Saints and Sinners: Sharing troubles is good medicine

You can pay a lot to tell your troubles to a professional counselor. Or you can avoid the expense by calling out to Mrs. Bloom.

Mrs. Who?

You may have to be as old as I am to remember the old-time radio show “The Goldbergs.” When something pressing was on her mind, Molly Goldberg would talk over problems with her neighbor, Mrs. Bloom.

Counselors today agree that the state of our mental health would be much improved if we all had someone to share our troubles with.

A Lutheran minister once said to me, “There was nothing more effective than the old-fashioned ‘kitchen counseling.” My mother had no training in counseling, but the number of troubled and anxious people who trekked into her kitchen to talk with her and went away feeling better was legion.

Pitted against this brand of personal, heart-to-heart counseling, pastoral counselors who see people in their offices “by appointment only” are at a distinct disadvantage.

“How can you compete against the smell of something baking in the oven or lamb stew cooking on top of the stove?” asks one pastoral counselor.

The success of old-fashioned “kitchen counseling” was largely dependent on food and kitchen aromas.

“A kitchen — particularly the big, old-fashioned kind — is a reassuring place,” says one professional counselor. “By contrast, a waiting room and an office are clinical and cold.

“Can you imagine Jesus setting up an office appointment for someone who needed help? He would have taken him on a walk through the open fields or along the seashore. On the way they would have sat down together on a hillside to rest. It would have been something warm and human.”

The basic rule for the layperson who engages in “kitchen counseling” — the Molly Goldbergs and the Mrs. Blooms — is “Listen sympathetically, and go easy on advice.”

Most of us do more “kitchen counseling” than we’re aware of. We may do it without even having a kitchen — although a kitchen would help. It is very important to know what to say and what not to say to people who unload their troubles on your shoulders. In fact, offering your hand to give a warm, reassuring touch could be just what someone needs.

Probably the best way to help another person is to say, “Come on over.” An invitation is worth a thousand words of hollow sympathy to a person in trouble.

As an illustration, when Elsie felt low and called Agnes, Agnes listened and said, “I’m sure it will all work out, dear. I’d like to talk with you longer, but Bob and I are going out to dinner and then we are going to a show. Call me again, honey. Promise?”

With that, Agnes hung up.

If Agnes had really wanted to lift Elsie’s spirits, she should have said, “Why don’t you come over tomorrow night for dinner, Elsie? I’ve just bought a roast. Bob and I would love to see you. I won’t take no for an answer.”

That is an example of real sympathy — the kind that heals.

George Plagenz is an ordained minister and veteran newsman based in Columbus, Ohio.