This article for
human-service professionals
complements
another article on alerting the people you serve to
five key family stressors:
false-self wounds and recovery, effective communication, grieving, and
relationship basics, and stepfamily hazards and safeguards. Despite adult
maturity, life experience, and formal education, most lay people and many
human-service professionals are unaware of these topics and their major personal
and social implications. This significantly promotes our tragic American divorce
epidemic.
Are You Responsible for Alerting Others?
If you accept the reality and implications of the widespread [wounds +
unawareness]
and you work in a group
setting, you face several ethical questions. One is whether you have a moral
responsibility to alert your co-workers and colleagues to this cycle for (a)
their own families and (b) their professional effectiveness.
If your
is
by your
you will probably answer "Yes, I do."
If you're an independent (private practice) service provider, you will
choose un/consciously whether or not to proactively
alert other professionals and organizations
you work with, and/or any professional associations you belong to.
The rest of
this article assumes you work in a group setting.
If you're motivated to alert your professional co-workers, you have
a range of options. On a scale of one (uninterested now) to five
(highly motivated now), rate your degree of motivation for each of
these options:
-
discuss (a) the concept of surface and
primary
__ and then (b) one or more of the five prevention
topics __, in
casual conversations with my co-workers;
-
ask my supervisor and/or program director to
study and apply the five topics __, apply them to their own family __,
and weave them into their work with me and others __;
-
hand out copies of one or more of these four
prevention pages to co-workers who show interest,
and/or refer them to the series on the Web (www.sfhelp.org/prevent/intro.htm)
__;
-
present in-service training seminars for
co-workers on how the five topics relate to their families __, our
clientele __, our shared work environment __, and those who fund
and evaluate our organization __;
-
formally recommend to our Board members and
executives that they (a) study and apply some
or all of the five topics to their own families __, and then (b) include the topics in our
organization's goals, policies, and programs __.
-
Other options __.
Did
your
(capital "S") just rate these items? What did you just learn about yourself?
Prepare to Alert Your
Co-workers
There are at least three vital ways
you can optimize the outcome of working to alert your co-workers to
the [wounding + unawareness] cycle is by preparing to do so first. The first
one is to (a) study all four or five topics and (b) apply them
to your own family and life over time. Benefiting from this depends directly
on your motivation to put and keep your Self in charge of your other dynamic
personality subselves. If you don't, expect substantially less success from
your prevention efforts.
A
second useful preparation option is to mull the pros and cons of taking a top-down or
roots-up approach to alerting your co-workers. Perspective:
Top-down or Bottom-up?
Wound-recovery pioneers Joseph and
Sharon Wegsheider-Cruse were hired in the 1980s by major organizations like
the U.S. Army and a pro football team to advise them on
Adult-Children of
Alcoholics (ACoA) wound-assessment and recovery fundamentals.
The
couple agreed to consult if they were invited to assess each
member of the Board or executive council for wounds first.
This is a "top-down" approach to
alerting any organization to the reality and impact of false-self wounds
and any of the other four prevention topics. The idea is that if
senior policy makers become personally aware, they're more apt to encourage
or require other people in their organization to do the same.
This
professional couple benefited from a well-deserved national reputation
as credible, effective experts in ACoA assessment and recovery. Prospective
clients' Board members and executives were more receptive to their proposal and
opinions than they would have been to lesser-known consultants.
The alternative to a top-down approach is
to build "grass-roots" awareness by your alerting co-workers
individually or in a group via in-service seminars. Then approach the
senior managers and policy makers. A third strategy is some combination of
top-down and bottom-up alerts. For instance, if you're not well-known to
senior management, you may alert a co-worker who is well known and
respected, and ask if s/he would approach senior management with or for you.
Any
of these three options can benefit your co-workers and the people you all
serve. The top-down approach is probably the most cost-effective - and
challenging - way to do this, in most situations.
The
third way to optimize your prevention efforts involves planning to
reduce or adapt to...
Four Potential Workplace Barriers
A combination of (at least) four
factors will affect your success in alerting your co-workers, executives,
and board-members to the [wounding + unawareness] cycle:
-
your own (a) false-self
(b)
ineffective communication attitudes
and habits, and (c) possible
of these; and...
