No applause please, just send money.
9:47 a.m.
The process involved an indepth interview, which I passed with flying colours, and several weeks of training with a group. It was an incredibly cathartic experience, actually. We r�le played, a would-be volunteer sitting in a separate room talking into a telephone while one of his fellow aspirants took the �call� on a speaker phone surrounded by his peers and the group leaders. The young man in my group who was my �volunteer� was fantastic with me. If I hadn�t been madly in love with my boyfriend at the time, I would have pursued this guy: Japanese, incredibly good looking, and a super guy. As it is, we were friends during my time there, and then I totally lost track of him after I left, even forgetting his name.
The most important skill I learned at the Centre was the art of listening and not passing judgement. The one member of our training group who did not make it was a middle-aged woman who had a predilection for giving advice and telling people what they needed to do to �fix� themselves. She was kindly told that she should think about doing some different kind of volunteer work. Otherwise everyone was accepted, even moi m�me, the youngest member of the group, and I lasted there for about a year before I left town to go to university.
The majority of our callers were not �in distress�, so to speak. They were lonely people, �repeaters� we called them, who would ring us up every day or so just to talk. One of them was called Betty, and she was incredibly loud. If ever she phoned, everyone in the room could hear her. We were required to keep logs of the calls, jotting down short notes, and my first page on Betty was filled with large letters: �She�s SO LOUD!� One repeater, whose name I have forgotten, was a teenaged girl who tried to sell me on the merits of country-western music, saying, �Classical music just doesn�t have any depth.� She was a real case.
Then there were the suicides, mostly young women who had already cut their wrists or taken the pills, and we were obliged to put a trace on the calls and involve the police and medical community. Once I had to talk to a woman who had put all her belongings in a locker at Union Station and was prepared to jump into the frigid waters of Lake Ontario to end it all. She would have been leaving two children orphans and a husband she loved a widower if I had said the wrong thing. Fortunately, I think I talked her out of that course of action. Then there was the man in the wheelchair, an elderly fellow whose wife was dead, his children grown up, and he saw no point to continuing his own existence when he had chronic ulcerative colitis and a raft of other incurable health problems and was simply not enjoying life anymore. I finally ended up agreeing with him, maybe the best course of action would be to end it all. I never did find out if he did or not.
We were also a source of referrals for people seeking information. We had numbers for birth control clinics, children�s aid, Goodwill, Salvation Army, rehabilitation services, you name it. I remember three calls from young women who were pregnant, having been on the pill and taking antihistamines concurrently. There were girls who were not yet pregnant, but were having unprotected sex because they thought that by taking birth control and being prepared they were making themselves too �available� and ruining the spontaneity of love making. I met a lot of very stupid people at that job.
Anyway, the reason I bring this up is because the experience served to make me a good listener. I learned how to ask the right questions and I rarely gave advice. My r�le was to help the caller find the solution for him/herself. I was pretty good at it, and when I moved away to go to university I considered finding another distress centre to volunteer for, but unfortunately didn�t have the time. Well, those skills have come in handy again. I�ve always played the �mom� somewhat to my singing students, but only as an aside. The place where they are really useful is in the Diaryland chatroom, and yesterday I received this email from a young woman who truly appreciated my efforts on her behalf (I have not received permission to post this correspondence and I know that this person reads my diary, so I hope that I am not stepping out of line):
Thanks for listening and offering this afternoon in the chat room. I isolate myself so much that any problems in my life are ultra-magnified in my mind because I don�t share them with anybody! So, it was a relief to get all of that off my chest to someone who didn�t instantly say, �You�re young, get rid of him, it�s not worth it, blah blah blah�. I needed someone to actually consider what I was saying and not give me a quick fix answer.
What I find especially touching about this email is that this particular person and I did not particularly hit it off at our first and subsequent meetings. It shows me that first impressions are not always right and that opinions can be changed. I�m glad I was able to help, even in a chatroom situation, which is somewhat akin to being in a roomful of Bart Simpsons jumping up and down saying, �Look at me! Look at me!� while you are trying to have a serious conversation.
So, even though my days at the Distress Centre came to an end 28 years ago, I still have the goods. I should hang out a shingle: Elgan�s Couch. Good support, no lumps.
from siddel :
See? I told you you rocked at listening/making one spill it. I�m still extremely grateful to you, too. And now I�m on the other end, helping people at work. Hugs!
from coldandgray :
I feel like I have somehow spent time on that couch; you do have all the qualities of a good listener, especially empathy.
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