# The Art of Helping People Out of Trouble/Chapter 5

What is necessary before one can read another's secret? It is not mere curiosity,—we know that shuts up the nature which it tries to read. It is not awkward goodwill; that, too, crushes the flower which it tries to examine.
A man comes with impertinent curiosity and looks into your window, and you shut it in his face indignantly. A friend comes strolling by and gazes in with easy carelessness, not making much of what you may be doing, not thinking it of much importance, and before him you cover up instinctively the work which was serious to you and make believe you were playing games.
When men try to get hold of the secret of your life, no friendship, no kindliness, can make you show it to them unless they evidently really feel as you feel that it is a serious and a sacred thing. There must be something like reverence or awe about the way that they approach you. (Sermons of Phillips Brooks.)
The task even of approximating a knowledge of other people would be impossible were it not for the fundamental need which every human being has for self-revelation. If this is true when the course of life is clear and undisturbed, it is most assuredly true when a man is in difficulty. Then reticence requires an almost conscious effort and confession is often a necessity. There are times when the urge to unburden one's self will not be denied and one is compelled to speak.
The experience that befell a social worker while on a train returning from the seashore is by ​no means uncommon. A shift in the crowd which filled the aisle of the car—it was the evening of the Fourth of July—placed him opposite a young man who had come on board at the last stop. The man might possibly have been a mechanic, Plainly he was a sturdy, hard-working, self-respecting fellow, not at all the kind of person to air his affairs in public. He asked the social worker when they were due at the terminal and the latter in reply brought forth his time-table. A few minutes later a question about hotels was asked, and answered.
Beyond this there was no conversation. After a quarter of an hour the train approached its destination and the social worker began edging his way toward the platform. The young man followed him, and, as they reached the steps said with a sigh:
"Well, I'm feeling mighty blue to-night."
"That's too bad," the social worker replied. "This isn't a day on which to feel blue."
There was a pause for a moment or two. The train had slowed almost to a stop. Then, the young man continued:
"I've just said good-bye to the best friend I have on earth."
​"Oh, I'm sorry," his companion responded. "I'm' sorry."
They left the car and started walking down the platform together.
"I'm as much in love with her now as when I married her," the first man remarked; and he began to tell his story. For an hour and a half these two, who until that evening had been strangers to each other, remained in the station while the unhappy husband disclosed the things that were troubling him, many of them of the most intimate character.
He had just left this wife who, he discovered, had been unfaithful to him. The whole tragedy was recent and vivid in his mind and the compulsion to tell was stronger than his natural reticence. The social worker was the first person to whom he happened to speak after leaving home, and to him, therefore, he revealed his distress.
As with this man, so with many people, inhibitions are weakest immediately after an emotional experience. It is then that such persons are most likely to tell what is upon their minds. With others the desire to tell is cumulative in its urgency, until at length they can hold their secrets no longer.
​It is, indeed, the unusual man who is able to resist the desire to unburden himself, and frequently the price of resistance is a miserable and an embittered personality. People want to tell. When they hesitate, it is only because they wish to be certain that they have found an individual in whom with security they can confide. And by security they mean, not merely safety from a repetition to others of what they have told, or the assurance of action that can be taken to help them, but also the far greater security that comes from the knowledge that they are understood, for people seem almost instinctively to believe, and rightly, that the individual who understands them will guard their secrets and will be able to advise them.
Whatever success a man has in learning to know those whom he is called upon to help rests largely upon whether or not they see in him this capacity to understand. It is the surest introduction to confidences. The person who would possess it must have a fundamental respect for other people. He must feel the unique importance of each individual who approaches him and he must have a faith in human nature that is founded, not upon a sheltered optimism, but upon a know​ledge of the facts. "Diogenes," says Chesterton, "looked for his honest man inside every crypt and cavern; but he never thought of looking inside the thief." He who would receive the confession of another man must see honesty in the thief without being blind to his thievery. He must feel neither surprise nor horror at any revelation that may be made to him, no matter how unusual. It is not enough to be silent and to refrain from expressing these emotions. They must not even exist.
