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KIND WORDS
It Will Be All Right"Easing the Pain with Laughter"
The author wishes to remain anonymous
Edited by Shmuel Greenbaum and other Volunteers
Printed with Permission of
http://www.traditionofkindness.org/The author wishes to remain anonymous
Edited by Shmuel Greenbaum and other Volunteers
Printed with Permission of
This month I enrolled in a course in medical clowning. We are a group of 40 people of all different ages and backgrounds. It's an amazing opportunity to meet all kinds of people that ordinarily I would not get a chance to know.
The most inspiring thing about being in this group is that most of the people have had much pain and difficult trials in their lives, and have come to this course not only to develop the ability to face adversity with optimism and humor, but to help others find this ability within themselves as well. I feel privileged to be with these people.
We do a lot of exercises to help us become aware of our own emotions, the emotions of others, and the interaction between the two. The exercises are very silly and we spend a lot of time laughing!
What I have noticed is that all the laughter and silliness creates a lot of kindness. For instance, someone offered to bring food for the break. Now every week, several people bring food: salads, casseroles, homemade breads and cakes. People with cars offer rides to people who don't have cars.
The ability to clown stems from the meeting between happiness and sadness, so when someone suddenly encounters this meeting place, he or she is surrounded with love, support and hugs from others in the group. When you receive this, you can give it to others.
We often try to escape from our deepest emotions of sadness, grief, disappointment and fear. When we can identify these feelings and acknowledge them in ourselves or others, we can turn them into something positive and creative.
What we are learning in medical clowning is first of all to get in touch with our own emotions and learn how they are expressed through our body language and facial expressions. When we learn this about ourselves, we can "meet" the patient where he is emotionally, and from there bring him to a happier feeling through clowning. In other words, you can't just pop into a room of sick people in the hospital, in a funny get-up and expect to cheer them all up and get them to laugh. You have to know how to come into the room, how to introduce yourself, and most of all know how to connect with them where they are emotionally. There's your meeting place.
Many of the exercises are focused on copying the expression of someone else in the group, and then creating something of ourselves from that. This trains us to "listen," be sensitive, and honor where the other person is coming from in ways that are not necessarily verbal. We're currently on session 5, and there are 15 more to go. Somewhere in the midst of this process, each of us will discover his or her own individual clown that exists inside each of us -- its character, its style, and the way that it expresses itself.
People who finish the course of 20 sessions go out to volunteer in hospital wards, senior citizen homes, and any other place where happiness can make a difference through helping people feel better about their lives. Dr. Patch Adams was the one who started this movement by opening a hospital in Virginia called "Gezundheit!" and spreading medical clowning throughout the world. You can see his website to learn more about it!
See these links for further information:
http://www.patchadams.org/home.htm
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"It Will Be All Right"
From Kindness: Making a Difference in People's Lives: Formulas, stories, and insights
By Zelig Pliskin
Printed with Permission of Shaar Press
From Kindness: Making a Difference in People's Lives: Formulas, stories, and insights
By Zelig Pliskin
Printed with Permission of Shaar Press
When someone is concerned or worried about the future, some people tend to give a general reassurance, "It will be all right." If the individual you say this to becomes calmer, what you have said was beneficial. But often global statements of, "Don’t worry," or, "It will be o.k." won’t relieve someone’s concerns, nervousness, or anxiety. When a person with much experience says, "It will be all right," the recipient of this statement knows that there is a valid reason for assuming that things will be well. When, however, this is taken as a dismissal of their concerns without facts or experience to back it up, it usually isn’t very helpful.
Address the specific issues that are bothering the person who is worried. Show him how things are likely to work out. Share your own experiences with him and the experiences of others in similar situations that worked out well. Do research and find the relevant reassuring data. Tell him your plan of action and how this can solve the problem. Explain how even if things don’t work out exactly as he would wish, he still will be able to cope with the outcome.
When speaking to a worrier, ask, "What exactly are you worried about?" When you first heard about someone’s worry, you might have assumed the worry was about one issue, but that wasn’t the worrier’s real concern. Regardless of how much reassurance you gave on that issue, it wouldn’t work. This person needs reassurance on another issue. By finding out what exactly is bothering this person, you will be able to really help him and not just say something that sounds good but won’t do anything for him.
One of my students told me this story:
I used to be a major worrier. I would try to lessen the distress of my worrying by telling other people how worried I was. I often heard such generalities such as, "There’s nothing to worry about." "Trust that all will be good." "Think good and it will be good." For many people this worked wonders. But not for me. I had to go underground with my worrying.
It was like a miracle that I met someone who told me that he too had been an obsessive worrier. He worried about anything that might possibly go wrong. Now he looked like anything but a worrier. As a matter of fact he was one of the most serene people I had ever met. When he described how he used to worry, it made me feel so much better. I was only an amateur compared to his description of himself as a professional worrier. He told me the thought patterns that had helped him.
"I think about the worst case scenario," he told me, "and I accept it. I think about potential solutions. I pray. I analyze the actual probabilities of what I worry about actually occurring. I increased my ability to focus on the present, which is much easier for me to handle than the future, which is always unknown. I began to visualize happy endings to the things I worried about. Since worry is only in my imagination, I create much more enjoyable pictures in my mind. I worked on gaining greater mastery over my emotional states. I learned to reframe the potentially negative into more positive evaluations. I sought to make the best out of problematic situations."
He spoke to me for several hours. The point that helped me the most was his sharing with me how he was an ex-worrier. I knew that what he told me was valid. I had living proof that the ideas he used actually worked. Since they worked for him, they would work for me. I now try to help every worrier I meet. Utilizing my own worrying as a resource to help others overcome their worrying has given me a positive reframe for all of the suffering I endured from worrying.
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