First call…

October 17, 2009 at 9:05 am (Counselling Skills, Motherhood, PND)

I made my first call to a client as part of my training as a telephone support worker at PANDA. I was pretty nervous and I’m not sure if it went too well but the client seemed to be doing very well, which is great. The other, more experienced, telephone support workers are wonderful to listen to; they all have their different styles and they’re all up to different levels in their experience. I’ve heard a couple of pretty serious calls and they have such empathy, respect and compassion for the callers. Am looking forward to tackling more callers when I’m in next.

Last week, as part of a contingent at PANDA, I visited a mother/baby unit at a public hospital. The unit manager, who was amazing,  showed us through the unit and explained the process from wo to go. The average stay at a unit is 3 to 4 weeks and thankfully the waiting list isn’t long. I’m learning more and more that there are many support services out there for women struggling with the transition to motherhood, whether it be the first, second, third or whatever, child they’ve had. Don’t try and go it alone, ask for help – even if it’s calling PANDA for further information. There are so many reasons for PND and making that call is the first step to recovery.

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September 30, 2009 at 8:48 pm (PND)

The Insight program on postnatal depression on 22 September provoked a massage surge in calls to PANDA. Even though there was probably only a 30 second snippet of the CEO of PANDA it was enough to create a huge response. This is great news and it at least raised awareness of PANDA and its services.

Today I learnt more about the database and the stats database and generally just listening in on calls – making a mental note of each telephone support worker’s style. They were all so great and I hope to be just as great when I hop on the phones. Their reflective listening, paraphrasing, etc, seemed to come very naturally to them.

Meanwhile there’s not much studying happening due to school holidays and a general weariness and non brain function in the evenings! Hopefully that will change next week when kids are back at school and kinder.

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Pretending to be strong

September 24, 2009 at 10:02 am (Uncategorized)

On further reflection, one of the other things which struck me watching the Insight program were the women (and men) who hid their pain and didn’t speak out about it. My memories of the first few months after having my first child are a little hazy but I do remember that once I spoke out about how I was feeling in my mother’s group, then it was like giving them permission to talk frankly about how they felt.

Why is it that we hide this suffering from the ones we love or even from society in general? It’s not a weakness to say “hey, I’m not feeling great” or “this is not how I imagined it would be like”. Having a baby can be very isolating – I had no hesitation in telling people that this is how I felt; I just don’t know how I would have coped without doing so. My partner and friends were magnificent and I was very lucky. I didn’t have a mum nearby and my wonderful parents in law were working (as were most of my mates!) but talking about it does make a difference.

Don’t pretend, let it out – you’d be amazed at how many people feel the same way or at how many people can help you.

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Insight

September 23, 2009 at 3:15 pm (PND)

Last night the SBS program Insight featured a show on post natal depression. Boy it was sad – particularly the story of the woman who took her own life in a mother/baby unit here in Victoria. She left behind two little boys and a deeply grieving husband. The thing which struck me were her photos – she looked so full of life yet she was extremely depressed, being unable to function even with help from others around her.

Thankfully I believe this is an extreme case. You can recover from PND, as the other stories in the show highlighted. One woman even went on to have five kids!

There were some slightly funny moments: the fix-it mentality of the men bought a few smiles and nods from both the men and women in the audience (and my partner). The point is that women want to be heard and listened to – not have their husband/partner immediately fly into fix-it mode. I also thought it was very brave of one of the women who admitted to wanting to put her child’s head under the water in the bath. Fortunately she was rational enough to immediately remove her child from the bath and call her mother for help.

You can view the episode here… http://news.sbs.com.au/insight/episode/index/id/122#watchonline

No PANDA this week as it’s school holidays – will be back there next week.

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The next phase

September 16, 2009 at 7:59 pm (Uncategorized)

Today I started the next phase of my telephone support worker training at PANDA. Fairly non-eventful 3 hours! Lots of policies and procedures to read and sign and a quick listen in on one of the experienced counsellors (who made it seem so easy!)

