Just Listen

Just Listen — Mark Goulston

Frank is sitting in his car in a mall parking lot, a shotgun pressed to his throat. The SWAT team is staged behind vehicles. Lieutenant Evans has been talking to him for ninety minutes. Logic, reason, pleas: none of it is working. Frank shouts or goes silent. The negotiators have the background: lost his job six months ago for screaming at coworkers, wife took the kids to another city, kicked out of his apartment, restraining order delivered the day before.

Then Detective Kramer arrives. He is a graduate of one of the hostage negotiation training programs Goulston runs for police and FBI. He leans over to Evans and gives him a line to say: "I'll bet you feel that nobody knows what it's like to have tried everything else and be stuck with this as your only way out. Isn't that true?"

Evans says it. Frank pauses. "Say what?"

Evans repeats it. Frank says: "Yeah, you're right. Nobody knows and nobody gives a damn."

Kramer tells Evans they have their first yes. Build on it. He passes another sentence: "And I'll bet you feel that nobody knows what it's like to start every day believing there's more chance something will go wrong than go right. Isn't that true too?"

Frank: "Yeah. Every day. Same thing."

Kramer guides Evans to reflect back the whole picture: "And because nobody knows how bad it is, and nothing goes right, and everything goes wrong, that's why you're sitting in your car with a gun wanting to end it all. True?"

"True," Frank says. His voice is quieter. Not gone, but different.

In a few exchanges, Frank has moved from refusing to communicate to listening and beginning to talk. What changed? Nothing factual. No argument was won. The police did not offer Frank a job or his family back. The only thing that shifted was this: someone said out loud what Frank was thinking but could not say himself. The words matched what was in his head, and his brain leaned in. A few minutes later, Frank drops the gun and starts to cry.