This article is written to human-service
professionals who (a) provide direct service to clients, patients, or
students; and others who (b) hire, supervise, train, consult with, and/or
evaluate direct-service providers. It assumes you have read about and
applied at least the first two of the three prevention steps outlined
here.
About Your Professional Ethics
If
you have (a) studied one or more of the
five basic topics
hilighted in this prevention series, and (b) honestly applied
your learnings to yourself and your own family, you face an ethical choice:
are you morally obligation to alert
the people you serve and work with to these topics and what they mean, or
not?
Do
you agree that (a) the problems that people seek your professional help with
are usually surface symptoms of underlying
and (b) typical adults and all
children are usually unaware of their primary needs? For example,
average people struggling with relationship, financial, occupational, and
legal problems don't see that their real problems are (a) unawareness
of psychological
and what they
plus (b) ignorance of relationship,
communication, and healthy-grieving
basics.
|
Restated: average people like those you serve and work with
don't know what they don't know, so they won't seek the
knowledge they need to fill their primary needs. |
Implication: people will ask
your professional help in reducing the surface symptoms of their problems,
not what causes them. If you advise them on resolving surface
problems without explaining their wounds and primary needs, you're really
not serving them. This is like a dentist accepting money for cleaning a
patient's teeth, and saying nothing about their cavities or gum disease.
Notice your thoughts and feelings now. If you disagree or discount the
meaning of this implication to you and those you serve and work with, your
is probably dominated by a protective
now
without your knowing it.
If
you accept responsibility for alerting those you serve to the [wounds +
unawareness]
and you work with and for
other human-service professionals, you face some practical challenges:
you'll need to...
-
develop an
effective way of alerting your clients, patients, and/or students to the
cycle, and how it relates to their presenting problems.
Effective means respectfully motivating them to want to
overcome their normal resistance to second-order (care attitude)
and...
-
explain why and
how you're dong this to your supervisor, program director, consultants,
and colleagues, who (probably) won't initially understand or
agree with it; and may c/overtly criticize you because what you're doing
implies they are not helping people the way they could (or
should). And you need to...
-
decide whether or not to alert (a) the institutions who trained
and certified you, (b) any professional associations you belong to (or
don't), and/or (c) the professional and/or governmental organizations
that evaluate your qualifications and professional conduct.
Pause, breathe, and notice your
now. Would an objective observer describe your reactions as "resistant,"
"inspired and motivated," or something else?
The easy way to deal with these inescapable ethical questions is to (a)
ignore or minimize them, and/or (b) justify postponing any decisions or
actions. Your
may try to persuade you with thoughts like these...
-
"This is way too much work, and I have too much to do
already;"
-
"Someone else is probably better qualified than I am to
alert my professional colleagues so I won't bother with it now;"
-
"The people I serve will be turned off by these ideas,
and I'll lose referrals;"
-
"I'll probably risk my job or chances of promotion if I
alert my colleagues, supervisor, and employer, so I better not;"
-
"I'll be seen as an oddball or renegade, and suffer
professional criticism, censure, and/or rejections. It's not worth it."
|
Your
will be clear on the pros and cons of short-term gratifications like these
vs. long-term benefits of alerting other people to this crippling invisible
cycle. The biggest potential future
payoff is how your Future Self will feel
about your life decisions and actions now. The second biggest
is the measureless impact you can have on present and future generations of
many other people.
|
Reduce any mental or bodily distractions, and assess where you stand
with these ethical questions now: T = "True," F = "False," and
? = "I'm not sure yet," or "It depends on (what?)."
I'm sure my
true Self is
my
right now. (T F ?)
If not, your false self may skew your
answers and cause future regret.
I'm clear on my primary long-term
life priorities
(life purpose/s) now. (T F ?)
I can (a) clearly describe each of the five central topics in these
prevention articles, and (b) I have studied and honestly applied them
appropriately to myself and my family. (T F ?)