He must be impersonal. He must not judge. His attitude toward the person who has revealed himself must not change from what it was before the secret was disclosed. "I told you," explained one woman who had confided to another woman certain things about herself unknown even to her husband, "because I knew that it would not make any difference." It is the capacity to hear the worst or the best in human nature and to accept it neither as worst nor as best, but as life, which is the supreme test of him who would become the confidant of his fellows.
This is by no means an unapproachable ideal. Granted that one has faith in human beings and a liking for them, he can cultivate understanding as ​he would cultivate any other attitude of mind. It is largely the outgrowth of an enlightened experience in dealing with people in trouble. The man whose first response to abnormalities in the conduct of his neighbor is—"I won't have anything to do with him. His actions are outrageous. He's no good. He doesn't amount to anything"—soon finds his ideas changing when he is faced with the necessity of helping the person of whose behavior he does not approve. Then the conduct which aroused his anger or his disgust becomes a problem to be solved. The more unusual the behavior, the greater he finds the challenge to his ability. He seeks more and more for causes and solutions and, in doing so, obliterates his old prejudices and preconceptions. He begins to appreciate some of the handicaps under which human beings less fortunately placed than himself live; and thus gradually he acquires the attitude and point of view that those in need of help seek in selecting a person to whom to tell their secrets.
Character and personality are not the only introduction to confidences, nor are they alone always enough to encourage self-revelation. Circumstance plays an important part in causing ​people to tell their secrets, and sometimes seemingly superficial things indicate to people the sort of person who will understand them.
The mere fact that a man is a physician or a social case worker is to many people a guarantee, not simply that they can expect competence and helpfulness, but that they will receive a sympathetic hearing. Certainly no one is entrusted with more secrets than those who follow these two callings. With what difficulty does a physician achieve a vacation. Let it be known that his profession is medicine and the most casual conversation will develop into a revelation of the intimate facts about the life of his vis-à-vis. Similarly the social case worker usually accepts rather than solicits the confidences of those in trouble. The men and the women to whom other men and women may reveal themselves are so few that he whose position or training gives promise of insight and an open mind is singled out for this service.
Of all the circumstances which are taken to indicate the capacity to understand, perhaps the most common is a kinship in experience. One mother will tell another mother what she would be slow to confide to an unmarried person. Mem​bers of the same profession, those who have suffered a similar bereavement, men who have faced danger together, have a sense of mutual appreciation that helps them to unburden themselves. How often has one person been heard to say of another, "He's been through it; he knows."
Frequently it is helpful to match what the person in trouble is revealing with a revelation of something in one's own life. It reassures the man in trouble to learn that the handicap or the difficulty which he had thought to be unusual is familiar to others, and that the person who is listening to his story has faced a similar problem. There is a value in the mere sharing of experiences. It gives a person a sense of security to find that his confidant is ready to give of himself as well as to take.
Next, perhaps, to this kinship in experience as a means of helping people to reveal themselves is a kinship in interests.
A social case worker had been called upon for advice about the apparent incompatibility of a husband and wife. Both were Armenians. The woman who had been deserted by the man accused him of neglect, abuse, and non-support. Her relatives endorsed all she said.
​It was important that the social worker should learn the man's side of the story. Accordingly she called at the home of a friend of his, also an Armenian.
"I have come to see you," she explained to the woman who answered her ring, "because I am trying to help some friends of yours, Mr. Terian and his wife."
Instantly a mask seemed to fall down over the face of the woman.
"I know nothing," she replied.
It was winter-time and the weather was raw, and so the social worker stepped into the hall saying, "It's a cold day. May I come in for a few minutes?"
Mrs. Demoyan took her visitor into the living-room.
After the two women were seated, the visitor began, "You're an Armenian, aren't you? I have been so interested in Armenia because it has had such a terrible struggle. How long did you live there?"
Simple and obvious though this introduction was, it immediately brought a response. The subject was of the greatest consequence to Mrs. Demoyan, and she began talking about her life in Armenia.
​"They have different customs about marriage over there, haven't they?" the visitor suggested after a while.
