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The team’s approach. Team limits
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The team’s approach
1. The team meets with the heavy person in a relaxed and friendly way, making clear that there is a team in existence and explaining that we like to work around people's needs in groups. To avoid unkept promises or unmet expectations, the team should be very explicit and straight about what it does and doesn't do.
2. When the team is talking with the heavy person, particularly when giving feedback or making plans, at least one team member should take the heavy person's side, making sure he/she is being heard and feelings are being brought out as clearly as possible - even if the team doesn't like what these feelings are.
3. All behavior is communication of some kind: the team should look very carefully at the heavy person's behavior. Since communication is a two-way process, we need to look at our own behaviour, too. Instead of seeing craziness as " in" the heavy person, we should seek the meaning of his/her interpersonal
behavior, by making a " heavy interaction analysis. " It's essential that this analysis not put someone in a conceptual box and leave her/him there. Understanding the heavy person's world and needs as a process helps the team avoid being trapped by confusion into being rigid or crazy themselves.
The team’s analysis might focus on one sequence of communications between two people. For example, " I got upset when she said that. Why? What was that tapping in me? Did she want me to get angry, or was that a backwards way of wanting me to say hello? " We can also look at the interaction between the heavy person and the whole group.
In one case, a woman claimed all sorts of terminal physical illnesses. She would talk very expressively about her complaints and then " faint” away on the floor, particularly if men were around. We would get very upset and rush around trying to revive her in a way that always involved touching her. When we finally realized the pattern we'd gotten into, we were able to see her fainting as asking for something from us. We then tried to give her a lot of attention, particularly male attention, when she wasn't talking about her symptoms, and we ignored her when she fainted. The actual situation was much more complicated, of course. The above is an outline of our team's approach.
The team’s " interaction analysis" may be quite wrong, but it provides the basis for a tentative commitment to the heavy person and a plan for acting differently, so the old familiar bad ways don't have to come up as such. Rather than merely having our painful reactions to the heavy person, we can become more active, expanding our interaction. Instead of standing still, waiting to hear the next crazy thing he/she did so we can groan, we can make moves to relate before the crazy things happen.
4. We’ve found that about 5 people make a good size team, although others are needed if support is being given around the clock. It's important to divide up responsibilities: who'll help with housing, who’ll go to welfare with the person, etc. It's also usually best to have a team coordinator who keeps track of who is doing what and what isn't happening. Team members should have each other's phone numbers, so that help can be reached quickly and easily. Whenever possible, invite the heavy person to the meetings. It may also be productive to have a different heavy person(s)as part of the team.
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5. We try to find out if the heavy person has a support network nearby. If there are friends, roommates, or relatives, it usually helps to try to work with them. Often these people have become scared, bewildered, or just tired and fed up. If
we can support them in finding new ways of relating with the heavy person, they are obviously the best bet for the person's long-term support. Also, a lot may be learned from people who know the heavy person. From the friends of a very spacy girl we’d been protecting, we found out that she'd been spacy but able to take care of herself for many years.
6. The team needs to meet frequently, ideally with someone who is experienced with heavy people but not actively involved with this particular person. To avoid feeling bad and wanting to dump the heavy person, it's essential to keep in touch with our own heavy feelings. As a team, we should constantly review our analysis to see where we're getting stuck. It's easy to get involved in a troubled person's system and find yourself playing a part you didn't intend.
Team limits
1. The team needs to feel very clearly that it doesn't have to control the heavy person or do anything about her/him " getting better" - like talking to a therapist, being open about her/his problem, going to a hospital, taking a pill, etc. With some exceptions, the team should not feel responsible for someone's life and welfare. They should not get into control battles about making the heavy person do things.
When a situation seems to be heading for a fight, instead of upping the ante of pressure on yourself and the heavy person, try to step sideways. One time on our hotline, a very provocative guy told me he had taken a bunch of pills. Obviously, my next move was supposed to be " how many, how long ago, where are you? " and these things he wouldn't tell me. Instead, I said, " You must be feeling pretty bad to have done that. Can you tell me what's going on for you? " And we got into a rap about his feelings. About 10 minutes later, he was able to back off and say he hadn't taken the pills - yet.