In the meantime I’m continuing, slowly, with my Counselling course. Finding the time will be my biggest challenge. Also challenging is the amount of reflective thinking involved, especially with a tired brain. It will be good when I can tackle the reading and work in the daylight hours but with work, kids, home stuff, excursions, fruit duty at kinder, scouring shops for animal costumes(!), PANDA training, etc, etc, it will take a disciplined mind and schedule. Mondays and Thursdays are definitely my days with Daniel, therefore aside from little bits of pieces I don’t work on those days. It’s a nice little balance and I’m enjoying my last few months with my littlest of men before he ventures off to school.

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Our last week

September 9, 2009 at 8:15 pm (Motherhood, Parenting, PND)

Yesterday was our last group training session. Awww. Today we focused on breastfeeding and we told our breastfeeding (or not) stories. What an amazing array of stories. Ten different tales. Mine was ho hum – able to breastfeed both boys for a year and no particular problems but others didn’t have the same luck. What struck me, though didn’t really surprise me, was the guilt factor when some couldn’t breastfeed or kept persisting because of the guilt. Guilt is such a wasted emotion yet we mothers suffer greatly from it – needlessly most of the time. Such pressure we put on ourselves.

We also briefly touched on our use of medication whilst pregnant and breastfeeding and received some wonderful handouts provided by Rodney White who is the Pharmacist at the Drug Information Line at Monash Medical Centre here in Melbourne. If you’d like more information on the use of medication whilst pregnant or breastfeeding, please call Rodney on 03 9594 2361.

Unfortunately the 3 hours flew and it was time to celebrate the end of our group training with some food and chat. I’m really going to miss these Tuesday sessions but we need to move on to the second stage of our training which is one on one training with the senior telephone support workers for 10 weeks.

Meanwhile, we’ve exchanged email addresses and hope to catch up as a group in the next month or so.

Other than that, I’m continuing on with my Diploma of Professional Counselling. I think it will be a slow process due to work, family, etc but the reading so far has been really interesting. Slowly but surely!

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Meltdowns and role plays

September 2, 2009 at 1:58 pm (Counselling Skills)

Our seventh week at PANDA started on a different note. Our usual practice is to go around the table and to comment on the reading you’d done during the week and also how your week of self-care was. I was first. The reading was interesting and I commented on that but then I went on to say that I’d had a massive meltdown the night before and yelled so much at my kids that I started crying and I nearly lost my voice! All over some of my expensive shampoo being squeezed into the bath to make bubbles…

Once I’d cooled down, the only thing I could put my meltdown to was by the end of Mondays when I’ve had a weekend of the boys, then I have a day with my youngest son, I’m ready for some ‘me’ time – or child free time. I’m also tired because I’m not getting enough sleep AND I didn’t do any walking last week because of the weather and other commitments so all in all I was feeling very frazzled and just wishing the kids would do as I ask them to – or at least not squeeze my expensive shampoo into the bath!

Anyway, this little confession led to each and every participant telling us something crappy that had happened to them during the week – from the not so big deal (mine) to the big deal. Another participant is having a lot of trouble with her 3 year old daughter who is difficult to deal with at the moment. This family went through the trauma of the bushfires; with neighbours losing their houses and some people in the little community where she lives losing their lives. Perhaps, as one person put it, Mars is somewhere or other (sorry, not big on astrology!) but it was wonderful to get our issues of our chests.

We then started doing our role plays straight away. I was the observer to start with and then I had to be the counsellor. I started off okay but then I sort of froze again when I felt I couldn’t get any further. Belinda, the facilitator, told me to forget about the process and just try and draw the story out of the caller by exploring their issues further when given an ‘in’. To just ask questions and not go into solution mode is difficult as it feels as if you’re not getting anywhere but of course the main aim is to make the caller feel as if they’re heard and we do this by asking questions and exploring their lives further – active listening.

