It's strange, but good crisis counselors don't think about the speed once the session has started. They don't think about the finish line, or the fact that people might die. As with trading, it is a complete absorption.
Only the absence of anxiety permits such absorption. For me, the calm that comes during a life-or-death counseling session arises from the understanding that the cards are stacked in favor of life. If people wholeheartedly want to kill themselves, they certainly don't need to consult a therapist. Counseling is of no value to them. The fact that they seek my help says that an important part of them wants to live, wants a way out. Few people really want to die. They simply want an exit from an unbearable situation. The part of them that seeks counseling is looking for an alternate escape route. That confers an important edge.
The collapse of time in crisis situations means that the participants are racing, not strolling, through the labyrinth of fate. A single session may very well determine an alternative future where the stakes are life and death. Everything seems heightened in such circumstances; each intervention assumes particular significance. A small turn of the steering wheel at 150 miles per hour affects the vehicle far more than at 15 miles per hour.
I didn't need an advanced degree in a mental health profession to see that Jack was in an unbearable situation. Even through his haggard features and silent tears, I could see that he was a proud man, not one who would normally seek help from a professional. His overt distress meant that he had not fully bought into his suicide plan. He wasn't totally resigned to a highway death. His tears, I thought, are my greatest assets.
"I've lost my wife," Jack explained. "I've lost my children. Look at me!" he exclaimed, pointing to his ragged clothes. "I used to be a happy person. I owned my own business; I had a family. Now I got fucking nothing. I'm just like every other asshole out there." As he talked, Jack became increasingly angry and agitated. I half expected him to leap from his seat and start smashing my furniture.
Actually, however, his anger gave me tremendous relief. Depression and anger are opposite sides of a single coin that depicts causes of problematic events. At one side of the coin, depression attributes those events to the self, looking inward for sources of blame. At the other side, anger casts a gaze outward, finding blame in the actions of external agents. Sometimes people oscillate wildly between anger and depression in a mad dance to make sense of a painful reality. Experienced therapists don't merely see the one side of the coin and then the reverse. Rather, they develop that spherical, Janus-like vision that allows them to see both simultaneously. Anger bespeaks hurt and loss; depression attests to resentment and frustration.
Clients, of course, enter counseling without such perspective. When they are angry, they simply see others as bad, themselves as innocent bystanders. When they are depressed, it is the reverse. This, fortunately, has its uses. Overtly angry people, on average, are less apt to harm themselves than depressed ones are.
I discovered that Jack had always been on the edge of crisis. As a child, he was an outgoing troublemaker, the black sheep of a large Greek family. After several scrapes with the law, his parents banished him from the home. He learned to fend for himself during those late teen years, drawing on a combination of hard work and shrewdness. Longing to prove to his parents that he was not a failure, he fixed his sights on becoming rich. In his early twenties, with the help of a friend, he started trading. His initial foray was wildly successful, as he caught the sweet spot in a roaring bull market. On a roll, he expanded his trading stake by agreeing to invest other people's money. Too late, he discovered that the bull market was the better part of his success. With his first major market correction, he sustained unbearable losses. He was forced to liquidate his holdings and to return pennies on the dollar to those who had trusted him.
The loss devastated him, yielding his bout of depression. The shattering of his dreams seemed to confirm his worst fears—that he really was a good-for-nothing. His world completely disintegrated when his wife, tired of the turmoil and long hours, took the children and moved into an apartment building owned by a family friend. In a mix of shock, amazement, and anger, Jack related how this friend billed him an inflated rent for the apartment, figuring that Jack would have to pay the sum as part of "child support." Suspecting that his wife was part of this scheme, Jack decided to pay the man a visit. At this point, he gestured to a bulge in his waistband and, with an enigmatic smile, explained that he had taken his two good friends with him: Smith and Wesson. The "friend" adjusted the rent downward, but not before Jack's standing with his wife was irredeemably tarnished.
Jack gave me a hard look after relating the story. He was scanning for my reaction. I could tell this was my first test. How would I respond to this tale of violence? How would I counsel someone who was sitting in front of me with a gun in his waistband, inches from his hand?
Somehow I managed a smile and a lighthearted tone. "Well, thanks for telling me about the landlord," I ventured. "I guess this means you don't want to hear about my new fee schedule."
Suddenly the Jack-the-depressed-man became Jack-the-big-shot-trader. The hearty man exploded with laughter, flashing a winning smile that made you feel like you were the center of his world. If I didn't mind his two friends, he said, he didn't mind talking with me.
Such tests are not unusual. Indeed, two psychoanalytic researchers, Joseph Weiss and Harold Sampson, maintained that tests lie at the very heart of therapy. Transference, they suggested, is actually one grand test: an effort by patients to rework their pasts by replaying them with their therapists. The therapeutic alliance is the patients' way of trying to help the helper become the parent they never had. Freud had cast transference as a pathological phenomenon, the mechanical repetition of early conflicts in later relationships. For Weiss and Sampson, however, transference is a highly constructive phenomenon. People pose tests for their therapists for the same reason that traders pose tests for their trading: They are in search of needed developmental experiences.