-
your co-workers' and executives' protective
denial of their own false-self wounds and ignorance, and their related
"resistance" to making significant
-
the common workplace taboo about
salaried co-workers' spending time discussing personal matters;
and possibly...
-
the wounds, ignorances, and resistances of
key people who sponsor, fund, evaluate, and accredit your organization.
Evolving a thoughtful strategy to handle each of these barriers will raise your
odds of your co-workers heeding what you're trying to alert them - and the
people you serve - to. What are your options for
devising such strategies?
Your Own Wounds and Communication Skills
A
core premise here is that a high
majority of average people - like you - are unaware they're often
ruled by a protective false self. Significant false-self wounds and
ignorance relentlessly promote personal, family, and
organizational stress and ineffectiveness.
Before you try to alert your co-workers and the people you serve,
yourself honestly for false-self wounds. Proactively
any wounds you find can (a) strengthen your family relationships and protect
your descendents; and (b) increase your convictions and credibility if you
advise your co-workers to evaluate themselves and others they care
about for unseen false-self wounds.
Even if your true Self is solidly
of your personality, ineffective communication skills may block your ability
to motivate your co-workers to study and apply the five prevention
topics in their families and their professional values, goals, and
conduct.
If
you haven't recently assessed your communication knowledge and skills, get
undistracted, try these with an open mind, and see what you learn:
Reluctance to invest time and effort
with these may indicate you're ruled by a well-intentioned false self.
As
you use these to assess your communication "status," imagine how your
co-workers would react to (a) you proposing that they use these tools, and
to (b) actually using them to assess themselves.
If
you decide you need to heal and/or your communication
need strengthening, work patiently at both of those
before you try
alerting your co-workers. Your experience with, and progress at, these two
core related projects will probably raise your desire to share the benefits
with other people, over time.
The
next prevention-alert barrier you'll need to prepare for is...
Your Co-workers' Wounds + Unawareness +
Denials
Typical people who are ruled by false selves
-
e.g. their ruling subselves deny the person is wounded, and resist
honest self-assessment until the person (a) reaches middle age, and (b)
hurts too much to keep denying (hit bottom).
Mental-health workers who specialize in working with troubled adults
raised in
families observe that many of them seek human-service roles and
occupations. If this is true, it's likely that
you and many of your co-workers and
executives are significantly wounded, and don't (want to) know it.
This means your co-workers' well-meaning false selves may...
-
ignore, minimize, challenge, or reject
your proposal that they assess themselves for wounds;
-
wrongly interpret your suggesting that
they don't know communication, grieving, and relationship basics as
an insult and an attack;
-
cynically criticize, oppose, and/or
sabotage your efforts to alert your organization's executives and
policy makers to the five prevention topics and the [wounds +
unawareness] cycle; and your co-workers may...
-
create a low-nurturance
work environment that stresses all of you,
amplifies your wounds, and inhibits effective service-delivery to
your (wounded, ignorant) clientele. Against all logic,
and their
subselves repeatedly seek environments that replicate the
low-nurturance conditions of their childhood - because it's familiar.
The least threatening of the six
is learning stepfamily basics - except for co-workers who live in one.
This topic builds on knowledge of the other four.
How you adapt to your version of these realities will depend on many
factors, starting with whether your true Self is
your other subselves or not. Another vital factor is the degree to which
you believe and follow these wise
If you have significant false-self wounds, your highest priority is
intentionally
them. The greater your co-workers' wounds and ignorance, the more
difficult your own healing will be.
Option: assess the
nurturance level (woundedness) of your workplace using
this and
this, and see what you
learn.
Keep your perspective as you decide what to do: like the people you
serve, many of your coworkers will not be ready to learn and act on the
five or six prevention topics, starting with self-assessing for
false-self wounds. Set you goal at planting seeds of awareness with such
people, and turn
the outcome over to the universe and/or your
Another
challenge you're apt to encounter in your prevention efforts is this
common organizational taboo...
"Co-workers Shouldn't Discuss
Personal Matters"
How do you feel about advising your co-workers
to learn and apply the five prevention topics to
themselves and their family? Most for-profit organizations and some
nonprofits expect employees to follow a rule like this: "At work, we co-workers and managers will confine
our discussions to professional matters. Discussing our personal lives in
any depth is 'inappropriate.'" If this rule exists in your setting and
you abide by it, you may block your co-workers from experiencing what it's like to apply the five topics to their own lives.
