The Art of Helping People Out of Trouble/Chapter 7
Thus they went on till they came to about the middle of the Valley, and then Christiana said, "Methinks I see something yonder upon the road before us, a thing of such a shape such as I have not seen." Then said Joseph, "Mother, what is it?" "An ugly thing, child; an ugly thing," said she. "But, mother, what is it like?" said he. "It is like I cannot tell what," said she. And now it was but a little way off; then said she, "It is nigh."
"Well, well," said Mr. Great-heart. "Let them that are most afraid keep close to me." So the fiend came on, and the conductor met it; but when it was just come to him, it vanished to all their sights. (John Bunyan, The Pilgrim's Progress, Second Part.)
The surest way of overcoming trouble is to face it, squarely and without evasion, is to appreciate what it involves, to recognize it as it is. The worse the predicament, the more perplexing and disturbing, and the more one dreads it, the more important is it that one should reduce it to its elements, that one should analyze and evaluate it. It is the uncertainties, the unknown, the things we do not comprehend, that cause the greatest anxieties. The first step in extricating one's self from difficulty is to determine precisely what the nature of the difficulty is.
Not everybody succeeds always in doing this. As we draw closer to an understanding of the individual in trouble, through the processes described in the preceding chapters, we realize how often there is justification for that homely diagnosis, "he doesn't know what he's up against."
Many people have not enough knowledge of life and of men to grasp the meaning of the events and relationships which are affecting them. They need an interpreter. Indeed, the degree of success or failure with which an individual passes through an experience can almost be determined by the quality and the manner of his preparation for it. This is illustrated by the way in which two girls met a peculiarly difficult situation. Both were fourteen years of age, the daughters of widows. Both widows were about to be confined, and in each instance the baby would be born out of wedlock.
Esther Boardman went to stay with relatives some time before her mother entered the hospital. The words with which the child was welcomed became the text of the conversation during her visit.
"This is terrible. We are all disgraced. Your mother is a bad woman. We're so sorry for you."
Now, whatever distress the relatives may have felt, their attitude showed a complete failure to deal with actuality. The baby that was about to be born was a fact which no amount of indignation could obviate. No matter what the woman had done, she was still Esther's mother, and the girl would be obliged soon to return to a daily and intimate association with her.
All this the relatives failed to appreciate, and instead of clarifying the situation they only beclouded it with prejudice and rancor, so that when Esther came home she could not tolerate either her mother or the baby. Not for months was she able to reconcile herself to what had happened, and it was only after the death of her little sister a year later that her affection for her mother once more expressed itself.
The second girl, Mary Culvert, happened to spend the period preceding and during her mother's confinement in the home of a woman of rare understanding and discernment. Both in her attitude and in what she said this woman tried to help Mary to face the situation as it was.
"The baby will need you more than most babies would," she explained. "It won't have a father as you had when you were little." She spoke of the difficulties confronting the mother and how she would want the affection of her daughter. There would probably be criticism. It was the more important that Mary should show her mother that no matter what had happened she loved her.
What the woman said helped the girl to appreciate the situation. When she returned home, she exhibited a loyalty to her mother and the baby that was only increased by the unpleasantness of the neighbors, and the difficulty which might have been a means of separating daughter from mother became a bond that drew them closer together.
While in the helping of people out of trouble it can never be said with assurance that any single cause has effected any given result, certainly it was more than a coincidence that in these two histories success should have followed a facing of the facts, and failure a refusal to recognize them.
Various factors entered into the preparation of the second girl for her experience, perhaps the most important of which was that accompanying the explanation of her problem was the description of her mother's need of sympathy and support. There was an appeal to the child's instinct to defend and to protect.
Seldom are the elements in a situation so simple that the bare statement of them is sufficient to enable an individual to face them. Usually much depends upon the manner in which they are revealed. The issue may be determined, as here, by the mood in which the facts are presented or, as with Mrs. Gordon, by the way in which they are ordered and arranged.
Mrs. Gordon had been deserted by her husband. Having followed him to the place where he was now living, she had had several unsatisfactory interviews with him. He had been indifferent and evasive. A social worker sought in vain for a basis upon which the family might be reunited. Mr. Gordon was not to be moved. He regarded his separation from his wife as permanent and his actions more than supported his words.