I can clearly describe (a) the [wounds and unawareness] cycle that
these five topics promote, and (b) how the cycle relates to the surface
problems those I serve and work with seek to resolve. (T F
?)
On a scale of one (highly motivated) to five (totally uninterested),
my current wish to alert...
-
the people I
serve to how this cycle relates to the problems they seek help
with is a ___.
-
my
supervisor or manager, co-workers, and employer to how this cycle
relates to the professional services we all wish to provide is a ___.
-
alert
the people
who train and certify people in my profession to how this
[wounding + unawareness] cycle relates to the main goals they seek is a
___.
-
the people in
my
professional association/s to how this cycle affects our
professional standards and policies is a ___; and one to five, my
current wish to alert... .
-
local, state, and
federal organizations who accredit and/or fund organizations like
ours, and/or judge our professional ethics and actions is a ___.
I feel that I can make time and energy available to alert one or more of
these groups of people to the cycle without significantly impairing my
health, personal life, my job, and/or my work effectiveness. (T
F ?)
What did you just learn about yourself?
Note your many prevention options:
you can choose to alert (a) one or more of these target groups to (b) one or
more of the five core topics, (c) now or later, in a way that fits your
personality, priorities, and responsibilities. Another group of options is
deciding if and when you want to interest others in helping you in this
vital prevention work
The rest of this article explores options for deciding how and when to
alert the people you serve
directly to (a) how wounds and ignorances may be affecting what problems
they seek to reduce, and (b) how you propose to assist them. If you're a
mental-health or media
professional, clergyperson, family-life
educator,
or relationship mediator, follow the links for
more detailed suggestions. Alerting
human-service co-workers to the [wounds + unawareness] cycle is explored
here.
Recall why you
began reading this article. Do you need a stretch break before reading
further?
Options for Alerting the People You Serve
No
matter whom you work with or how you want to inform and motivate them,
the most important thing you can do
is to accumulate experience at intentionally putting wound-healing,
and effective communication, grieving, and relationship basics to work in
your family and relationships. The more you do, the more confident and motivated you'll become at
helping others experience the benefits of these four essential topics.
If
the people you serve include a significant number of troubled adult
couples and/or co-parents, I also encourage you to study the
re/marriage,
co-parenting
and stepfamily basics in this site -
specially if you're a divorced or stepfamily co-parent. These basics build on the other four topics.
Then as part of your professional service, pass on key parts of what you learn verbally
and/or in print, as appropriate.
A basic option is to
stay consciously aware of your (a) personal
and
(b) professional values and goals, as your inner and outer
environments change. Revise those as needed to give consistently high
priority to personal and family
problem prevention
vs. resolution. This revision probably implies a significant
second-order
in your personal and professional job descriptions and key
performance-evaluation criteria.
Coach yourself to stay clear on which
topics you want to alert
your students, patients, or clientele to, and why
- i.e. stay clear on how the topic/s you select can benefit these
people, and watch for validation of this in your and their lives. For
example, if you choose to alert your people to communication basics, skills,
and options as part of your professional service, consciously ask if you
and/or they start to get more of your primary needs met with your subselves
and other people.
Risk: as you become more aware
of the relevance and power of these topics (a) in general and (b) in
the context of the problems people consult you for, guard against feeling
you are (solely?) responsible for your people "seeing the light." In
excess, this attitude can signal
- a sure sign of false-self
Feeling over-responsible can also signal unrecognized
between you and those you serve, where they are the
victims, and you are the (1-up) rescuer. Such triangles are usually toxic to
all involved - including children - because they hinder clear identities,
boundaries, self-responsibility, and self-confidence. Note that most of the
people you serve don't know about triangles, their impacts and how to avoid
or dissolve tem...
Protect against this risk by accepting that
some people aren't ready yet to
understand and apply these five prevention topics to their surface
problems and lives. You may enter their lives before they're ready to accept
these topics and their relevance - and you can't
that. You can see yourself (realistically) as an idea-planter,
which may sprout personal and family benefits months or years from now.