Mrs. Demoyan replied by saying that she had not known her husband until the day before she was married. She added that Mr. and Mrs. Terian had met each other only five days before their wedding.
A more desirable approach to the purpose of the interview could not have been found. In a very few minutes Mrs. Demoyan had told Mr. Terian's story and had promised to send him to call upon the social worker in order that he might talk with her about his marital difficulties.
Interests are inherently seductive. It is almost impossible to refrain from talking about them once they are suggested, and, as with Mrs. Demoyan, the transition from the impersonal to the more intimate interest takes place almost unconsciously. This is particularly true of the use of reminiscence as a means of learning to know elderly people. The past which they enjoy describing supplies the very background that is essential to him who is trying to understand their problems, and at the same time serves as an introduction to the other facts which it may be necessary to obtain.
​There is a value in conversation upon subjects other than the one of immediate importance. It gives the man in need of help an opportunity to become acquainted with the personality of the individual who desires to aid him. While this can be carried to the point at which it becomes a waste of time, there is often no other way of conveying to a person the assurance that here is one with whom he can feel safe. This applies also to doing things together. A lunch, a talk across a restaurant table, an afternoon stroll, may bring forth secrets that no interview in an office could produce. Again and again, the boy or the girl whose reticence has resisted all efforts at conversation has been helped to self-revelation by the influence of an afternoon in a moving-picture show or a ride on a motor-bus.
There is about the doing of things together something which takes from a man the consciousness of being observed. Many people, no matter how much confidence they may place in the person to whom they are talking, prefer not to have him looking into their faces while they speak. To know that he is being noticed reminds a man of himself and makes him self-conscious. If he is seated by the side of his confidant instead of ​opposite, this sense of being watched does not become so strong. The idea that an individual is more likely to reveal his secrets when he is in the shadow than when he is in the full glare of light is not without its foundation in experience. We want to tell our secrets unobserved even by the person to whom they are being revealed.
Far more important than this in aiding an individual to unburden himself is the demonstration of a friendly interest in him. It was sucha demonstration which caused a young unmarried mother to talk to a social case worker about the father of her baby when she had been unable to discuss it with any oneelse. Instead of seeking an interview upon this subject, the social worker had written a note to the girl asking whether she would not like to enter night school. She knew that the young woman was anxious to learn bookkeeping. When the girl arrived, the conversation was first directed to her new job. She had just obtained a position which gave her an opportunity to work with figures and which greatly pleased and interested her. The question of further training in business was discussed, and plans were made for her admission to an evening high school. Not ​until then did the social worker venture upon the real subject of the interview.
"Do you feel like talking about Walter, now, Nina?" she asked. Walter was the name of the father of the baby.
The girl began to cry. She had kept her troubles to herself for so long a time, she said, that she had become hopeless. She was relieved to be able to speak about her anxieties. Secure in the friendly interest of the social worker, she told her story.
Sometimes so gradual an approach to the facts is unnecessary and it is possible to go directly to the heart of the trouble.
Two friends who had not seen each other for more than a year chanced to meet on the street.
"How have things been going?" asked the first.
"Fairly well," was the somewhat doubtful reply, and the first speaker, observing a cloudiness about the usually clear and alert glance of his friend, went straight to that which he desired to know.
"Jim," he said, with concern, "are you worried?"
Jim was worried. His friend had opened the door to his story and he laid bare his anxieties.
Even more interesting was the opening ques​tion of a physician who was being consulted by an extremely nervous person. She was so excited when she entered his office that she was visibly trembling. The doctor saw his opportunity.
"Are you always as nervous as this?" he asked. Nothing could have been better planned to relieve the patient. By recognizing her difficulty instead of appearing to ignore it, he placed her at once in a free state of mind and soon she was telling him about herself.
"The manner in which this first approach is made to the individual in difficulty frequently determines the success of the interview. This is illustrated by the different ways in which two persons set about helping an ex-soldier out of trouble. The soldier had been discharged from a hospital which reported: There is nothing wrong with the man physically. He seems to be worried about something. Possibly he may be having trouble with his wife."
A young man, a novice in social case work called to see him. Having in mind the statement from the hospital, his greeting to the patient was: "The doctor says you seem to be worried about something. Are you having trouble with your wife?"
