Counseling...?

This blog idea began on June 06, 2008, a few weeks after I began working at Southview for the summer.

A church member came into the office a couple days ago to talk to Rob (for the purposes of this blog we'll call the man John). Apparently John had had an altercation with someone the previous day in a store parking lot.

Now let me preface the story by saying that John is a big guy who's originally from the south. He's fairly new to the whole church thing, so from time to time he still lets a cuss word fly around the pastors, etc. I'm pretty sure he's ex-military and at one point in his life he spent a considerable amount of time in jail. Oh, and he's HUGE. Muscle huge, not fat huge. He's been in fights before, and he knows how to handle himself, so messing with him is just a bad idea.

Back to the parking lot incident...the other person had cut him off in the parking lot or flipped him the bird or something, which John didn't really appreciate, especially with his wife in the car. John's wife rolled down the window and yelled at the guy, and the guy just yelled back and continued his rudeness by calling her an obscene name. John then proceeded to get out of the car, the whole time yelling and cussing at the guy, and basically telling him he was ready to fight. The other guy, still sitting in his car like a coward, pulled out a knife and showed it to John. John looked him in the eyes and said that he better stay in the car and drive away because, if he got out and tried to cut him with that knife, he would kill him. The guy finally wimped out and drove away.

Now the point of this post isn't to question his actions. It's not even about him specifically. The point is to ask a generic question about counseling. When people come in to speak to a pastor or therapist or whoever, what do they expect to happen? Are they looking for someone to just listen? Or are they looking for someone to tell them where they went wrong, what they should have done, and WJWD (What Jesus Would Do)? I find that if you throw a topic my way, odds are I'll have a pretty straightforward opinion about it (thus the name of this blog). However, I've been in situations where people are having a tough time and they just need someone to whom they can let it all out without responding. If there's one thing the whole world has in common, it's hating being told that they're wrong. On the other hand, the person may be desperately looking for someone to give them guidance. Over time I've come to realize two things about this topic:

1. Both types of people rarely verbalize what they need. They talk, and then it's up to the counselor to figure out the next move.
2. If you mix these situations up and speak when you shouldn't, or stay silent when you should speak, things simply don't end well. The person leaves with a feeling of "Man I was looking for something more" or "Hey why are you all up in my grill?!".

I suppose it comes with experience, but so far it's been tough for me to discern between when my thoughts are needed and when I should just keep my big mouth shut.