Another primal protection against losing your
balance and boundaries is to choose to nurture your
awareness and faith, and trust that you can safely "turn over" the wounds
and ignorance of those you serve to a responsive Higher Power, after doing
your practical best. Being able to
do this without significant doubt or guilt as a sign of true-Self
leadership!
Surface Needs vs. Primary Needs
A key first step in alerting your people is to verbally propose that normal
busy women and men like them often focus on surface problems (symptoms),
rather than the primary needs that need filling. Use these "digging-down"
examples, or create your own, to illustrate how to separate surface needs
from current primary needs.
Relate this to the problems they're seeking your help with, and ask if
they're willing to identify and focus on their primary problems. If they
balk or seem ambivalent, let them know (if you believe it) that
paying you to focus on the surface
problems may reduce the symptoms, but will probably cause the problems
to return or get worse, over time. Option: hand out and
discuss this brief summary of common
primary needs, and see how the other person/s react.
A
next step in alerting them and focusing your work could be to brief the
people you serve on an overview of some or all of the five main prevention
topics. Options: (a) pass out copies of selected summaries from this
collection, with some verbal
explanation; and/or (b) alert people to
(wound recovery),
(effective communication), and
(healthy grieving) in this non-profit Web site (www.sfhelp.org)
and the related guidebooks. Here is some
perspective on each of these:
Alert Others to Personality Subselves
and Inner Wounds
Paradoxically, the most impactful topic you can study, experience, and alert
other people to will usually evoke the strongest resistance. Think of your
own reaction when you first learned of
and the personal and family
of significant false-self
These concepts are alien and alarming to average adults - specially to
people who are unaware of chronic domination by a well-meaning,
short-sighted false self.
Premise: the majority of those
your serve are probably often
by a false self without their knowing it. Common symptoms are
obesity; chronic depression, stress, sleep and/or digestive problems;
addictions, major work and financial difficulties, troubled kids;
significant marital stress; and
Listen for hints about any of these as you work with your clients, patients,
or students.
Unless you're a mental health or medical professional, they
will not expect you to discuss false-self wound-healing as part of your
service - yet many of them (and their
desperately need someone to alert them, as they would with unsuspected
cancer or heart disease!
Options: Practice determining if
your true Self is
your personality, assessing when
other people are ruled by a false self, and progressing on
any false-self wounds you have. If you're not doing your own
periodically re-experience this safe exercise
in "talking" with one or more of your
Then consider (a) inviting the people you serve to experience the exercise
themselves, (b) adapting the ideas in this
letter to skeptics to fit your and their values and styles; and (c)
providing a copies of these overviews...
-
a 15-page overview
of normal personality subselves,
-
the six false-self wounds
(Web page), and...
-
recovery from
false-self wounds (Web page).
If your clients, students, or patients seem interested, identify qualified
local mental-health professional/s who specialize in treating
early-childhood trauma, and refer your (wounded) clients to them. Ideally
you'll refer to professionals who are practiced at helping clients or
patients empower their true Selves to harmonize their discordant other
personality subselves.
Alert Others to Effective Thinking and
Communicating
Premises: (a) all adults and kids - including you - depend
on communication
and skills more than any other learned behavior to get their current and
long-term needs met well enough; and (b) most lay and professional adults -
and all kids - are unaware of these vital
communication basics and the seven skills they can develop to fill their -
and others' needs well enough.
Your clients, patients, and/or
students probably don't know what they need to know about improving their
communication knowledge and skills, or ask your advice on this as part of
your service to them. It's also probable that you don't specialize in
teaching effective communication skills.
Opportunity: build the habit of being alert for (a) ways to illustrate
how communication knowledge could help those you serve, and (b) when to
propose the benefits their improving their awareness and skills at home,
work, and/or school. Your success at this depends on (a) your communication
knowledge and awareness, (b) your having experienced the benefits of
enhanced communication awareness, and (c) your ability to illustrate these
benefits in the context of the other person's situation and interests.
