anyone’s crisis. What may seem routine to us can be deadly serious to another.

That’s why it’s wise to determine what the counselee is saying to himself or herself about the event. When a counselee’s fiancé dies, it would be easy to think, This young woman’s dealing with grief. But behind that single event may be a woman who’s lost another fiancé, or who wanted to break off the engagement, or who was driving the car in which her fiancé died. If so, she’ll be telling herself different things about the death.

Beginning to understand those volumes of self-talk can help a counselor deal with either the precipitating event or the perceptions of it, true or skewed.

What history does the person bring into this crisis? Since no crisis is an isolated life event, what people bring into the crisis has great bearing on how they survive it. Some people are simply more equipped than others to plow through personal crises. I was amused by a desk plaque that read: i can handle just about anything but adversity.

Who is most prone to cope poorly? In his book Crisis Counseling, H. Norman Wright lists several characteristics of those who have trouble handling crises: (1) people already hurting and emotionally weak, (2) people in poor physical condition, (3) people adept at denying reality, (4) addictive people with oral fixations (drinking, smoking, eating, or talking excessively), (5) people with poor conception of time and timing, (6) those who struggle with excessive guilt, (7) people quick to assign blame to others, and (8) the very dependent or independent.

To that list can be added a ninth characteristic: people without faith or with immature faith. The religious can sometimes fall apart as easily as the atheistic. But a deep and abiding faith in the sovereignty of God and the unchanging love of Jesus Christ can be seen only as an asset for long-term crisis resolution. Such people maintain the sense of God being in control despite temporary evidence to the contrary. They hold out for the wide-angle picture of the meaning of events. Perhaps crises help separate those who say they believe from those who believe.

To understand someone’s crisis means looking beyond the immediate disaster into the course of events and experiences that got the person there.

What support does the person have? It’s murder to go through a crisis alone. Often the social support the person receives spells the difference between positive crisis resolution and long-term disastrous effects.

To again use Cory as an example, family had pushed her out, and she had shed friends. Had she not “disobeyed” her father’s wishes and sought a string of pastors and counselors in her wanderings, her crisis would have been the death of her.

The person with a strong network of family and friends can bear much more stress than one taking the assaults of life solo. That’s where the church can make such an impact as it fulfills the role of family for those who have none.

What symptoms are present? When a person feels incapable of handling the situation, we may see many of the following symptoms, Wright suggests: headaches, vomiting, hyperventilation, fainting, depression, panic, sleeplessness, or bleeding ulcers; a feeling of being absolutely overwhelmed, beaten down, defeated; the desperate, often frantic, need for rescue or relief (“You gotta help me!”); and a general shutdown of abilities when all else is jettisoned to focus on the crisis.

At times the symptoms become the crisis, such as when a desperate person attempts suicide as one way to “make the hurting stop.” Then all attention obviously is focused on the symptom. The rest of the time, the symptoms point pastors to the underlying problem, which will go on producing a string of symptoms until it is treated. Pastors offer appropriate care for acute symptoms, but they want most of all to trace the symptom trail to the source.

The Pastor as Participant

Pastors bring themselves, their faith, and a number of interpersonal tools into crisis intervention. The trick is to become involved in a therapeutic way, one that neither tries to take the crisis from the counselee nor remains detached and aloof from the very present human need.

Looking back at my initial contacts with Cory, I see now how my need for validation as a “real minister” was at play. New in the ballgame, I wanted to show I could field adroitly whatever came my way. Any pastor who counsels must fight the urge to do it for personal benefit. The need to be needed runs strong in most people, and counseling can offer wonderful ego strokes.

The desire to become overly involved flows especially high in crisis counseling. Few pastoral coups compare to jumping into someone’s mess and effecting a dramatic solution. We’d like to be able to stuff such victories and hang them on our study walls. But we can’t.

What’s “too involved”? Assuming responsibilities the counselee is capable of handling. Shielding the counselee from behavior consequences he or she needs to feel the full impact of. Helping to perpetuate a lie. Each of these actions can harm the counselee and impede crisis resolution. The pastor is there to help, but too much help can become tyranny.

One California pastor said, “I’ve got to remember just whose problem it is. It’s not my problem to keep, so if people try to hand it to me, I just hand it back and say, ‘It’s yours. How can I help you with it?'”

The following chapter focuses on general crisis intervention before we launch into the nine chapters on particular crises.