[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
it feels silly to be saying "i will not allow the spirirtual aspect of my
self and my OT practice influence how i enact that practice"...if my sense
of spirituality is connected to eveything i do, then how can i remove "it"
from what i do ?
This rings true with me. I live in rural Mississippi and, along with many of
my home care clients, I am an evangelical Christian. I also identify easily
with any Christian belief, such as Catholocism and Pentecostalism which are
common here. I also can identify with anyone who speaks about praying or
looking for spiritual insight, which is how some of my Jewish clients put
things. As far as I know, I have never had a client who believed in any
formal religion other than some branch of Christianity or Judaism. There are
Hindus and Muslims in Mississippi, but so far not among my elderly client
population.
My approach has been that I do not bring up spiritual things until or
unless a member of the family does. When they do, it is usually something
that is no problem for me to fit in with, like they may say, "I pray for you
girls driving around all over in all weather." (About their home health
workers.) Or they may say, "I am praying for peace to accept - and name
their diagnosis." All of this I can assent to and join with them on. I guess
one way to look at it is that we have the same beliefs (or close enough), so
that I can assent to and support theirs without contradicting mine. I feel
that I could find a lot of common ground with other clients with other belief
systems too, but where I live and work, it hasn't come up.
The only time I have felt uncomfortable is if they tell me something
like, "I have a word from the Lord that Mama is going to be healed." And I
don't personally believe that God speaks to us in that way. So far, (and I
had not thought this through real well a la Carl Rogers) I respond to this
kind of thing with an answer that I think is supportive of them, and true to
my own beliefs too, like " I know that is encouraging for you." If they
would carry on from there and, say, want to send the Mama's wheelchair back
to the DME company, I might try to persuade them not to, and I might say
something like, "I know God can answer prayer and work whatever He wants, I'm
not doubting that, but we don't know how or when every part of his plan will
happen, so lets wait until you see that she doesn't need it. We don't know
God's timing, He may still have more plans for this hard time you and your
Mama are going through with this stroke, so lets wait and see."
One other aspect of this that I have just recently added to my life is
that I have started to pray for my patients when I come to their house. I
was feeling weighed down by the situations many of them face. The caregiver
who has children, an elderly parent, and a job to tend to, people facing the
loss of function and independence, cases where the client has loss a spouse
(sometimes after having been married over 60 years). I began to feel that
help learning to bathe alone or use the walker safely in the kitchen was not
enough help in view of all the hard times people I see are going through. So
I decided that as I drive to each clients home, I will pray for all their
family, everyone I interact with about that client, whether they are paid
caregivers, friends that live in the home, family that lives in the home, or
family that lives close by, so I have interaction with them, or lives far
away, if I have any contact with them. I pray for peace and strength and
patience and joy and healing for all of the family. I don't tell the clients
about it ( although sometimes they will bring it up, "Say a prayer for me,
will you honey?" and then I do tell them I will). I don't feel like this is
imposing my beliefs on them because if they don't believe, or have a
different way of praying, I have not intruded my prayer into their world. It
helps me to deal with all the situations I see without being too weighed
down. It gives me perspective, and makes that help with the bath or kitchen
seem more meaningful. So that is where I am coming from here in rural
Mississippi. -- Jody