Key points to hilight, in your way:
-
all human
behavior is caused by needs - to reduce physical,
emotional, and spiritual discomforts and to increase local or future
pleasure;
-
the primary way
we all try to fill our needs is by communicating verbally
and nonverbally - with our
(thinking), each other, and (for some), a meaningful
-
studying and
practicing communication basics and skills will fill more of your daily
personal and social needs, and increase your satisfactions,
contentment, comfort, and productivity. That will probably reduce daily
stress, improve your health, and may extend your life.
-
Teaching
dependent kids effective thinking and communication awareness and skills
is a priceless lifelong gift. They probably won't learn these in
school. Some would say modeling and teaching these gifts is a parental
responsibility.
Unless you're a communication pro, your prevention opportunity is to
(a) interest those you serve in their raising their communication
and
and (b) refer them to qualified resources to help them do that. Resources
can include printed information like
these and these, and a local
class or seminar that you
believe is qualified. A third resource is a local communication consultant
or program you feel confident in referring your people to. If you work in a
group setting and the group leaders don't emphasize effective communication
awareness and skills, see this and
this for options.
|
Keep your perspective: communication knowledge and awareness
will provide the most benefits to people whose personality is
consistently guided by her or his
Conversely, healing false-self
depends partly on
and communication effectiveness. These two prevention
topics go hand-in-hand. Does this make sense to you?
|
Alert Others to Healthy and Blocked
Grief
Like you, every person you serve has suffered major life
(broken bonds), and will have more of them. Adults and kids range from
"very-effective grievers" to "totally blocked grievers."
Most of your people won't know
(a) where they fit on this spectrum, (b) effective-grieving basics, or (c)
how and why to assess themselves and their loved ones for blocked grief. Do
you agree?
Ancestral custom and our pleasure-oriented media promote public indifference
to and unawareness of (a) inevitable
(b) what
healthy
and (c) common
of, and major problems caused by, blocked grief; and how to
Would you say this is generally true of those who seek your professional
services? People raised in
childhoods are often unaware of healthy-grieving principles and requisites,
their own grief blocks, and ways to promote healthy mourning in their lives
and key relationships.
Unless you're a mental-health or medical professional, or a
family-life educator, alerting the people you serve to the value of
healthy grieving probably is outside the scope of your professional service.
You still can provide your students or clients with a brief handout on this
vital prevention topic, as a side benefit to their hiring you. Again: you're
option is to "plant seeds," and then let go of worrying about the results
without guilt or anxiety. You're most apt to do this if your true Self
guides your personality.
Watch for opportunities to mention
healthy grieving in the course of your work. Common symptoms are (a)
obesity and/or chronic dieting; (b) addictions, including codependence; (c)
chronic or "seasonal"
and "apathy," (d) "rage attacks;" (e) emotional "numbness," and (f) using
prescription medications for some significant sleep, anxiety, "mood," or
digestive problems.
Resources: (a) this brief introduction to
Good-grief basics, (b) this
quiz on healthy grieving, and (c) the
other Project-5 articles and worksheets in
this Web site. These resources differ from others you may find in that they
suggest that blocked grief is partially caused by psychological
and/or living in a grief-inhibiting (wounded, ignorant) family and society.
Your motivation to help alert people you work with and for on the value of
healthy grieving will be proportional to (a) your knowledge of healthy
three-level mourning, and (b) your assessing you and your loved ones for
possible blocked grief.
Reality check: on a scale of one (extremely motivated) to five (totally
disinterested) rate your present desire to alert the people you serve to the
value of learning about healthy mourning and blocked grief: ___ If you're
not interested in weaving such an alert into your work at this time, which
of your
is deciding that?
Continue
with two more prevention opportunities with the people you serve and
work with.
The Web address of this
two-page article is http://sfhelp.org/prevent/clients.htm