1998 or thereabouts, between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. Emergency Services clinician at Netcare Access, Columbus, OH, to a walk-in homeless man who probably wants a sandwich and an Apple & Eve juice box: “You are feeling suicidal? Do you have a plan?”
No-Eject No-Reject Client: “I’m going to jump off a building.”
1998 or thereabouts, between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. Emergency Services clinician at Netcare Access, Columbus, OH, to a walk-in homeless man who probably wants a sandwich and an Apple & Eve juice box: “You are feeling suicidal? Do you have a plan?”
No-Eject No-Reject Client: “I’m going to jump in front of a bus.”
1998 or thereabouts, between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. Emergency Services clinician at Netcare Access, Columbus, OH, to a walk-in homeless man who probably wants a sandwich and an Apple & Eve juice box: “You are feeling suicidal? Do you have a plan?”
No-Eject No-Reject Client: “I’m going to jump in front of a building.”
Clinician: “That’s probably not going to kill you, but that story deserves a sandwich.”
🔩
I am in a rancid mood these days, but the above account is true. My shift was 12 midnight to 12 noon, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. With 24-hour crisis availability, nurses and psychologists* would drag their recalcitrant teens to our facility at 3 in the morning, such as the 14-year-old boy wearing high-heels and an evening gown (those were the days when that was OK but not yet de rigueur). When a Borderline threw her colostomy bag at Barbara D__ (the social worker who, admittedly, most deserved it). When a Somali man would make a bee line down the way, knocking all the computers off the long desk. When a Somali woman was seen eating the chair’s vinyl seat in the interview room.
Now, after years of doing one-hour once-a-week therapy with variably amenable clients, I can’t quite remember how I would help those folks attenuate – temporarily or even longer – their extreme crises. I was full of depth psychology information, which could then as now help someone see their plight from an understandable, valid and self-compassionate perspective. I was saturated with peak moment solicitous care and respect. But the magic that would make someone immediately stop feeling deathly – that may no longer be in me. But maybe it would kick in again.
Looking back to those hours, those years, I wonder if that work was in some ways more fulfilling than individual therapy. I have this sense that that one moment, where a person’s entire life has come to be condensed and twisted into a poisonous tiny ball, like the universe before the Big Bang, is the best time to give her a feeling of hope. It’s as if all of human life is distilled to a symbol: We always need a person to save us, and here he (or she) is. An hour during shift work becomes the perfect Mother, what we will always need, cradle to grave, in the human tragedy.
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* That is, the professionals with the most troubled children.
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Comments are welcome, but I'd suggest you first read "Feeling-centered therapy" and "Ocean and boat" for a basic introduction to my kind of theory and therapy.