Inasmuch as the family could not be reëstablished, it was important that Mrs. Gordon should recognize this and begin making the necessary adjustments. For months she had been living a kind of tentative existence, all her plans being unsettled by the possibility, ever present in her own mind, that her husband might rejoin her. The children had now reached an age at which, for the sake of their education, a degree of permanence in residence was necessary, and they needed interests to take the place of those which under ordinary circumstances their father would have supplied. For their sakes as well as for her own, Mrs. Gordon needed to perceive the situation with which she was confronted.
The social worker set about helping her to do this in an interview which Mrs. Gordon began by saying that she was at a loss to account for her husband's behavior. For two years he had not supported his family. During a large part of this time, to be sure, he had had difficulty in obtaining work, but still he had not even written to her. Her friends felt that there was nothing good in him, but she believed that there must be an explanation. Sometimes it seemed as if the Arthur Gordon she had once known had disappeared.
"Perhaps the best thing to do," the social worker suggested, "would be to start at the beginning and see whether that won't help us to decide what to think."
She already knew much of what Mrs. Gordon would tell her, but she wanted Mrs. Gordon to provide a basis from which her past might be interpreted to her. And so, with the help of a few sympathetic questions, Mrs. Gordon, beginning with her early life, told her story up to the time of her husband's desertion.
She had had a loveless and unhappy childhood. Both her parents had died before she had reached her sixth year and she had been brought up by an aunt who regarded the task as an unwelcome obligation and did not forget to impress this upon her niece. Having lived for a time in the city, the aunt moved to a village where there were no amusements and nothing which interested the girl until Mr. Gordon appeared. He was on a vacation, a good-looking, dashing sort of fellow, apparently ambitious, and with more of an education than Mrs. Gordon had had. He began an ardent courtship. It was the first time since her mother's death that any one had shown her affection. She fell in love with him, and after she had accepted his proposal of marriage he seduced her. She was ignorant of the significance of what she was doing, for she had only the most rudimentary knowledge of the physiology of sex.
A little while later, when the doctor whom she consulted told her that she was pregnant, she believed that she had committed the unpardonable sin. All the background of her religious training seemed to draw in about her and she felt that she was cursed of God.
When Mr. Gordon consented to marry her, she saw him stooping down to lift up a fallen woman and save her from disgrace. Wholly overlooking his greater responsibility, she ever after felt toward him a sense of gratitude which blinded her to his many failings.
After their marriage they went to a city in the Middle West where Mr. Gordon began selling automobiles. Another baby closely followed the first, and, either by reason of her pregnancy or the necessity for taking care of the children, Mrs. Gordon was unable to take part in the social life of her husband, who soon developed a large acquaintance. He told her little about his business, except to say that it frequently necessitated absences from town. Accordingly, she did not worry when he was away from home for a week at a time. At first he had made a point of celebrating the anniversaries of their married life with gifts to her of flowers, or candy, or jewelry. This made an impression upon her that enabled her to overlook many lapses in conduct.
Once a rumor came to her that he was having an affair with one of her friends, but when the woman assured her that the gossip was without foundation Mrs. Gordon was glad to be able to believe her.
Then, Mr. Gordon's sales began to decrease and the finances of the household went from bad to worse. Mr. Gordon suggested that he go to a neighboring city and see whether business would not be better there. As soon as he had saved some money, he would send for his wife and children and they would reëstablish their home. That was two years before. The rest of their experiences the social worker knew.
The story as related here was not the story that Mrs. Gordon told. Hers was simply a chronological recital of events. She did not attempt to evaluate her history. This the social worker now undertook to do for her. She began by taking Mrs. Gordon back over the story which she had just told.
She explained the connection between Mrs. Gordon's loveless childhood, her ignorance about sex, and her seduction by Mr. Gordon. She showed her the part her aunt's insistence had played in Mr. Gordon's willingness to marry her, the insincerity of her husband's absences from home while he was still nominally living with his family, and how the woman who had denied any entanglement with him had deceived her. Then she helped Mrs. Gordon to see the significance of her husband's silence during the two years of his desertion.
The social worker was simply interpreting to Mrs. Gordon out of her own words the experiences through which she had gone. It was Mrs. Gordon who made the diagnosis. There seemed to be no other explanation, she said, except the one that her husband no longer cared for her. The social worker pointed out that perhaps he did not have the capacity for real affection. This might be either a temporary condition or a permanent handicap. It was also possible that there might be some one else whom he loved.
