We're six weeks into the eight weeks of training for answering the crisis line (last two weeks were both on handling suicide calls) and last night I did my first apprenticeship shift. You are on for a four hour shift and actually answer the hotline with a trainer listening in who can help you out if you get stuck. So it was the first time I ever took actual phone calls.
It was really amazing and a very powerful experience for me. I had 11 calls in my four hour shift which is considered a pretty heavy load. My very first call came about 30 seconds after I sat down and was the call I was dreading above all others: a sex call. I was worried with my background that I would get really upset and not handle it well. But to my surprise although my radar started going off I was pretty calm and just a minute or so in it became clear what the caller's purpose was, so I very calmly told him that I was uncomfortable with where the call was going and I was going to hang up now, goodbye. And then I hung up the phone. (That's what the training said to do.) I was worried I might have overreacted but the trainer said, you handled that really well. I saw my T this morning and I told him about it. I was feeling good because instead of freezing and feeling powerless, I actually was annoyed that the caller was misusing the resources of the hotline and very clear about hanging up but without going into a reactive rage. And then my T pointed out something I hadn't thought of which was that in a situation in which as a child my boundaries were consistently overrun, I was able to clearly state my boundary and act on it. Which was pretty cool.
Then I got my first real call, was pretty nervous, talked way too much, and got the call model backwards; asking questions when I should have used statements and using statements when I should have asked questions.
But once that was out of the way and the trainer and I had a good laugh at me, I settled down and did fairly well at the rest of the calls.The trainer was answering all my questions but wasn't giving me a whole lot of feedback throughout the four hour shift. So of course, and I know you'll all understand this, I was getting more and more worried I wasn't doing too well. But when we hit the end of the shift, she had to file a report on how I did in my file and she showed it to me before she put it away. There were a number of categories and she gave me mainly Es (for excellent) and a couple of Ss. And she told that I was very genuine on the phone which was also the comment she wrote on the evaluation. And then she smiled and said, you're doing great, now it's just a matter of getting more experience. I floated out of the building.
When I got in my car, it hit me, I can really do this! Don't get me wrong. Everyone around me, including my friends, my family, this forum AND my T all expressed their confidence in me, but I realized that I hadn't really been able to believe it until I did it. And I was just flooded with this intense sense of gratitude, that I had actually healed enough to be able to help other people. It feels like a miracle. And then it hit me that I was grateful I could experience all the feelings flooding me and so happy because I knew I was seeing my T this morning and he would totally get how major this was. There was a time I just would not have believed it was possible for me to be doing this, it is such a gift.
And I had a really wonderful session this morning. My T and I talked about my shift and how I was feeling about it and boundaries and were really comfortable and very attuned.
And I was able to share with him that I had woken up in the middle of the night and made the connection between realizing that I could do the volunteer work and why I feel like I need to leave therapy, at least for a little while. I need to know that it's really me, that the changes I'm experiencing are really a part of me and that I can still implement them even away from my T. I am so aware that without him this healing would never have happened. I told him that I was able to be present during the phone calls because he modeled that so well for me, that I was using neural networks that he co-created. So I need to separate and experience that I've really taken these lessons in and made them a part of me. Don't worry, we also talked about the fact that it was going to take me a while to work through leaving, but it was more affirmation that I'm right about it being time to go.
I am so very blessed. Thanks for giving me a place to be able to say this.
AG
