Welcome to From Insults To Respect. Today’s post offers an approach for respectfully helping someone experiencing hopelessness during a first-hour counseling session. I commend it to you for I have found it remarkably helpful over my many years providing counseling services.

Helping people experiencing hopelessness can be rather challenging because many of them have no interest in doing anything about it. As the renowned psychologist and philosopher William James explains in a letter to his famous novelist brother, Henry James:

Henry is left of William

To suggest personal will and effort to one “all sicklied o’er” with the sense of weakness, of helpless failure, and of fear, is to suggest the most horrible of things to him. What he craves is to be consoled in his very impotence, to feel the Powers of the Universe recognize and secure him, all passive and failing as he is.

That said, if you find you are engaging with someone experiencing something like this, is there nothing else to be done other than offering your condolences? For your consideration, here’s what I refer to as a Jamesian approach because it is based on some of the writings of William James.

Beyond Just Offering Condolences

Who are capable of trying the approach I have found so helpful?

Most people have the ability to try this Jamesian approach. However, there are some who will not be able to do so because they have very little patience in the presence of anyone feeling hopeless. Such persons might cry out, “Enough with this helplessness crap. Snap out of it and get the hell on with your life for crying out loud!”

Now, admittedly these unsympathetic people sometimes find, upon confronting someone with their demand, it actually seems to have been helpful. The person who had been feeling helpless becomes enlivened with the demand and can then find themselves improving their functioning and end up thanking the demanding person.

However, some of these demanding people find their approach in the situation with which they were dealing didn’t work and conclude there is nothing else that can be done. These people, totally disgusted with the continuing helpless attitude, very likely will not be able to utilize the Jamesian approach I wish for you to consider.

That said, it just so happens that some people who begin with the lack of sympathy approach end up seeing it has been far from helpful. They may yet be left harboring some desire to be helpful in some way. If they didn’t end up completely severing any subsequent relationship with the person feeling helpless as a result of their demanding approach, they might, through a turn of mind, come to say, “Well, I guess I have the ability to try a more supportive approach.” Such persons might still be able to utilize the Jamesian approach.

As for everyone else who thinks they can spend an hour being present with the person feeling helpless and express empathy, while being a good listener in other ways can give the approach I soon will describe a try. I’ve never seen any harm from such attempts.

Three types of situations in which the Jamesian approach can be utilized

The first two types of situations one can utilize this approach involves a professional counselor or psychotherapist. The client arrives for an appointment. The professional then begins the session by asking the client, “What concerns would you like us to address?” The despondent person might reply,

“There really is nothing to address. I only came for this appointment because my sister kept urging me to speak to a professional about my situation and I finally gave in. To me this whole appointment is a waste of time. My situation is hopeless.”

Or, the person might respond,

“I’ve been feeling stressed out and hopeless and I heard I might qualify for disability benefits. I can sure use the extra money.”

As you will soon see, neither of these two situations provide any obstacles for utilizing the approach.

The third type of situation the Jamesian approach can be helpful involves nonprofessionals that know someone they care about who has reached that helpless state of mind and are willing to see if they can set up a time to spend an hour with the discouraged individual.

The Jamesian Approach

Phase 1 (first half hour)

You begin by asking the person you hope to help, in a soft, caring manner, “How have you been doing?” Over the course of the next half hour, your job is to listen with all the empathy you can muster, to whatever your counselee wants to share with you.

If your conselee becomes angry with him or herself, your job is not to convince the person that becoming angry at one’s self is wrong or foolish. Rather, you make sure the person knows you heard what is being said, by making the following type of reply. “I see you are angry about… (summarize what the person said about why he or she is angry)” and then in a soft, caring voice say, “I understand you have been through some very rough experiences.” It is essential during this half hour that you do nothing that can appear to be correcting or constraining the expression of the counselee.

 Listening in a sympathetic manner during the first half hour is time well spent. During this time you will be modeling for the counselee an alternative to how he or she might want to respond to the situations that currently has been leading to angrily insulting oneself. People learn a great deal by observing others. Your job in this first half hour is to be a superb model of reacting to very human mistakes by remaining supportive to the notion that we all goof-up from time to time.

If your counselee finishes earlier than a half hour, begin to ask the following questions. “Please talk to me about when you first began to feel so helpless?” and “I’m interested to hear how you have been functioning since you have been going through this very tough experience. If the functioning question is answered in a sentence or two, you are to invite some additional sharing of the counselee by asking, “Have you been able to go to work?” If yes, ask, “How has that been going?” If there is still time left during the first half hour, also ask the counselee if he or she has been able to do home chores, such as cleaning and making meals. If this hasn’t filled up the first half hour of your one hour session, continue with these additional questions: “How have you been sleeping?” “Have you been staying connected with some people you care about?” With these series of questions, you should have no difficulty passing this half hour of listening in a caring manner.

Phase 2 (second half hour)

Now, in seeking to introduce phase 2, sometimes the counselee is not quite finished sharing what she or he has been going through. If this is an intense part of the distressed person’s experience, I recommend not interrupting. Instead, at the close of the hour you will have to set up another hour session. However, I have found most times you will be able to gently say,

“I’d like to pause here for just a few minutes, if that is ok with you. I would like to tell you a story that many people who are going through a similar experience as you, find helpful. In referring to these experiences as similar to you, I recognize each person’s experience is unique. That said, with us being fellow humans, we can often see certain similarities that might help us make some useful connections with our own unique situation. So, would it be ok if we pause here just for a few minutes so I can tell you this story?”