​The soldier, of course, assured the young man that he had not a worry in all the world and that his wife was a great comfort and help to him. More than this he would not say, and in despair the young man asked a social worker of maturity and experience to see what she could accomplish.
On entering the room, she noticed beside the bed a tray with the breakfast upon it untouched. The soldier lay partly propped by pillows. Tears were rolling down his cheeks.
"Not very hungry this morning," the visitor began, looking at the tray.
The soldier shook his head, but made no reply.
"Well, it's hard to eat when you're not feeling just right," continued the woman. "Were you able to eat any supper last night?"
"Not much," the soldier replied.
"I'm not surprised," said the visitor. "Most men don't like to take their meals in bed. Why don't you ask the landlady to put the tray on the table over there?"—pointing across the room. "Then you could sit up. It would give you more of an appetite."
"I couldn't," replied the man; "I'd be afraid."
"I know," said the social worker understand​ingly; "you'd feel as if you were going to topple over any minute."
"Yes."
"Especially out on the street, when you're alone. I've had the same feeling myself."
"When you were waiting for the trolley car?" inquired the soldier.
"Yes," answered the social worker, who it happened had had a nervous breakdown. "I used to feel as if I were going to drop. I used to have all sorts of queer feelings."
The soldier showed that he was interested. The tears had stopped.
"What did you do?"
"Just grit my teeth and kept on waiting until the car came."
"What happened?"
"Nothing. After I had stuck it out for a while, the feeling didn't come back." Then, taking a turn at questioning, "Do you find it worse in the morning or at night?"
"Won't you sit down?" the soldier interrupted with a nod toward the chair near the foot of the bed. "It's worse in the afternoon, I always feel weaker then. I guess I get tired by the work at the vocational school. I always feel faint."
​"Perhaps you haven't been eating enough for lunch. That's a poor way of economizing—unless one has to," suggested the social worker.
"My Government allowance hasn't been coming regularly," explained the soldier.
Allotments and allowances during and after the war were a subject of interest to every soldier. In answer to a few questions, but largely without suggestion, the young man told when the payments had stopped, how much he had received, how long he had been sick, and when he had been disabled.
"So you see, I haven't always been able to afford lunch," he concluded.
"That's probably a good part of your trouble," the social worker replied. "Three hearty meals a day would make you feel differently. I'll have the landlady send up some hot coffee—I'm afraid this is cold—and some toast. And I'll have her arrange a good lunch and dinner for you. Then you'll feel more like yourself. To-morrow you come and see me and we'll try to do something about your compensation."
The next morning the soldier appeared at her office. The talk had been enough to enable him to master, at least for a time, the neurosis from ​which he was suffering. Of his own accord, in connection with the plans for obtaining compensation, he remarked that he was sorry not to be able to send money home, and then the fact that he was worried about not being able to support his wife was disclosed, as well as many another fact about himself. Building on this knowledge, the social worker was able to help the soldier to make the adjustments that restored him to health and family.
So it is with most people in difficulty. They want to tell about the things which are worrying them, and if they are only approached in the right way they will disclose their secrets. Trouble seals the lips of few. Usually it compels revelation. Human beings must share their lives with others. Joy is too exquisite, sorrow too bitter, to be endured alone.
"I remember a man," wrote Mrs. Piozzi in her "British Synonymy," "much delighted in by the upper ranks of society in London some twenty years ago, who, upon a trifling embarrassment in his pecuniary affairs, hanged himself behind the stable door, to the astonishment of all who knew him as the liveliest companion and most agreeable converser breathing. 'What upon earth,' said one ​at our house, 'could have made —— hang himself?' 'Why, just his having a multitude of acquaintance,' replied Dr. Johnson, 'and ne'er a friend.'"
Most people want to unburden themselves of the things that are troubling them. The person in difficulty may share his secret in part here and in part there, or he may select some one to whom he reveals the whole story. In one way or another he will seek to relieve himself of the load he has been carrying. All he asks is that his confidant be a person who will understand him and with whom he can feel secure.