WHAT peace is missing?
Welcome back to another blog post! This article is near and dear to me as it is the first piece of writing that I did professionally and was published by someone else (other than me - ha!). I had the honor of one of my friends and colleagues asking me to submit a piece for an organization they are a part of - Association of Threat Assessment Professionals. I still remember the amount of discomfort I felt when they asked me, let alone the fear I had when I actually pressed 'Send' to the editor. Glad I know my breathing technique so well!
Now, a year later, I read this back to myself with a lot less cringe and way more pride. If I had not taken a chance on myself, you wouldn't be reading this blog.
Take a read and let me know what you think!
A Perspective on Threat Assessment in Healthcare and Mental Health Systems
Working in the Addiction field, there is heightened threat every time a client walks out of my office. I have the responsibility of knowing their addiction to a substance makes them more possible to reacting to irrational thinking and feeling at any given moment. I learned quickly that I had No control over this codependent relationship. How do you influence someone who practices Intentional Apathy?
The threats within the healthcare system are not the people who we know so well to be unpredictable. The helping professionals who are responsible for the outcomes of “fixing” the problem(s) can be the most underestimated threat to the healthcare system and family systems. The people who are callused by stress, the ones that know the answers but are unable to utilize the solutions due to their own suffering and stress. A callus that is a bias to our experience of the immense threat in this world: Apathy. The majority of our nation is addicted but would never know it. For some, awareness of this is often too stressful to even be a consideration. We have become addicted to stress, so much that we build systems of stress around us (families, work, relationships, etc.) that keep us distracted from the solutions.
These systems have carved pathways in our brains because of stress (neuropathways). Our genetics altered (epigenetics). We have become biased by stress. Unable to notice patterns of impulse and instant gratification (relief) that weave a tight web of denial, desensitization, and ignorance. And then we wrap our children into this web, whom pass it among their systems, again and again, unaware of the stress they are experiencing. Healthcare providers are more susceptible to absorbing the stress of patients. We receive, process, and guide the patient into the system. We are humans responsible for outcomes, supporting the dignity, worth, and well-being of these patients and their families. Furthermore, after doing this task, we have to recap the “Right” details for the system we function in, justify how we reduced the threat in someone’s world, our world, just to be compensated for our efforts. Then, we go home and deal with our own realities.
I was not able to recognize my own Apathy until I had such a level of stress that I became the patient. Once I realized I needed to do something, I did not have that much support from the system that influenced me getting to that point. Since I knew something needed to change, I took what I learned from working with the people that intentionally did not want to feel and I practiced what I preached. I had to put myself under the intentional stress that an addict avoided. Come to find out, I had my own addiction to stress, sugar, and food that I was apathetic toward. I had to practice suffering. I had to understand my own perceptions and connections to stress, as I had become an expert in everyone else’s relationship with stress, but did not even understand my own. It was then I was able to be more effective and aware that the peace I lacked in my life, was my own barrier to practicing PEACE: Perspective, Education, Acceptance, Compassion, Empowerment
Practicing PEACE is an intentional reflection process that supports the change of apathetic systems, starting with the individual. It’s a recipe for what we know as emotional intelligence (EI), although in entirety, EI is a complex concept as trauma escalates in the world. How can we educate humans to accurately assess threats without awareness and a relationship to their own experience of the perceived problem? My identity as a therapist requires me to understand a perspective of suffering I will not likely experience myself, to guide people to choices, and teach them how to cope and manage with the stress of their continued suffering. What happens when providers can’t keep up with the work they do for others and the work they have to do for themselves? Patients have providers, but who and what do providers have if other providers are struggling? Provider leadership can only do so much to run the agency for the masses and make sure the providers have enough. How come interventions and changes are made to secure the patient’s needs, without anticipating the impact on the person providing those needs?
Provider health is patient health. Assessment and application of PEACE from an organizational and systemic vantage point is a start. We have to create new systems, pave new pathways, while the old heal and carry a lesser load. We have to work together, with families, with communities.