Next week is our last week, which is a little sad. We then go onto one on one training for ten weeks. Til next week…

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Counselling Skills

August 26, 2009 at 8:33 am (Counselling Skills, PND)

In  our sixth week at PANDA we covered Counselling Skills and brainstormed what makes for good counselling skills. Here are a few points we came up with: active listening; reflecting content and feelings; paraphrasing; summarising; clarifying (do you mean…?); reframing (husband’s or baby’s point of view); empathy (putting yourself in their shoes); curiosity; sympathy; questioning (closed: getting facts, yes or no questions or open: getting more info); minimal responses (mmm, yes, I see)…

After this brainstorm we did some more role plays. While I know this will get easier, the skills mentioned above sometimes don’t come easily – to paraphrase, reflect, etc, can sometimes sound false but to know that you’re making the caller feel at ease and demonstrating that you are really listening to them is the outcome that you want to achieve. After all, they’ve taken the huge step of calling in the first place.

Another thing which I am finding difficult is how much information can we ask of the caller. Again, while this will come naturally (and the facilitators do it REALLY well!) my feeling at the moment – even though we’re only role playing – is that I don’t want to push too hard or delve too deep. What is going to be very beneficial is the second part of the training where we sit one on one with the most experienced telephone support workers and listen to their side of the conversation.

One final note for this week – I’ve signed up to do the Diploma of Professional Counselling through the Australian Institute of Professional Counsellors. I received my first package yesterday and I’m looking forward to getting stuck into it.

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Attachment and the infant development

August 20, 2009 at 2:35 pm (Motherhood, Parenting, PND)

Week 5 at PANDA had the potential to be quite confronting for us as part of the focus was on the attachment to your baby and how it impacts on the baby’s brain development. John Bowlby’s attachment theory is that infants are primed to seek protection from one or a few close figures so that they can survive. The Circle of Security Theory (Cooper, Hoffman, Marvin & Powell, 2000) is based around the infant needing his/her parent to “support my exploration; to watch over me; delight in me; help me and enjoy with me”. The infant also needs his/her parent to “welcome my coming to you and protect me, comfort me, delight in me and organise my feelings” (safe haven). This is beautiful, however when a mother is suffering from PND or anxiety this attachment can be tentative and of course the outcome for the development of the child can be less than desirable. All the more reason to provide support for women with PND or maternal anxiety.

On a lighter note, we did our first role play. Agghhh. The first part of the role play was easier: I was the caller, however when it came to being the support worker, I’m happy to admit I froze a bit!! We were told that in a few weeks it’ll become second nature – I hope so. In fact, I know so!

Our homework for this week is to be curious. Ask questions of our family and friends and be genuinely curious about their lives. Should be fun!

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Counselling callers to PANDA – week 4

August 11, 2009 at 2:34 pm (Motherhood, Parenting, PND)

At the start of each training session we go around the table and each of us have our say about the week that has just been and ask any questions about the training and reading material provided the week prior. Today I ‘confessed’ to feeling flat for a couple of days last week and could only put it down to the vast amount of info we’re receiving and thinking back to when I had my children and the wish that I’d known some of this information when they were babies, especially after I had my first child. While nearly 8 years has past since I had my first child and I’ve recovered from the shock and anxiety(!), it has brought back a little of how I felt at that time. So, I decided to just let it sit, acknowledge that it was there and know that it was going to pass – and it did. I retreated from the world slightly, as an introvert is prone to! To recharge, I need to spend time on my own or within a safe place – with my wonderful partner and crazy, noisy boys. Not to mention the fourth test of the Ashes was on AND the football, so it wasn’t hard to retreat.

PANDA, the two facilitators running the course and the women who are undertaking it are all very supportive and I’m sure it wasn’t a shock to them that this was how some of us are feeling. Belinda, the CEO, congratulated us on deciding to undertake this training and help other women in the same situation we’ve found ourselves because it does mean revisiting old (and perhaps not so old) feelings when it could be easy to forget what happened and just move on. We’ve moved on, but at least we’re there to help others recover.

Today it was all about the processes in place to provide counselling to callers; the beginning of learning the skills and techniques of supportive counselling. This is a little scary because the past 4 weeks have been about the theory, now we’re getting to the nuts and bolts of what to say when actually talking to these callers! The facilitators enacted a role play: one being the telephone support worker and the other being the caller. The thing that struck me was the calmness of the telephone support worker and the ‘slowness’ of it all – not rushing the caller and just asking her for her story.

We have a tonne of reading which I’m looking forward to tackling. At this moment though, my oldest son is making my youngest one laugh out loud! Until next week…

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