Several months ago I had a sudden shift in employment. My new job was seemingly simple. I was to provide care and protection for mentally disabled patients in their own homes. Easy enough I thought. I would cook a few meals, clean some t-shirts, and then take them grocery shopping. Little did I know how little I knew. It is one thing to study mental disabilities; however, it is a much different thing to deal with its frustrations daily. Many things that are small to you and I are major issues for others.

Several of my clients had varying levels of self-cognizant abilities. All knew their own names and for the most part were very aware they different from the average individual. Some were willing to be participants in their own care. For them it gave a sense of control to be able to say what they would like or need. It was sad when they had been allowed by sympathetic adults to have so much control that they had lost control. For me, the hard part was when I had to train them to know when to have a voice, and when they just had to go along with the request.

I discovered like any job you can become jaded when you become the face of their frustration. One of my autistic patients has a lot of frustration pent up. Seemingly there are only two thoughts that can occupy his mind at any one time. As these thoughts swirl they must take control. There is an occasional time when there is a window into the whirlwind of his mind. This window occasionally opens long enough for you to interject another thought. For him changes and tasks seemingly interrupt the train of thought and it scares him. He will begin to lash out verbally. It is not an attempt to be mean, simply an attempt to stop the confusion long enough so he can get his train back on track.

For many seemingly the world speaks another language and is traveling in another dimension. Yet it asks them to stop resisting and to start to assimilate. The disabled is simply left to feel frustrated and out of control saying, “I would join you if I could”. In the end they are left with the options of taking control, lashing out, being left behind, or being what they can be. These choices can some-times turn into negative behaviors and attitudes. Like all of us, the choices we make have consequences, but unlike us the disabled may not be able to weigh those consequences adequately.

That is where people like myself come in. We try to empower those choice making times by training and encouragement. We are not there to run their lives but to gradually equip them to be able to weigh out to a certain measure the course of their own lives. The extent of their disability may limit how far their choices can carry them. However, we can help make it as long and as profitable a journey as possible. I have had many conversations restating the same thought over and over in different ways until it fits in to their thought patterns. It is not so much as they are being dense, but as in I haven’t found the right shape for the hole in their knowledge. It could be said working with the mentally disabled is much like being a puzzle master. You just have to keep trying pieces until you find one that fits.

In the end I am learning that not everybody is all that they appear to be, but we all are more than we appear to be. I also learned to look beyond the response to see its underlying why. I have always been able to let things role off my back. I now am learning to use them, as learning opportunities.
Reference:

Constitutional Convention. (1787). U.S. Constitution. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: