The D.C. law enforcement crisis negotiators did a great job in our nation’s Capitol recently, talking that guy down, convincing him to surrender. It took several hours, but the time was well spent; nobody got hurt, despite the North Carolina man’s threats to trigger a bomb he claimed he had in his pickup truck.
The model these heroes used was the FBI’s Behavioral Change Stairway, which follows these steps:
1. Active Listening: Understanding the psychology of the person making the threats, and reminding them they are being listened to.
2. Empathy: Letting him/her know you understand their issues and how they are feeling.
3. Rapport: Building trust
4. Influence: Offering solutions, based on trust built.
5. Behavorial Change: The perpetrator acts, but in a peaceful manner. He/she surrenders.
I worked on a locked psych unit for 11 years. I was a counselor, and the ward’s first ever human rights officer. When I started working at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, which is a teaching hospital, I had a lot to learn.
The doctors, nurses, counselors, social workers and occupational therapists I worked with had academic credentials I didn’t have. I majored in English and journalism at UMass. I didn’t know much about psychology, other than my psych history, which was pretty messed up. I’d battled depression and anxiety for decades.
Empathy on the unit came easy for me.
It didn’t take long before I realized I had some strengths working with some of the more difficult — behavior wise — patients. Those who weren’t there voluntarily.
They had to be there.
I soon garnered a reputation for being good at negotiating with patients whose behavior was threatening. I knew how to listen. I was good at establishing trust and rapport.
I’d been a newspaper reporter. Writing skills are obviously among the skills reporters can boast of. But as important are the social skills needed to get people to trust you, and talk to you.
When the psych unit’s medical director needed to tell a potentially violent patient he/she needed to stay in the hospital longer, when he/she expected to be discharged that day, the director wanted me to accompany him into the patient’s room. He knew I was good at defusing situations like this.
I empathize with those who defused that situation across the street from the Capitol. Great job done by you all!
We need more people like you these days, in which threats are so common.
Terrence McCarthy, an Easthampton native, is a writer who now lives in North Carolina.