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The accompanied is a full human being. With his own history, his own feelings, his tastes, his experiences, his abilities, his disabilities. He sometimes he looks like us. We meet there, we are empathic. Sometimes we have nothing in common.
WORK – It happens that the user “coward” and we don’t understand why. (The term “ Username “ identifies a person who uses a particular service related to the sector medico-social. as a service assistant SocialThis is the name of the people I receive as part of my functions.)
Everything had started so well. The plan was precise, neat, worked with onions. According to the requests of the person. Because of course, we always start from the requests of our users.
But at some point, the person accompanied “disappears”. She no longer responds to requests, slips like an eel, runs away. What ingratitude! However, I had put so much time and energy into this project… So much of me… The problem is there! My reality is not that of my user.
The fraud
Sometimes we put so much hope in success of a project to which the user, wanting to please us, initially adheres. But it won’t last. And telling us would be too complicated. So cheat! She says it without words. Because she felt that we were not ready to listen. Or what we don’t want. Because sometimes, despite all our good will, we are convinced that we have understood what was good for the other. We have found the right path to follow and we are not giving up.
Treating the other as you would like to be treated is sometimes a problem. We are not our users.
The accompanied is a full human being. With his own history, his own feelings, his tastes, his experiences, his abilities, his disabilities. He sometimes he looks like us. We meet there, we are empathic. Sometimes we have nothing in common.
Attaching our own representations to a situation cannot be the solution. The way I thought was right is right for who? For the accompanied person? For me ? For my ego?
Of course, we want the people we support to be happy, for their projects to be successful. But at what price? Our ?
unravel the request
Because sometimes you have to know how to unravel what is hidden behind the initial request. Where does it come from? From the person himself? Or his family, the company, the social worker?
It happens that users make the demands they believe are necessary (to find a job, for example) to achieve the idea they have of normality. It also happens that these requests do not make sense a priori. Or that the user systematically defeats them. And right now, not wanting it can be a challenge! This confronts us with our impotence.
Social accompaniment is also making desire arise in the other, not building it for him. We accompany, we do not do instead. So yeah, sometimes it just doesn’t go fast enough. The user could do much better, much more. But under what standards? What are our expectations? How much pressure do we put on, often without even realizing it?
Sometimes we want too much… Too good, too fast, too far. And sometimes, loving in the other’s place is loving in spite of him. Abuse can interfere with the escort-escort relationship out of the blue! Hell is paved with good intentions… Social support too!
the difficult balance
The difficulty is in finding the middle ground between letting the person lose himself in his problems when he is not moving, or not enough, and leading him despite himself towards the goal that we have decided for him.
It is important to note that the user is sometimes simply not prepared. That his temporality is not ours. And that this is totally acceptable if we can step aside. You have to find the right tempo. Don’t stay completely out of the project by exclusively following the user’s steps, but don’t go too fast at the risk of losing the rhythm either. We do not do assistantships. We are neither in front nor behind the person we are accompanying. We are at her side, we observe the path with her, pointing out her dangers, advising her on the different possibilities available to her. The objective is that it can do without us, not appropriate it to model it in the image of the ideal user, one that is good for the ego of the competent professional that we are.
The good user and the good social worker
Because we also build ourselves through our support. Our professional practice is constantly evolving as well as our experiences in the field, meetings, successful projects and those that derail. Our path is marked by these questions often introduced by this or that support, these failures, these successes. And somewhere the myth of the good user is correlated with that of the good social worker.
We must, it seems to me, be open to the idea that this accompaniment-accompanied relationship nourishes us, that it does not only go in the direction of helping-helped.
Some users, some encountered situations follow us and mark us long after their passage. And this even when the set goal is not reached. Indeed, perhaps the most important thing is not so much the result as the path traveled with the person being accompanied within the framework of their social accompaniment, because that is how the relationship is built, fine-tuned and nurtured.
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