Hello my friends,
I’m looking forward to writing about things that I’ve found essential to maintaining my recovery, building resilience, and offering the best I have to those who use our services. I hope you’ll join in with questions, comments and deeper thoughts about those things that make our lives and our work meaningful and relevant. We’ll be discussing the ways to build the spirit of resilience, and also the things that tear it down. What we discover can be applied to our own personal character building and growth experience as well as to organizational transformation.
What I know for sure is I want to bring to light the incredible energy we can derive from tending to and mobilizing our spirits. I have had many positive responses to the webinar I did in September on this topic so I know this is an area of interest. Over 500 hundred people joined that webinar and many others have watched it since. https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/recording/3271088152166638339
Along this same line, I think we could all benefit from learning how to use painful and stressful experiences to our advantage. For many years I ran from pain, avoiding it at all costs. By doing this I deprived myself of the crucial learning opportunities that being pinned down by pain, anxiety and depression can give us. I still don’t like it, but I now try to learn from it. It’s made a big difference.
So, I invite you to check in on Lori’s Blog from time to time and please do add comments to share the insights and wisdom you have gained from your experience.
I was thinking about your last letter and the subject of promoting our Peers to be able to get jobs and stay employed. I think that the subject of ‘Supported Employment’ is greatly misunderstood, even by myself.
Could you address what this means from the Resilience standpoint; and what those of us who are employed, yet struggling can advocate for with our employers besides access to Employee Assistance Programs, who I have found to have little to no understanding of a Peer in the workforce? I have had a pretty rough year and could have used some built in support. It was available when I first joined the Program/Company I work for. But, as times changed, so did the importance of the debrief and processing of difficult situations or just even the need for validation of each others work in some situations with my Peers and Professional Colleagues, based on the Program I was assigned to. Now some have forms of it. Some are gathering on their own time outside of work to maintain support that seemed to have disappeared with funding of programs, others have absolutely none in place.
We all have case loads and responsibilities that are almost larger than can be realistically addressed by the size of our workforces, both Professional and Para-Professional such as ourselves. I think that raising awareness of the importance of having these supports for all employed in the Behavioral Health Professions built in will dramatically improve things like burn out and complacency. I look forward to your thoughts in an expanded format. I have read the studies done on it. But, I have no education on how to look at them, or process the information contained in them to discuss them with more educated colleagues.
Growth, and Resilience
I have grown from every experience I have. (From new experiences turned into old experiences)
I have lived life to the, “T”, seeing maracle after maracle, not one ever being the same (being that everyone is different).
If you believe in life that belief rubs off on other people.
Signed,
Just have a little faith!
David N. Thorne
I also to have spent most of my time running from pain and suffering since I really didn’t know what else to do about it. Recently my brother died and I found out I could not “run” from this pain and suffering, so my only choice was to actually try to go through it. After the death, I decided to try new do things I would never normally do, however while these activities helped, they just turned out to be a diversion. One day my dear friend spent an hour trying to convince me to attend a local grief group. I decided to go since I almost felt like I might die myself from the deepest grief I had ever know. At the group, I have learned many new ways to hopefully live a better and more compassionate life regarding myself and people I come in contact with. I have learned to tell you how I feel and not to say “I’m good” if someone asks me how I am. I have found that talking about my feelings is a way to connect on a much deeper level with myself and others. I have also learned that forgiveness is actually an action and it is better to take the action of apologizing when necessary. After apologizing for something I have done, perhaps the feelings of remorse for my action will come or perhaps not, but the very act of being willing to acknowledge my part in a conflict is releasing and healing to my soul. I pray everyday I will not become someone’s
resentment. I have also learned that forgiveness with understanding the other person’s point of view or looking at their own issues, opens me to a new point of view that I have never had before.