“What is it like for you and the staff seeing all the good things and successes these types of initiatives can bring?”
This was an interesting question which was asked by a media representative during the recent open house. It is a question we don’t discuss honestly enough.
A lot of times the people we support and work with have a deep relationship with failure or disappointment. It’s familiar. It has been something that has been a sort of self fulfilling prophecy for so many through poverty, mental health issues, through impacts of abuse or substance use disorders.
Eventually it became the norm. Try? Sure. Probably going to stumble or fall, and that becomes the cycle. Sometimes trying becomes something not worth effort because the result hasn’t changed.
The problem is when that becomes the cycle and the expected outcome it is what you become familiar accepting and moving on from you forget how to handle succeeding.
People living in that cycle is also what many of our educational programs for people entering this field are taught to understand and navigate. Relapse, lapse, bad relationships, poor choices, impacts of repeated let downs and finding themselves looking at the familiar look of disappointment.
There is lots out there about supporting someone through the stress of difficult times, of challenging circumstances and navigating losses of all kinds. There’s also lots of talk among these curriculums about identifying self sabotage and how to support or guide when that is part of the reality.
Succeeding however, there isn’t much discussion about how to harness that energy. There isn’t much guidance in how to handle that challenge to the expectations previous times created.
It is in those times, when our folks are learning to accept and live in their successes, that we realize that stress can trigger similar responses regardless of failing or succeeding. It is as critical to navigate it supported as failure but it is overlooked – those things seen as positive often times are.
So we learn through seasoning that support and community is just as important when learning to ‘take your wins’ as it is when we ‘learn our lessons and keep going’.
So these types of things are amazing, because we get to see people taking their lives back, learning to harness the highs and lows in healthy ways and we get to do the same.
Noone taught those of us who came to this through learned avenues how to do it so those of us who came through lived experience lead the way.
I guess the answer is it is a beautiful time for all of us – we grow together as staff, as residents, as graduates, as community members, as people.
