One of my favourite cartoons by Michael Leunig (www.leunig.com.au) shows two
men sitting on the curb, one is crying, the other has his arm
around the shoulders of the crying man. Behind the two, there
is a street sign saying 'No Understanding Any Time.' A man in
uniform stands behind them with a stern look, shaking his finger,
poised to write a ticket. The man with his arm around the shoulders
of the other looks bewildered.
I often think of this cartoon when I hear people trying to
figure out what to do about the people who are negative,
pessimistic, obstructive, and 'just don't get it!' Sometimes I hear
this from families about staff, sometimes I hear it from staff
about families, from staff about other staff, from managers about
staff, and from staff about managers. It goes in all kinds of
directions, there's often blame and judgement that goes with
the conversation. I remember (and continue to experience) the
frustration of working passionately for change only to be
confronted by cynicism and a tide of people waiting to be
convinced. In the first Essential Lifestyle Planning course
that I attended, I completed the matching exercise, listing the
traits of people I like to work with and hang out with, and those
of people I don't like to work or hang out with. My don't
like lists were full of words like apathetic, pessimists, and
negative, while the like list included words like passionate,
creative, energetic, positive, optimistic. While the words on
my lists really haven't changed over the years, particularly in my
role as trainer, I have had to find ways to be more effective in
working with people who, often to say the very least, really are
not convinced.
The hopes and fears tool has become one of my
favourites in helping people to unpick what it is that is
preventing them from optimistically pursuing new opportunities for
themselves, a family member, or someone they support. While
simple, it is powerful in allowing people the time and space to
express the things that are worrying them, alongside the positive
things they may be hoping for. I wonder though if sometimes
we forget to really listen to why people have lost hope, or are
just not game to hope. As many of you will be aware, in
Person Centred Thinking training we lead people in exercises that
require people to put themselves in the shoes of those they
support, particularly with regards to people who have endured
significant loss of control in day to day life, and are made
repeated promises of change, which are rarely honoured. We ask
people, 'what would it take to trust again?' The question can
also be reframed to discover what it would take for people to
rediscover their optimism when they feel they have been repeatedly
let down.
In human services, we're no strangers to the benefits of hope
and optimism in pursuing social change, facing challenges and
solving problems. I think sometimes we forget to explore
what's going on for people who have lost hope, and fail to look at
it with any more depth than, 'hope is good. Be hopeful and
everything will be okay.' It reminds me of calling a phone,
power or other such company, furious and frustrated about a service
issue, being put on hold and having to endure intolerably cheerful
music, as though that alone will magically erase my negativity.
When people have experienced a number of failures, betrayals,
losses or any number of negative experiences, the natural response
is to begin building up defense mechanisms. No one wants to
feel naïve, in fact most of us prefer to have some kind of shield
ready for when disappointment hits. The challenge of course,
is to figure out how to keep the shield in reserve rather than
blocking every new experience on the off chance that something bad
may happen. In disability services we are in such danger of
being self righteous, and in the process, we can fail to treat
people's defenses with the sort of sensitivity that honours the
intense disappointments that lead to their construction in the
first place. Very few of us come through life without moments
of pain, disappointment and doubt, and times when we lose our hope
and optimism. When we are working with people who feel they
have experienced more promises broken than kept, particularly in
the face of large scale culture change within organisations, it is
all too easy to talk about hope as though it is something people
can simply switch on or off when they want to. If we stop to
explore our own experiences of hope lost, we know that it is rarely
that simple. We will remember that we needed time, information, the
wise counsel of confidants, we need to hear others' stories, we
need to tell our own stories (sometimes over and over again), we
need to know we are safe to express our fears, and we need to know
that if our fears are realised, we will be supported and that we
will be able to cope with yet another disappointment.
For people who have experienced profound and repeated
disappointments, the energy needed even for small investments of
hope can be huge. This is explored in The Evolution of Hope and Despair, an article
by Randolph M Nesse (Social Research, Vol. 66, No.2 , Summer 1999).
Nesse explores the idea that both hope and despair serve a purpose,
and dismissing despair as undesirable does not help people to heal
and recover their hope. This all brings me back to the Leunig
cartoon, and a need to ensure our teams and services are not
displaying the 'No Understanding Any Time' sign, even, and perhaps
especially for people who remain negative and resistant to person
centred change.