It is very rare, from my experience, that the counselee will refuse this request, but if they do so, don’t press the case of the value of hearing the story. Just respond by saying, “Maybe I can share the story with you on another occasion.”

If your counselee agrees to hearing the story, it is ok to read it. Here’s the story.

During William James’s life he became the greatest American psychologist and philosopher of his time, and remains even today enormously well regarded for his wisdom. But as a young man of 25, while studying for his Harvard medical degree, he suddenly dropped out. As he explained the reason, “it was as if something hitherto solid within my breast gave way entirely, and I became a mass of quivering fear. . . . I awoke morning after morning with a horrible dread in the pit of my stomach.”

After about 6 years of these dreaded experiences, he suddenly began to feel much improved. Here’s how Will’s father explains it in his letter to his other son, Henry, in March of 1873:

He came in here the other afternoon when I was sitting alone, and after walking the floor in an animated way for a moment, exclaimed “Dear me! What a difference there is between me now and me last spring this time: then so hypochondriacal” (he used that word, though perhaps in substantive form) “and now feeling my mind so cleared up and restored to sanity. It is the difference between life and death.” He had a great effusion. I was afraid of interfering with it, or possibly checking it, but I ventured to ask what especially in his opinion had promoted the change.

He said several things: the reading of Renouvier (specially his vindication of the freedom of the will) and Wordsworth, whom he has been feeding on now for a good while; but especially his having given up the notion that all mental disorder is required to have a physical basis. This had become perfectly untrue to him. He saw that the mind did act irrespectively of material coercion, and could be dealt with therefore at first-hand, and this was health to his bones.

We see in the above that at this time James had viewed his distressful experience that led to his departure from medical school as a “mental disorder” that he had to accept as due to something wrong with his body and therefore he could do nothing but accept that he had this condition. Then, his conceptualization began to develop from a physiological pathology model to one that gives at least some freedom to the will.

He came to this understanding from his own counselor in the form of reading the works of the philosopher, Charles Renouvier, especially in the sections that provides a vindication of the freedom of the will. At the same time, he was also reading the poems of William Wordsworth. What did these poems have to do with one who had been so suffering for many years?

Wordsworth’s poems are often about his deep love with being in nature, as we get some sense of from considering some of the lines from “I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud:”

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o’er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

This exuberance with being in nature, for Wordsworth, spilled over into his life even when he was not in nature as we see in the following lines:

A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company:

I gazed—and gazed—but little thought

What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.

For William James, he not only read Wordsworth, his reading led him, through an act of will, to go out in nature. The particular scenes he came upon of woods beside a body of water lifted his spirits. It also got him walking, which is well documented to improve health. It also improved his interpersonal relations, for he discovered some people who shared this love of nature, and they often would join him on his nature walks. Sometimes he and his companions would walk in silence, just enjoying the pleasant sounds of birds and the rippling of water. Other times they would enjoy discussing common interests.

Later in his life, William James added another element to his understanding of the disturbing experiences he had as a young man. It was prompted by a quarrel.

Healthy-minded individuals often believe that those who worry are “morbid-minded” and “diseased.” In their defense, some of those referred to as morbid-minded have argued that “the world’s meaning most comes home to us when we lay them most to heart.”

After describing the argument between the so-called “healthy-minded” and the “morbid-minded,” James then states:

In our attitude, not yet abandoned, of impartial onlookers, what are we to say of this quarrel? It seems to me that we are bound to say that morbid-mindedness ranges over the wider scale of experience, and that its survey is the one that overlaps. The method of averting one’s attention from evil, and living in the light of good is splendid as long as it will work. It will work with many persons; it will work far more generally than most of us are ready to suppose; and within the sphere of its successful operation there is nothing to be said against it as a religious solution. But it breaks down importantly as soon as melancholy comes; and even though one be quite free from melancholy one’s self, there is no doubt that healthy-mindedness is inadequate as a philosophical doctrine, because the evil facts which it refuses positively to account for are a genuine portion of reality; and may after all be the best key to life’s significance, and possibly the only openers of our eyes to the deepest levels of truth.

To James, people confront events daily that create feelings of helplessness, pain, sadness, horror, and dread. James argued that the feelings that go along with these kinds of events can lead toward truth. Thus, he counteracts any tendency to assume that those referred to as morbid-minded are automatically inferior to those referred to as “mentally healthy.”

So, this is a story of one man’s experience of feeling helpless to do anything helpful by an act of his will, and thus spent years in a deeply disturbed state. Through being counseled by reading the writings of Renouvier (specially his vindication of the freedom of the will), along with discovering the health promoting effects of spending time in nature and with some people who shared his developing love of nature, he found this was health to his bones. As the years went by, he came to understand that there can be some benefits that come from the experiences many so called healthy-minded people view as morbid-mindedness or, more frequently in today’s culture, “mental illness.”

Here this ten-minute story ends. At its conclusion, gently ask if your counselee would like to share any thoughts or feelings that came about upon hearing about William James’s experiences and ideas about what people today often refer to as having a mental illness. Then, in the few minutes left of the hour, begin again to listen in the caring manner I described above.

Well, I hope this post has provided an approach for beginning a counseling experience with someone suffering from a sense of hopelessness. Until next time, may all of your concerns be addressed with wisdom, love, and kindness.

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Some people will enjoy reading this blog by beginning with the first post and then moving forward to the next more recent one; then to the next one; and so on.  This permits readers to catch up on some ideas that were presented earlier and to move through all of the ideas in a systematic fashion to develop their emotional intelligence.  To begin at the very first post you can click HERE.