Not challenging this taboo
(a) raises the odds that your co-workers will react to the five prevention
topics intellectually, not viscerally. It also (b) blocks
their empathic awareness of how typical clients, patients, and students
would react to learning and applying the topics and the [wounds +
unawareness] cycle to their lives.
If you choose a top-down approach to alerting your organization,
consider (a) acknowledging this taboo to your senior management, and (b)
recommending that they sponsor suitable in-service training
on the prevention topics, and (c) encourage employees to
discuss the personal impacts of the topics on their own lives and
families at work.
|
Premise: over time, personal experience with these
prevention topics can (a) strengthen your co-workers' families, (b) raise the
nurturance-level of your organization, and (c) increase the
long-term effectiveness of the services you provide to
your clientele. Do you agree? |
The last barrier you may face is indirect, unless you're a
senior executive or Board member:
Resistance from Funders,
Legislators, and/or Accreditors
The most ecological way for you to alert your co-workers to the [wounds +
unawareness] cycle is from the top down. Your directors and senior
management are responsible for (a) attracting public and private funders for
your organization, and (b) complying with professional-association, state,
and federal licensure and accreditation standards and laws.
These two groups of people are
probably just as unaware of the five prevention topics and their personal
and social impacts as your clientele and co-workers. They're just as
likely to ignore, resist, or disapprove any new prevention policy and
priority in your organization as anyone else - perhaps more so, since they
bear greater responsibilities.
Unless you're one of them, your decision is whether or not to ask your
senior executives (after alerting them to the five topics) about the extent
to which they feel constrained in adopting the topics by funders, laws, and
compliance organizations.
Whatever their answer, as a voter and a member, you can choose to personally
recommend that relevant professional-associations, and state and federal
organizations (a) study these five topics and their impacts, and (b) revise
their policies, standards, and laws to include them to help prevent
personal, family, and social stress.
The Ultimate Barrier to
Breaking the Cycle
The biggest single hindrance to motivating people to prevent the [wounds +
unawareness] cycle is our primal horror of admitting that our laws permit
couples to make unwise, uninformed marriage and child-conception
choices. These choices usually produce low-nurturance families, which cause
false-self wounds and unawareness to spread in our society.
We require competency testing and licensing to be a professional plumber,
vehicle driver, accountant, clinician, nurse, teacher, etc. - but the idea
of legally requiring couples to demonstrate their marital and co-parenting
competence before child conception evokes universal outrage and defiance.
Notice your own reaction to this idea...
As creator of the cartoon character Pogo once observed,
"We have met the enemy, and he is
us."
Recall that this article is one of a series
proposing practical ways lay and professional people can prevent
epidemic personal and family stress, (some) illness, and divorce by helping
other people learn and apply up yo six vital
Recap
This prevention article invites you to prepare for key factors that
will affect your success at alerting your co-workers to the widespread
[wounding + unawareness] cycle that increasingly threatens our future
generations:
-
your
own
and
-
whether you choose a top-down or bottom-up
approach to alerting others in your organization, and...
-
your co-workers' and directors' denials of
their wounds and unawareness, and perhaps...
-
the workplace taboo against co-workers'
talking about personal matters, and...
-
the wounds, ignorance, and unawareness in
the people who fund, regulate, and accredit your profession and
organization.
The
theme suggested here is to (a) admit which of these apply to your situation,
(b) work to change those you can, and (c) let go of the rest.
For more specific
prevention
options,
choose a link:
Recall why you read this article - did you get what you needed? If so, what
do you want to do with these ideas? If not, what
you need?
The Web address of this article is
http://sfhelp.org/prevent/coworkers.htm
Note
- this model and series was originally designed to focus on effective clinical
work with typical di-vorcing families and stepfamilies. It is being reorganized
in 2009 to pertain to all "low-nurturance" (multi-problem,
"dysfunctional") families, and persons recovering from early-childhood trauma
("Grown Wounded Children" - GWCs). Sections still hilight keys to serving
divorcing and stepfamily members effectively. 