A friend of mine in one of my college courses told me about her grandmother that went to the hospital on Tuesday night. She told me that her grandma had pneumonia and on top of that a virus. She seemed really concerned and told me that she was worried because she knew someone that recently died from pneumonia. I tried to comfort her by letting her known I'd keep her grandma in my prayers. That evening I said a little prayer asking God to look over my friend and her grandma. Two days later I saw my friend in class and asked my friend how her grandmother was doing. With excitement my friend told me that her grandma was doing really well and was planning on coming home that day. I thought that this was an answer to my prayer.
Another moment I had I was driving in the car with my mom on our way to dinner with our family. My mom was complaining about her colleagues that disrespect her. Having come from a history of men disrespecting her in her life, she has become a very strong independent woman. And any time that anyone tries to disrespect her she won't stand down.
As I was talking to my mom about her situation, I thought of how this situation relates to the skills that I teach 12 and 13 year olds at the school I am working at for my field placement. At this school, I manage part of the Peacebuilders Program that is used in the school to prevent bullying. The main skills it focuses on are praising others, righting wrongs, giving up put-downs, helping others, noticing hurts, and seeking wise people. As a social work intern at the local school, I give presentations in the classroom on each of these social skills for pre-teen children.
Back to my mom's situation, I realized that even adults still need to learn social skills in their environments too. I gave my mom some advice about giving up put-downs by trying to ignore the negative statements that others say to her. I told her a tool that she can use is keeping a list of all of her positive attributes to remind herself of her strengths in order to ignore the negative statements that are being thrown at her. This way she won't be concerned about what other people may think of her, because she knows that she has all these other strengths.
Then we had an in-depth discussion about self-statements that she may be saying to herself when she does something wrong. I explained to her that maybe when she does something wrong she is so used to hearing her ex-husbands and her father telling her she is no good and worthless. Now on her own, she is telling herself that she is no good and worthless when she does something wrong. I suggested that she could change her self-statements to "I put forth good effort." After I suggested this to her, my mom completely agreed with me that she is doing that to herself. She then complimented me and told me that I am really good at counseling people and not even her counselor with a Master's degree suggested anything of the sort that would help her in this way. After she said this, tears started to fill my eyes as I realized that even though I make mistakes as a social worker at my field placement sometimes, I myself do have skills and strengths to be social worker. Possibly I should be listening to my own advice about self-statements at my work place. I think this is one of the ways God is reminding me that he has blessed me with the strengths to counsel His people when they are in need and remind them of the goodness that they have within them. Thank-you God for your blessings!
No comments:
Post a Comment