Yesterday, I spent seven hours, non-stop, in my very first large scale Teams meeting. Throughout the totality that was the Great Pandemic, I avoided attending any Zoom or Teams meetings through a lovely combination of avoidance and illness. Now, I love that we have the technology to meet and work with people digitally, but to be completely honest, it isn't my favorite medium.
This isn't going to be a word vomit post about how I don't like things, I mean why would anyone want to read about that, plus, the world is awash in an oil tanker amount of negativity as it is. Nope, today is going to be about something I noticed in my all day, counselor/social worker Intensive yesterday.
I arrived early, as I tend to do, but I am especially prompt when there are variables such as non-Kat utilized tech, internet connections, and other people involved. My instructor is a PhD, yet she is the most approachable, humble person. We spent about ten minutes chatting before others arrived, and I could tell she was bit nervous about the session too, because it was her first time conducting an intensive with Teams.
Her vulnerability made me feel right at home. I find that allowing a bit of vulnerability show with an attitude of confidence makes most things more pleasantly bearable.
As we all delved into the session, things progressed not at all smoothly, but incredibly awesomely. Any time we ran into any sort of kerfuffle, we all worked together to keep the ship afloat and moving. And considering how vastly different all of us were, from all kinds of different backgrounds, of a huge variance of age, and personal philosophies, we all came together and learned with and from each other.
It was pretty splendid.
It was during an anonymous survey activity however, that I was faced with my most impactful insight.
The activity was called Stand up for your neighbor which was a pretty interesting name, I thought, for an anonymous assessment survey about the day's attendants.
As we all clicked through the questions, I found myself intrigued by the content. We all finished up quickly and met back together to go over the results with our instructor.
Nationally, 1 out of 6 people are sexually assaulted. I am sure that statistic is not the most accurate as a lot of people don't report such things. Over 60% of my 22 class members had been.
85% percent of us had been verbally or emotionally abused.
The vast majority of them were working full time, not at all financially stable, and dealing with all manner of heart-breaking statistical situations.
Yet, here we all were, in a class together, learning the tools we need to help address the hurts in the world. Our world has always been broken, at least when it comes to human interaction, and it did my heart good to be in a group of people who instead of letting the pain they suffered define them, instead were training to come along side others who are suffering and guide them.
One of the positives in our technological inter-connectedness is that it is easier than ever to connect, to share, to find your tribe or resources needed to navigate this often messy, painful world. The problem that arises is that there is an overwhelming amount of options, and broken, hurting people often don't have the support or mindset they need to get going.
When I was a librarian, I helped people navigate our resources to find the content they needed. As a mental health clinician I plan on doing a similar thing, only tailoring it to the individual and standing alongside them as they navigate the path.
It did my burdened by the constant messages of media-generated negativity heart some good to be in a group of wounded souls who desire to do much the same, utilizing their own unique strengths and makeup.
Even if sometimes people were talking with their microphones muted.😉