Jack was making it clear to me that he was a bad boy. He did not conceal the bulge under his waistband that no doubt belonged to his friends Smith and Wesson. The content of his messages bespoke pain, loss, and depression. The process, however, was quite different. Jack was challenging me to reject him, as his parents had rejected him. Or, more in keeping with Weiss and Sampson, he was challenging me to accept him, as his parents never had.
Because we barely knew each other, it was too early to shift the focus from content to process in an explicit fashion and to point out to Jack what he was doing. That would have only made him feel uncomfortable at a time when he was reaching out. With humor, I tried to respond to his process with my own. The metamessage of my joke is: I'm not afraid of you, and I'm not ashamed of you. I can accept you as a bad boy.
The rest of Jack's story came quickly. He kept long hours managing the trading, but he began partaking of the booze and the readily available women that accompanied success. Intoxicated by an excellent start and a sense of invulnerability, he stopped treating his trading as a business and left an increasing share of the details to others. He suspected, but could never prove, that a partner skimmed funds from the operation. For a while after the initial market drop, Jack scraped by financially, aided by money that poured in from two investors. When his performance lagged, however, the flow of new money ceased, and his friends became increasingly restive. Jack was forced out of the market, only to now face his neglected wife and children.
There was a long pause, the laughter now a distant echo in the room. "I'm not doing this any longer," he said quietly. "I'd rather be dead."
FACING LIFE'S CHALLENGE
So what do you say to someone who packs a handgun and has a plan to kill himself? This is where the traditional skills taught in professional school break down. Jack doesn't need a psychological analysis or any of those prefabricated techniques: open-ended questions, reflections, summarizing statements. He needs a reason to live. Unfortunately, t
hat's not on the syllabus for most graduate courses in psychology.
What the crisis counselor can never, ever do in such situations is show doubt, confusion, or fear. That other person is looking for an answer and needs you to have one. If you hit the panic button and show a lack of confidence, your credibility is shot. No mood, no message, no resolution. It's okay to feel uncertainty. It is not okay to show it—even when a gun sits in a waistband, not three feet from your temple.
Is it confidence that allows the therapist to sit there calmly in the midst of a storm? Or is it the fear of not being confident? And does confidence help people weather crises, or do they first live through the storms and then develop confidence?
I sat calmly with Jack for the same reason I sit calmly with a large position that is hovering at breakeven. I know I will internalize however I respond, however I act. First, behave according to your ideals; the feelings come afterward. Acting out of control only reinforces the loss of control.
So I hang in there with Jack, as with a big position on the line. And I watch for the markers, even as butterflies dance in my stomach.
WHEN THE GAME IS ON THE LINE
It was the 1992 National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) basketball tournament. Coach Mike Krzyzewski's Duke University team was in the midst of an epic tournament battle with the University of Kentucky in a national semifinal game. The game went to overtime, with five lead changes in the final 30 seconds alone. Each time one team made a clutch basket, the other responded in kind. It seemed as though the team who held the ball last would win the game. Each execution was flawless.
It was Kentucky that took the last crack at victory. Shawn Woods penetrated into the lane and threw up a runner. It banked in, leaving 1.4 seconds remaining on the clock.
Coach K later would explain his approach to the subsequent huddle during a time out. "The first thing I think you have to tell them is We're going to win,' whether you completely believe that or not." The players at that moment are at a fragile point. Their season is on the line, and the odds seem stacked against them. The coach's only ally is the desire of the players to believe and the capacity of those players to absorb the faith of their mentor.
The mood, then the message. Fear and crisis, words of confidence.
Grant Hill threw the ball the length of the court. Christian Laettner caught it at the top of the key, turned to the basket, and released his shot, seemingly in a single motion.
It hit nothing but net.
The players jumped in jubilation. Thomas Hill clutched his head and cried out, in a timeless moment of relief and disbelief. In the span of less than two seconds, his team had gone from defeat to victory.
The best athletes create their own moods and messages. That is a big part of what makes them special. Few people gave Muhammad Ali a chance to win against the undefeated George Foreman in Zaire, Africa. By 1974, Foreman had devastated every foe in the heavyweight division, including multiple knockdowns and a quick dispatch of that consummate warrior, Joe Frazier. Ali, even after his imprisonment for failing to participate in the Vietnam draft, still had speed, but Foreman had unquestioned power. The only hope for the aging "Greatest" one was to keep away from Foreman's vicious hooks, much as he had stayed away from the similarly intimidating Sonny Liston.
Interviewed before the fight, Ali explained the source of his strength. If he only thought of himself and big George Foreman, he was scared. But if he believed that God was with him, Foreman didn't seem big at all. He was little, conquerable. For weeks before the fight, Ali taunted Foreman as a "mummy," emphasizing his foe's slowness and inability to keep up with someone who could "float like a butterfly, sting like a bee." Clearly, Ali was talking himself—and the public—into believing that this was a real fight, a match that he could win. It was, indeed, a page out of the Liston book, where Ali had ridiculed the "ugly bear" and, in a burst of genius, feigned insanity in order to rattle his intimidating opponent.
