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I went to Ruskin hoping to bring my hands on caring experience over the
past few years into focus so that it might be useful to others as they
struggle in difficult caring situations. However the Ransacker experience brought its
own difficulties from which, with new friends and new ideas, I created
this web site. At Ruskin I woke up to the fact that I had wasted much
of my life chasing my tail and barking up wrong trees, trying too hard
and taking on too much and giving myself a rough time Fortunately in that benign environment it all came together; my old despair
and the recuperating effect of being able to get into my feelings and
reason my way out of the mess into which I had got myself. Now I can bring a note of hope to any who find themselves trying too
hard etc As a model of such a person let’s look at someone who is caught in what
I call the quarter hour syndrome. She, or it can be he, is a paid carer who morning and evening goes from home to home doing
what needs to be done. But the pay, like the job itself is desultory.
Ety passing aimlessly from one subject to
another; random, haphazard, superficial (from salere
to leap down) If she dares say how she really feels on a bad day the carer can be subject to an onslaught of criticism and ridicule
from four quarters. From friends and family who are out of sympathy
with her job, with what she’s doing; they will have their own ideas
which they’ll try to impose of her. From her employer cum organizer
who wants less user complaints and more commitment at no greater cost.
And some service users, to say nothing of their families, will want
even more and can be tyrannical too. And always there are those who
say that nothing can be done about it. And others who insist you put a brave face on it and don’t let your feelings
show; we call this emotional labour and it
crops up throughout the site. Go to chapters one and two when you want
to get to grips with it. It’s insidious and the tool of fearful people
who are more concerned to keep the ship afloat than help you deal with
what’s happening. But the biggest onslaught can be from her own
sense of inadequacy. This can be about anything in her life, maybe nothing
to do with her job as a carer; almost anything
can trigger off her sense of having fallen short of some ideal she has
to meet. All that ought to have happened or could have happened had
she whatever. Worst case is when she can’t make reply to her accusers
of what she is supposed to have got wrong. Then she’ll punish herself,
try too hard and take on too much anything to escape the blame and the
phoney guilt she all too easily loads on herself. To anyone in such a predicament trap do join in my party at Chapter
12 of this web site and start the long haul of being rehumanised.
Within the context of realizing the potential of our fundamental human
needs we can, by voicing and owning our sense of inadequacy, regret
and vulnerability survive. We can affirm each other and know we’re loveable
and what we bring to life is good. There and find new
possibilities so let’s go with them. We become citizens in a world
of what I call social autonomy and in the web site we look at that too. I once was haunted by A.E.Houseman’s “I, a
stranger and afraid, in a world I never made”. This rang a bell so I
looked at my sense of being such a stranger. Now it’s become a distant
memory, another morbid zone which has lost its power to a confidence
which comes as we realise, and share, those
potentials of our fundamental human needs. |
This web site is in effect a research opportunity. Join in to discover that we are social animals who can recover from ingrown thought habits to know we are innately loveable and what we bring to life is good. |
| Response, what's on your mind |