Will I ever be ready?

 

Nope, no one will, nor can ever be perfectly ready to take on life as we know it. No mother can be given a baby guide to raise the perfect child, no bachelor can be given enough counselling about finding the perfect woman and there is no book for dummies on making the perfectly correct decisions. This is a good indication of how I feel about this module...having no specific recipe book as every clients case will be different.

As lectures have been rolling past about mental illnesses and OT ways of dealing with them I have started to get clammy hands and a dry mouth....

 

I have grown up in what I would like to call a fairly balanced home that encountered many different types of people but seldom people with mental illness. Oh wait, I profoundly remember a Downy girl called Elke, in my childhood. Back then, people with any kind of cognitive impairment were looked down upon and some even said it had something to do with the children's parents faith, which HAD to be lacking in some way or the other. 
My mom helped run our kindergarten within our community and I remember how much it took her to convince Elke's parents about the pros of sending her to the play school. I also vividly remember how my mom treated Elke when her parents finally gave in, which was with love and great respect, in other words just like she would treat the rest of us. To me my mom modelled an attitude of equality amongst the human race (which included race, age, religion, nationality, disability and gender) yet she remaining level headed, realistic and reasonable which greatly impacted my life to this very day!

 

I guess what I am trying to say about my mom is that she shaped a great deal of me! She stood out in our community, as she would always bring with her a bigger perspective on a matter which got people thinking. Many didn't appreciate her view points as they usually went against the 'old' traditional ways of doing certain things. A good example was only inviting the top students to the end of year prize giving's. My mom would refuse to go as she did not see eye to eye with the narrow mindedness of only celebrating the most prestigious kids in the school and leaving the rest out.  

David H. Barlow in 'Abnormal Psychology' states that the definition of psychological disorder is a "...psychological dysfunction within an individual that is associated with distress or impairment in functioning and a response that is not typical or culturally expected." (Barlow, 2005)

This definition made swallowing difficult as we are slowly starting to uncover the sort of cases that we will be confronted with. Flip, lately my mind has been grappling with the thoughts of how on earth will I connect with my clients?! I try to keep reminding myself that there is no map for life so there surely is none for what we are going to be going through, except for our knowledge that we are gathering and our experiences...oh, and to be yourself at all times.    

Let's face it, we all try to stay away from people that are  'distressed' in some way or the other. This may be because they are consumed by their problems and all they see is darkness all around them. I, myself am many a time consumed by distress which I sometimes battle to cope with and this semester we will be expected to minimize the distress of our clients?! I tend to seek wise counsel  (an OT lecturer or a 4th year student) in times of distress which I am also planning on doing this semester as I have heard that the course has quite an emotional side to it. (And of course there is my mom that always has an ear to give - even though she likes talking more than listening.) I also keep a personal diary that I confide in whenever my thoughts and feelings are waaay to heavy for a simple life like mine. ;)

What has always intrigued me is how differently people respond to different situations. This is possibly due to the influence of their social, physical and emotional surrounding. I only realized in one of our previous lectures how much our surroundings influence our thinking, behaviour as well as our response to certain situations. I am grateful for my surroundings in many ways as they have instilled in me ample room for difference. We need to know what influences our clients thinking in order to understand where their response or their actions are coming from. This can be done by utilizing the different models (KAWA. MOHO, PEO, CP) that we have been taught to us. Having a closer look at these will most certainly guide me well.

We however always need to bare in mind that people with psychological disorders can not help the way that distress and impairment is taking over their lives...it is a chemical imbalance or a shortage that causes them to respond in a way that is not culturally in sync. People like Elke can not help the way they are, just like we can't control our hormone cycles that play around with our moods like yoyos. We need to give people a great deal of leeway when assessing them to get down to the most important problems to consider in our programmes for them. In order for us to reach a good problem list we will have to brush up on our assessments which need to be up to date. 

It is also important to probe a little deeper into the mind of individuals with psychological disorders by reading some of their stories so that I do not forget to embrace this semester with an open mind and remembering that we all have different environments that influence the way we do things...just some of us have little short changes that result in difficulty living up to the expectations of the others. 

 

I will also make sure that I spend sufficient time in the outdoor, jogging and going for walks and spending quality time with people that ground me. I will do this with the intension of not forgetting to live and to give my mind a good, solid rest.

My mom greatly inspired me to

• find my own shoe size and to walk in them the journey of my very own life
• to stand up for what I believe in
• to be an advocate for those that are not capable of coping with life like you and I

I feel privileged to being able to reach out to people together with the help of OT!