2. The team needs to attend to the heavy person's survival needs. It's pretty hard to get your head together when you aren't sure where your next meal's coming from or where you're staying that night. Sometimes heavy people will resist your efforts to stabilize their living conditions, but we've learned through bad experience that if we keep crashing someone for months, making new arrangements every day, the only result is uproar, a lot of which is due to our own grudginess about limited resources.
If someone is too upset to work, he/she can be put on welfare. Sometimes when heavy people refuse to go on welfare, it indicates their desire that the group support them. Insisting that a heavy person get living security is making the person do something, to which we are generally opposed, but the other side is what the person is making us do by continually coming in for a handout and a place to crash. If we insist on welfare, we should make it clear that it is for our good, not theirs. Of course, the person always has the option of splitting.
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We also have some very basic limits: we don't want to be shit on, and violence is not acceptable. To keep these limits, we try to understand behavior and relate to what's behind it, or by ignoring it, leaving the room, etc. If all else fails, we need to feel comfortable saying, " I can't be with you when you're like this. There is no way I can be helpful now. I guess you'll have to leave. ”
Except in certain suicidal cases, we need to feel comfortable about not being responsible. If there are repeated signs that the person can't make it, sees no way out, and has made previous attempts at suicide, then we need to feel more responsible, acknowledge that we can't work with the person, if they are someone whose relationship with us can't be trusted as much as their urge for death. We have carried suicidal people, but only when there was one Changes person who was clearly so closely relating with the person that we could absolutely count on a call for help.
We haven't worked out the dimensions of extra responsibility. Obviously, every precaution possible must be taken.
3. Knowing the relationship is free and voluntary on both sides gives everyone a lot of psychological space. People should not have to work with someone that don’t like or feel very comfortable with. Hopefully, within a non-demanding situation with clear limits, heavy people have maximum flexibility to do what they need to do. And the rest of us should be only as involved as we feel good about. It's always better to have a lot of people involved who each give a little than a few people who feel ripped off and get resentful.
4. No matter how strange, give heavy people credit for having good reasons for their behavior. Another way of looking for the function of their behavior is to look for what " good life thrust” might be in their bad way of acting. Then, respond to that life thrust just as if they had acted it out fully and appropriately. A lot of crummy ways are really only crummy because the right things are being half done and half defeated, instead of being fully and freely done. If you respond to the half of it that is happening, that lets it happen more (from the Rap Manual by Eugene Gendlin and Mary Hendricks, and within this book)'. There are impulses which could be happening while the person is being annoying: if it is appropriate, you could say, " I'm glad you're reaching for contact with me, " or just respond by giving contact.
If a person asks for something you can't give, tell him/her that, but also that you are glad she/he is in touch with their needs and felt free to ask for them. This is especially important if the need is in the direction of life and growth for the person, such as wanting closeness, sex, or time with you. (Rap Manual)
If you're working with a very freaky person who says one thing that makes sense and then a lot more you can't understand, stick with your one point of contact. ”I really understand it when you say you hated her. " If the person continues to say things that don't make sense, you can repeat that one thing again and again. Also, if someone says something that can't be true (" The Martians took everything from me" ) respond to the feeling part (" You feel like you've been fucked over. " ) (Rap Manual)
Generally, we invite heavy people to share in our community as we would with any new person. They can hang around, work at the coffee shop during the day, and drop in (and work) at the office during the evenings. They are invited to our Sunday night community meetings, which are more formal than our daily meetings. On Sundays if we let them, heavy people are apt to demonstrate how crazy they are by talking constantly about irrelevant things and making the larger meeting very difficult. As very polite folks who tend to ignore heavy people's behavior, we sometimes increase their disruptiveness. If other members of the group don't handle the situation, someone on the team should respond by listening carefully and reflecting to heavy people those of their feelings that make sense, and also have enough courage to tell heavy people to be quiet when they're making no sense. This reflecting should diminish their need to use crazy methods to make themselves heard.
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Sharing your personal life and feelings with heavy people is very helpful: going to the movies, out for coffee, etc. Communicate that you're willing to share your " normal" life with them - they don't have to be freaky to spend time with you. Be careful, though, that you don't get so caught up in being friends that you forget their need for " therapeutic" talk, too.
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