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| Old-School Empathy for Today’s Troubled Teens |
| Columns - Professional Development | |
| Wednesday, 31 March 2004 | |
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Jennifer, a 17-year-old girl with a severe substance abuse problem, killed herself. The people who lived in the small town where she resided were horrified. It was the first suicide the area had ever experienced, and Jennifer was described as the most popular student in her high school. I was commissioned to travel to the town where I was asked to run a grief group with Jennifer’s friends and then speak with them about the dangers of drug abuse.
As I entered the door to the high school, the principal greeted me with a distressed look on his face. He explained that Jennifer’s friends left school when they were told about my visit. Since I was accustomed to working in big cities, I was a bit taken aback when the principal indicated that he would personally round up each and every one of Jennifer’s friends and bring the whole group back in the cargo area of his pick-up. “After that,” he explained, “I’ll throw them in a classroom and you’re on your own.” Working with teens is anything but easy. If you make the assumption that about 50 percent of all adolescents whom you treat don’t want your services, your job will be a lot less disappointing.
There is nothing accurate about most counselors’ empathy I therefore concluded that I needed to convey honest accurate empathy. I’m not talking about the new superficial, watered-down textbook version, where I might say, “I hear you saying such and such” or paraphrasing what the client just said. (Any neophyte student in my first year undergraduate skills class could pull that off, and to be sure some software programs can do it better than any human!) Sure, there might be a time and a place for that sort of thing, however, it would have been totally contrived and unauthentic in this instance. I decided to forget about what I should do in my role as a counselor and respond with 100 percent genuine old-school psychotherapeutic honesty exactly like pioneer Carl R. Rogers, who popularized empathy and genuineness, had suggested. The principal made good on his part of the bargain and within an hour I had a room full of Jennifer’s friends glaring at me and displaying the most blatant “I don’t want to be here” body posture I have ever encountered. “Look,” I began, “I didn’t know Jennifer and as a matter of fact I never even heard of this town until your school board contacted me. I’ve never even seen a picture of Jennifer. I know nothing about her except that she was popular. One thing I can guarantee you is that I’m not some big expert who is going to tell you how you should feel. In fact, quite frankly, if I were you and some expert from afar tried to come in and tell me how to feel I’d be furious. I’d probably get up and leave. I don’t have a clue how you feel and I sure as heck don’t know exactly what you are going through. What I do know is that I’ve responded to a lot of tragedies at high schools and somehow the kids felt I was very helpful. Now can somebody please help me and explain what really happened to Jennifer?” A young woman began crying and handed me a picture of her from her purse. Within minutes everybody jumped in and began adding their two cents. The rest of the session was remarkably productive and lasted for hours.
Tune in to turn teen-treatment on Let me cite a stellar example: A school counselor referred a client named Mark who refused to go school and was merely wasting his life away sitting at home smoking dope. The family court was ready to yank Mark out of the home for truancy. The school counselor admitted she was just going through the motions of making the referral to me since, as she so eloquently put it, “this teen cannot be helped.” She explained that this lad had such a lack of motivation that he refused to come to my office and only agreed to see me if I came to his house. I agreed. When I arrived, I noticed that the entire front yard and backyard were covered with televisions, cassette decks, CD players, and various electronic parts. The smell of marijuana was overpowering. I began by telling Mark that he had some awesome electronic equipment and insisted he give me a tour of his inventory. We talked about his hobby of building and repairing electronic equipment for the better part of an hour. I then said, “Why do you sit around smoking dope and skipping school?” (A question, I might add, that would have been totally useless and inappropriate had I asked it as my opening line. Here again, genuine accurate empathy is required.)
“Well,” he replied, “I’m stupid. If I went to school I’d be the dumbest kid in my classes. I’m sixteen and I can’t read a sentence. I can’t even spell my name. It’s embarrassing, man.”
Outrageous difficulties call for outrageous empathy After engaging in this activity, I returned the next day with an electronics parts catalog. I pointed to a picture in the catalog and said, “What’s that?” Mark looked at me and said, “That’s an RCA cable. Any idiot knows that.” “Good,” I said. “The next time you read those letters, you will read them as ‘RCA cable.’” I pointed to another picture. “What is that?” “Well any dummy knows that’s a capacitor,” he remarked. “Okay, then the next time you see those nine letters, you’ll merely say the word ‘capacitor.’” I was amazed at Mark’s lightning-fast progress. He began devouring electronics books and catalogs. His self-esteem and reading skills began to improve and best of all, his mother reported he hadn’t smoked a joint since my visit. When I called the school counselor to share my optimism and enthusiasm, her response left me in a state of shock. “Take those electronics books away from him and you’ll see how dumb he really is,” she chided. I can’t help quoting Andrew Salter, the father of behavior therapy who once commented that, “Society would be better off if some helpers worked as elevator operators.” I concluded that although there was hope for Mark, there was little or none for this school counselor!
Empathy works out Take Gerald, a 16-year-old polysubstance abuser who obsessed about building up his scrawny body. Since Gerald’s family’s sole means of income was public assistance, this ruled out the possibility of him purchasing exercise equipment or signing up at a glitzy health club with chrome and mirrors. Many therapists would unfortunately ignore this child’s major concern (i.e., his physique) and go right for the jugular (i.e., slapping him in a 12-step group or other form of addiction treatment). My advice: Not so fast. First you need to show this client that you understand his world, or chances are he will dismiss you as a therapeutic ally. In order to convince Gerald that I truly understood, I sent him an unannounced package with a copy of a freehand exercise book written by a famous football player who built his own body without health clubs or equipment. (Unfortunately, I must urge the reader to speak with his or her supervisor before mimicking my success, as some agencies have rules against this practice.) Gerald’s mother relayed to me that his excitement reached an “all-time high” when he received the package. Empathy was batting a thousand.
How to exercise empathy
Old school empathy is making a comeback. Can you dig it? Dr. Howard Rosenthal is the Program Coordinator of Human Services at St. Louis Community College at Florissant Valley and the author of the Encyclopedia of Counseling and the first-ever Human Services Dictionary. This article is published in Counselor,The Magazine for Addiction Professionals, April 2004, v.5, n.2, pp. 33-35              |
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