The ultimate fact, that Mrs. Gordon could not hope to be reunited with her husband and that upon her would fall the responsibility of making decisions for her children, was not mentioned, although, of course, it was present by implication. It would be enough for her to start by considering whether or not her husband loved her.
Mrs. Gordon then had an interview with Mr. Gordon which showed how much she had profited by the discussion of her problem. She said that she had never realized that she could talk so frankly with him. They had gone over things together from the beginning, just as she and the social worker had done.
Mr. Gordon told his wife that he would lie to her no longer. He admitted that his love had never been anything but physical. He said that she "would have to go on without him except for financial support" which he realized he must supply. Thus, he himself confronted his wife with the adjustment which she must eventually make.
Neither this interview nor the one with the social worker was alone enough to cause Mrs. Gordon to accept the possibility of a permanent separation from her husband. The great revolutions in life are not so easily gone through with as this. These two interviews were just the beginning of her recognition that her home would have to be built upon a different basis. It required many weeks and the continued indifference of her husband to establish the inevitable finally in her mind and in her plans; but it was the revealing interview with the social worker that supplied the foundation for an understanding of what her life had been and the nature of the adjustment she must make.
The procedure followed in this interview is frequently used in helping people out of trouble, and particularly, in helping them to understand and to face their problems. The process by which an individual tells the story of his experiences and then has that story retold to him as it appears to the person whom he has consulted is a fundamental method of interpretation. The application of it will vary with circumstances but the same underlying principle is always involved.
The initial telling serves two purposes—it usually relieves the feelings of the person in trouble, preparing him emotionally for the reception of the truth and it makes his history vivid. He sees his life as a whole and is thus the better able to appreciate the significance of its events and relationships as they are revealed to him. Sometimes the mere act of reciting the facts clarifies his mind so that by the time he has completed his story he is well on the way to an understanding of it. Sometimes, also, the process of telling and of receiving a sympathetic hearing strengthens his confidence in the person who is listening to him and by that much facilitates the task of interpretation.
The retelling of the story is not necessarily a literal rehearsing of the entire narrative. While occasionally it is precisely this, more often it becomes rather a series of questions, suggestions, and comments which clear away the clouds of difficulty and discover the problem in its essentials.
Presumably the person who is able to help brings to the work of interpretation the background of a wider experience in the adjustment at hand than that possessed by the individual in trouble. This is an important consideration. It is what influences us in consulting a physician when we are ill. We seek an explanation of certain pains and disabilities through the medium of his greater knowledge of disease. It may be the first time that we have encountered this particular pain. To us it is unique. To him it is familiar, a symptom which he has observed in many different people. So, too, the trouble which puzzles a man can often be clarified by the experience of one who has seen other persons pass through the same difficulty.
When William Flack lost his job, although through no fault of his, he felt a sense of failure and defeat. He began to have doubts about himself. He was ashamed. He dreaded the inevitable question about what he was now doing. He wanted to avoid meeting his friends. He was loath to mention his predicament. Finally, he sought the advice of a person who had helped many men through the difficulties of unemployment. This man told him that he was simply showing what were characteristic symptoms of his adjustment. They were almost inevitable accompaniments of his problem and nearly everybody in a like situation was obliged to cope with them. The cure lay in admitting his predicament and in recognizing that only as he informed people that he was in the market for a job would he be likely to secure employment. The relief that William Flack felt in learning that his reactions to his problem were not unique is the relief which one can bring to many an individual who is in difficulty by giving him the perspective that comes from knowing what other people have felt and done under the same circumstances.
The interpretation of this man's problem was accomplished through a marshaling of testimony about what had occurred in many similar problems. For Mrs. Gordon it involved reviewing her own intimate experiences with a person who not being involved in them was able to point out their significance to her. With the daughter of the widow who was about to become a mother it required a statement of the facts accompanied by an appeal to the child's sympathies and to her instinct to protect.
With each individual there was a difference in procedure, but it all led to the same conclusion—the facing of the facts. This is not an easy thing for anybody to do. It takes courage. Often one is tempted to follow the example of the boy who plays hookey to avoid taking an examination, even though the postponement only prepares a more unpleasant crisis. Often, too, like Christiana in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, we are glad to have some one stand with us as we confront the experience. Yet not infrequently to face the adjustment strips it of much of its terror. To see what one is about to meet or what one is already grappling with is to be strengthened for overcoming it. Let a man face the facts of his life and he has gone more than half-way toward a solution of his problems. The surest way out of trouble will be found in a seeking of the truth.