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Early on in my career I used to say, “Every situation is
different. There is no one set recipe for intervening.” Back
then I would teach a range of skills from paraphrasing to
body posturing. I figured the more options the better. To say
I have eaten those words a thousand times since would be
an understatement.
My turn around in viewpoint occurred for me while
facilitating yet one more role play during a seminar. I noticed
that everyone, no matter how skilled they were, all kept getting
stuck at the same moment of the intervention. For the most
part, the scenes I watch are fictional, meaning they are role
plays of what an actual argument might be like in the real
world. Role-playing how to address angry people is time well
spent, considering that we all encounter conflict.
I noticed two consistent trouble spots for people roleplaying
the “intervener.” First, they said too much during their
intervention. Saying too much overwhelms the person you are
trying to help. Consider this—Have you ever been “drunk on
your own rage”? It would be a rare person who hasn’t experienced
a moment of inner rage. The ability to hear what others
are saying to us is compromised when we are angry. A person
who is intoxicated can only hear one or two words spoken to
them at a time. Once they sober up, they usually can’t remember
the conversation. Rage, like alcohol, is intoxicating and like
alcohol, it can blur our vision and impair our hearing. When
speaking to someone who is “drunk on his own rage,” the less
you say the more likely you will be heard.
Secondly, role-playing “interveners” had no idea of how
to manage the conflict at hand, except that they wanted “it,”
the conflict, to stop. At this moment during the role play,
we would hear, “I don’t know what to do.” Being frightened
by the scene unfolding before you conjures up all types of
internal dialogues such as, “Why me?” “How did this start?” or
“Why didn’t I see it coming?” Pertinent as such questions may
be, they can rarely be answered during an intervention. The
important question for the intervener is, “What is my goal?”
Debunking the “Que Sera, Sera” Conflict
Management Style
It became clear that interveners always entered by asking
“What’s the problem?” or “What happened?” As mentioned
in the previous chapter, interveners failed to drop the content.
When I see a role player looking bewildered, stuck in the
content, and unable to manage a conflict, I ask, “What is
your goal?” The range of responses varies from “What do you
mean?” to “My goal is to stop the conflict.”
Perhaps with brute force you could physically stop another
person from pummeling someone else. An authority figure like
a parent or police officer could demand that someone stops his
or her actions. For the most part, though, when brute force is
used, the end result is that someone gets hurt. When I ask the
role player how they expect to stop the conflict besides using
brute force, there is often no set plan. In other words they
are winging it. Making it through by the seat of your pants is
neither safe nor effective. Would you want a fire department
or paramedic responding haphazardly to your needs? Imagine
a burning house and people dangling out of the window. If
the firefighters arrived and never had a drill on how to use
the water hose or ladder, precious time would be lost as they
figured out how to turn the water on and put up the ladder.
It would be ridiculous for a paramedic to ask a choking
person “What were you eating?” before helping her dislodge
the obstruction. A choking person can barely breathe, never
mind talk. Instead of winging it, firefighters and paramedics do
practice drills. When a real emergency does occur, they know
exactly what to do, and they all have the same goal—to make
sure that they are safe so they can create safety for all.
I found that I could use the same main ingredient of
“safety first” that first responders use, and incorporate it into
a Goal-Oriented Intervention. This new approach to conflict
management has a set protocol for interveners to follow that,
though similar to emergency first aid, is indeed tailored specifically
for emotional emergencies.
Instead of trying to solve the crisis or find out the particulars
of the events that lead up to the crisis, interveners keep their
sights on securing safety first. Securing safety for a firefighter
means putting out the fire, getting people out the house, and
keeping spectators at bay. Safety for a paramedic means stabilizing
the patient and transporting him to the hospital. Safety
for a crisis intervener is broken down into two stages: personal
safety and scene safety. Like firefighters, crisis interveners need
to insure for their own personal safety so they can help others.
When you feel personally safe from harm, you’re able to think
clearly and remain emotionally unaffected by angry words
directed at you. You are also likely to exhaust your breadth of
verbal responses before resorting to a physical response.
With personal safety secured, you then move onto helping
others or what first responders call stabilizing the patient. I
call this step “Scene Safety.” With scene safety, you take into
account the people or person in crisis; spectators; and physical
factors such as furniture, exit routes, and tight quarters that can
hinder management of a conflict.
The next chapter, entitled “Is the Scene Safe?” will detail scene safety.
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