George Foreman, however, was not intimidated.
Bolstered by faith, Ali came out for the first round and did what no one expected. He did not stay away from his foe. He entered the ring swinging, hitting Foreman with one righthand lead after another. The enraged Foreman came at Ali like a bull, pounding the body and swinging for the head at every opportunity. By the end of the first round, it was clear that Ali could not keep Foreman away. He could not keep dancing for an entire fight in the 80-plus degree heat and humidity of Zaire. Some commented that, in the break between the first and the second round, it was the first time they had seen real fear in the eyes of Ali.
There he sat between rounds, staring into space. It was his moment for self-counseling: crisis counseling. Suddenly, pulling himself up before the start of the second round, he led the crowd in a cheer: "Ali bomaye!" (Ali, kill him!) The crowd responded, and Ali fed off their energy. He proceeded over the next six rounds to do what no man had ever done, what no one predicted he would—or could—do. He allowed Foreman to hit him. And hit him. And hit him. It was the rope-a-dope; Ali invented it on the spot to demoralize his opponent. With each body blow, Ali taunted the larger Foreman: "Is that the best you can do? You hit like a sissy!"
Even more enraged than before, Foreman swung wildly at his tormentor, missing numerous shots to the head that would have felled any opponent. By the seventh round, it was clear that Foreman was spent. Starting the eighth round, Ali knew his foe was unable to sustain his power. "Now it's my turn," Ali announced at the bell. And it was. An overhand right put the big man on the canvas and made Ali, once again, world heavyweight champion. Ali had transformed his fear into invincible braggadocio, the enthusiasm of the fans feeding his self-made image. (Years later, the bitter Foreman would make his own personal transformation and regain his boxing stature, this time as an engaging media figure.)
Perhaps it wasn't his overhand right or even his ability to take the punches that were Ali's greatest accomplishments that night in Kinshasa. Ali had become his own therapist, shifting gears, turning crisis and adversity into inspiration and opportunity. Through his fear, he stayed sufficiently mentally flexible that he could craft a new strategy on the spot.
Ali, I believe, would have been a phenomenal trader.
THE EDGE IN CRISIS COUNSELING
One of the advantages of doing therapy for a long time is that you get to the point where you have pretty much seen everything. When things get hairy, I reassure myself by recalling the close calls of my younger days as a professional. The worst such incident involved going to a client's home after receiving a nighttime crisis call. It was a foolhardy move; the right thing to do was to contact the police and the hospital. But, ever the eager helping professional, I entered the home, only to find the client holding a knife to her neck. For two nerve-wracking hours I talked with her until she agreed to put the knife down and to set up therapy meetings. At one point, she threatened to turn the knife on me.
Once you've been to Hell and back, one arm thrust away from a plunging knife, the idea of suicide becomes a lot less threatening. That is what I try to communicate to the person in crisis. I've worked with people who have lost their careers, their loved ones, and their possessions. I've worked with alcoholics who have hit bottom, with not so much as a driver's license to their name, haunted by memories of the abuse they have inflicted on others. They were able to turn themselves around. It is doable. Even when everything else seems hopeless. Even when there is 1.4 seconds left on the clock . . .
My optimism stems from yet another edge that counselors have in crisis situations. Clients who contemplate suicide already enter therapy in an altered mood. They are all emotional nerve endings, overwhelmed with anxiety, depression, and anger. The message they need to hear is one of hope: There is a way out, even if it isn't clear at the moment. And I will be there to help you find that way out, just as I've helped others.
As a counselor, you might be shaking inside, doubting if there will ever be a happy ending. It doesn't matter: You look that person in
the eye, get off the stool, and get the crowd into the action: Bomaye! There is a way out.
What you see in situations like that is nothing short of remarkable. Almost like osmosis, your confidence becomes their confidence. In the heightened state of crisis, the message flows freely from counselor to client. The person who had been bent over with inner torment suddenly sits up straight, looks you in the eye, and musters the energy to express some optimism. A less scientifically oriented observer might conclude that some form of possession has occurred, as if the spirit of the helper somehow entered into the body of the person being helped. You may not have said anything different from what others had been saying to the client for weeks, but you had the credibility and those other people didn't. The mood was ripe for change for you, not for them.
On this occasion, with Jack and that suspicious bulge in his waistband, a strong dose of hope and optimism was just what was needed. But this time, I didn't quite come through.
Because I was busy having my own flashback.
DR. BRETT'S TRADING CRISIS
It was 1982. The stock market had been weak through much of the past year. Each bounce off the low points seemed feeble, suggesting to me that further declines were in the offing. In fact, the advance-decline line, a measure of market strength, was dipping to multiyear lows. I went short in the summer, anticipating one last plunge that would take the Dow toward its 1974 lows.
My timing couldn't have been worse. Soon thereafter, my short position encountered the most powerful rise in years. With considerable anxiety, I rode out the August spike, waiting for the market to pull back and bail me out. It did pull back modestly, only to give rise to an equally powerful upward thrust in the fall. Stunned, I covered the position. My profits from the past five years were lost. I had totally misread the market.
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