Sometimes people come to you in crisis. We're morally bound
to respond in kind, right, to make sure that we match the crisis with a sterling,
robust offer of help? The tricky thing is, it depends ...
I cannot tell you how often I have fallen for one particular
game. Here're the rules:
[By the way, I am adept at both sides of this game, so I'm really describing myself all along ...]
[By the way, I am adept at both sides of this game, so I'm really describing myself all along ...]
X calls up: 'I'm bleeding and on fire; help! Help! I need
fire-extinguishers! I need gauze! I need ...' I hear the
'here-come-the-cavalry' theme running in my head, and I rise to the occasion.
I might be full of practical, homely advice; I might offer a more comprehensive
solution, involving learning how to handle sharp objects and Bunsen burners.
On a bad day, I get emotionally involved. Following hot on the tails of the heartfelt
compassion come its stooges: irritation, bluntness, peremptory responses.
(Remember: 'help is the sunny side of control!) We’re on the phone for
hours. And I’m exhausted.
Maybe a day later, maybe a week later, I'm waiting poised,
with my finger hovering over the Big Red Button of Assistance, ready to deploy
the Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles of Sponsorship ... and I hear from
them. And they're kinda fine. They've sometimes forgotten what the problem was.
But one thing is clear: whatever that was, a true crisis it wasn't. And you've
fallen for it again; all the words were written on wind and water, sound and
fury signifying nothing.
The word ‘crisis’ originally meant ‘turning point’. A lot of
what passes for crisis is actually Saturday Night at the Palladium. The curtain
rises, and the show begins! ‘Send in the clowns … Don’t bother; they’re here.’
It is very easy to get sucked into a drama, thinking you're
helping, when actually you're just the cat following the dot of light. The ego,
somewhere, is laughing, although maybe not the person—he or she is usually
unaware that this game is being played, because games, once brought to
consciousness, are hard to play with a straight face.
It wasn't true assistance that was wanted: it was company,
eating popcorn, eyes wide open, staring at the screen on which the drama was
unfolding, with all the flashing lights, distorted sound, and excessive volume
of the modern cinema experience.
So, how do you tell when it is help that the person
genuinely wants, as opposed to someone to take the spare cinema ticket?
Here's a story. Clancy—at least I think it was Clancy—tells
a story of Chuck C.—at least I think it was Chuck C.—who was approached by an
AA member in profound, fulminating despair, full of suicidal threats. The
response was this: 'I'm tied up for a few days. If you're still alive by
Monday, come round to my place at 6.30, and we'll talk'.
The chap was, and did, and progress was made.
So, tips, are there any tips?
What is true is that occasionally the crisis is real and the
cry for help is a cry for actual assistance; what it also helps to remember is
that awareness of what might be going
on should never tip over into cynicism or harden the heart; the last sine qua non is the maintenance of calm
and kindness. As George Herbert said:
Be calm in arguing: for fiercenesse makes
Errour a fault, and truth discourtesie.
Why should I feel another man’s mistakes
More, then his sicknesses or povertie?
In love I should: but anger is not love,
Nor wisdome neither: therefore gently move.
I’m not going to give you an algorithm for navigating these
situations, partly because you haven’t asked, and partly because I haven’t got
one. But there are three tools to use, which can be thought of as ‘the three Ps’
(remember Al-Anon’s ‘three Cs’ and ‘four Ms’? Well: here’re the three Ps; and
you can quote me on that).
Pause
Pray
Postpone
Pausing because the Big Book (page 87, for the geeks)
suggests pausing when agitated or doubtful (Ever get agitated? Ever get
doubtful? Are you ever anything other
than one or the other?!), reminding ourselves we’re no longer running the show
(including their show), stating the
wish that ‘Thy will be done’, and asking for the right thought or action.
Pausing is my favourite tool and my most underused one. Although sometimes I do
pause for so long people hang up, thinking the line has gone dead (like the Molvanîan
actor whose dramatic pause was taken to be a sign that he had kicked the bucket
and who was actually buried alive). My friend Tom suggests that we get one
second of reaction time for every year of recovery. I’m therefore working on my
23rd second.
Praying is great. God is very, very big, and of above
average intelligence. God is also not particularly interested in my take on how
things should proceed, but I should definitely be interested in His. God’s will
in many situations is the needle buried so deep in the haystack that it cannot
be discerned by ordinary sight. The sixth sense—the common sense that becomes uncommon
sense, per the Big Book—is required.
Postpone: this is a tool available, not the tool that will necessarily be required; but in any case it is
rare that a solution is required this
instant. Perhaps the postponement will be for half an hour; perhaps for a
day or more; but the individual took decades getting where they are; a little caution,
forethought, and postponement now won’t generally hurt.
Here are some postponement tools:
‘Let me think about this and get back to you [in a few
minutes / in half an hour / later today / tomorrow / next Wednesday]’.
‘Try XYZ [perhaps suggesting pausing, praying and postponing],
and let me know how you get on. We’ll talk again then.’
This last option is great because whether or not the action
is taken is a good sign of whether it is genuine assistance or company that is being
sought.
As usual, this year’s resolution is to practise the three Ps
more assiduously than I have ever done before.