Answer by choko_canyon
1. Dump the metaphors. Considering therapy using the idea of a 'lens' might be helpful to you as a visualization tool, but remember the dangers of labeling and how limiting they can be.
2. Remember too that each of your clients is an individual with an utterly unique set of issues and problems to deal with. There will never be a single tool, technique or mode that is useful in all situations.
3. The client MUST become part of his or her recovery process. They must engage. ONE way I have found to be useful is take them out of the context of patient/client/victim and put them into the context of therapist. Pose a hypothetical question to them about a hypothetical client: The client has an inability to believe that they can change a certain negative aspect about their lives. You as practititioner are having trouble coming up with a way to illuminate the possibility of change and hope. What would the client suggest? How would THEY approach this problem? What would THEY say to such an invididual. In the process of thinking about this and then verbalizing it, I find that they often start to see how such a solution might work for THEM.
This won't work all the time for all clients, but it can be a useful device for increasing awareness of possibility.
Answer by Emily
Just make sure you make the patient feel truly listened to and respected. I've been through therapy multiple times so...I know what it is they want
Answer by Bradley P
Empower. Do what you can do to give your client, your consumer an *internal* locus of control over their lives. And it has to be more, substantially more, than just pretty words or slogans, ok? You and your partner in their recovery *have to* work on something tangible, real-world, that the consumer can look to and say, "I did this," or at least, "I helped get this done", or "This is something I belong to and feel a part of in a positive way."
That last bit is important too...just getting someone back to work at *any old job* doesn't count if said job is a total *grind* from which nothing positive comes--not even the paycheck when said pay leads to a *drastic, income-cliffed and entirely disproportionate* cut in supporting benefits like, oh, getting the health care the consumer *needs* to maintain medication access so that they *can* stay stable enough to work. Trust me, I lost my last job, in part because of stress from a death in my family, but also in *large* part because the health care benefits were *not paying one red cent* of the costs of my meds, forcing me to pay *full costs out of pocket*, which literally devoured one of my whole paychecks each month....(as in meds plus counseling).
But I digress. My apologies. :) Point is, it can't just be *any old thing* that comes along, in terms of jobs or goals. You can't just dictate things and shovel them down someone's throat. Aside from that *not* being about internal locus of control, it is also a highly *negative* thing for someone who frankly *lives* in a whole world *packed to the gills* with negative things lately.
If you wish for someone to "buy into" a recovery model....it has to *belong* to them as much as their mental illness does if not more. It has to be a recovery that is *their choice* on their terms. Meaning no One Size Fits All style Cognitive Behaviroal crap, no rubber-band shackles around the wrists, no psuedo-behavioral mental wedgies. No psychologizing social problems that *come with the territory* of mental illness either, like not being able to find meaningful work, or being treated poorly by society (because word gets out, in general, that some folks are "mopes" or "flakes" and more and more lately, those folks, people like me and my neighbors, we get treated like so much trash). No telling people, right off, that anything, any problems they have, are all a "voice" in their heads when damn it, many of us *are not now, nor have we EVER BEEN delusional* in the classical schizophrenic sense. Try just treating people as *people* first, taking what they say at *face value* and not passing judgement for *once*. :)
Yeah....how about that? How about listening to folks for more than five or ten lousy, heavily scripted control-freak minutes at a time, and actually trying to *help them* oh, I dunno, *DO* something they want to do? You know, of a "hopes and dreams" sort of nature...*lol* sorry to be ranty. I have good reasons, ok?
But yes....give someone a *reason* to recover. Help people get their lives back in some way. Get them in classes, out and about, doing hobbies they like and can afford, doing whatever work they *can do* and see fit to....this is one of the big, BIG reasons why I can't go along with that Cognitive Behavioral crap, ok? Because it says it's "Behavioral" and yet I *know* my B.F. Skinner....and CBT is *almost all* aversives.
So *where* do you get the *rewards* for being in the system and for being the one who does ALL the hard work TO get better? See what I mean?
So yes. EMPOWER. Focus on developing an *internal*, consumer-driven locus of control over one's own destiny. Even if it is only in something small....so long as it is something positive *and* meaningful in a concrete, real-world sense, it should work out. :)
Hope this helps you...I wish it had helped me.
Orignal From: How do you engage consumers of mental health services through a "recovery" lens?
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