Resume my role as a telephone counselor

I had once been a telephone counselor since 1994. That was a voluntary job helping the Chinese speaking residents of Auckland when they are in need of someone to talk about their difficult situation. It was a part-time voluntary job which I contributed six hours per month in the evening sitting and waiting for calls in the telephone room. That job lasted for about 10 years till October 2005 when my Parkinson's disease disabled me from driving.

Although I had stopped serving as a telephone counselor since then, I have been playing this role now and then in the past five years. What motivated me to write this blog was due to my latest experience in helping my family friends going through their problems, and that two cases brought the memory of that 10 years working as a volunteer up my mind screen.

I was browsing on the Internet in the morning of last Friday, the phone rang and I answered it. It was from our family friend. Her tone was frustrated, bit angry and anxious, instantly I knew she must be having some problems and I should provide whatever assistance to help her out. Naturally I had gone through the basic steps of telephone counseling skills with her. And it was a satisfactory one because later in that evening she rang to thank my help as her problems had been solved and she was happy again.

The next day, I received yet another request for counseling from my friend Mr. X his problem was sent to me by text message through mobile. The message reflected anxiety and depressing sort of feelings. I texted back saying that I would reply his message by e-mail as it got to be a lot lengthy. Then we both found that even a long e-mail could not touch the core of the problem, so we arranged a telephone conversation.

Mr. X's case was done in the evening of the next day. It comprised of three seperate contacts by three means of e-mail, telephone and mobile devise.

In the telephone session, I mapped up the whole picture and empathized him, and by the end of the process, I heard the tone of his speech turned from depressing and anxious into calm and hopeful. He commented on my e-mail that I sent to him earlier as having pin-pointed something that was troubling him.

In my diary that noted my recent telephone counselling experience, I could not surpress the joy of my heart and have thus typped to conclude the episode I played in. "... I was affected with my routine, and the tremor becomes bit more rigorous, however, the feeling of being helpful is nice."