Healing Techniques in Community Development Work

By: Stephen Ainsah-Mensah

Imagine two people, one a male and the other a female. The male’s name is Ross and the female’s name is Lucy. Both of them have given up on life. They lack basic economic support to enable them have a normal lifestyle. On top of this, both have two kids and are unable to support them in the barest fashion. But the persistence of these difficulties has broken down the emotional and mental temperament of both persons; so apart from their financial problems of having to take care of their kids, they also have to deal, on a daily basis, with chronic headaches that arose from their emotional and mental anxieties. In short, a problem that was originally financial has mutated into a chronically emotional and a chronically headache-based problem. But chronic headaches, which are commonly called migraines, while situated in the body, specifically in the head region, do not have to be merely construed as body problems and treated as such with prescribed medications from an accredited doctor. A healing technique without the use of medication and set within an unsophisticated office environment could, in some cases, work better.

What one can comprehend from the dismal experiences of Ross and Lucy is that repeated intakes of medication to soothe the pain from their respective migraines are only temporary measures. In fact, the pain killers could even, in the course of time, disturb their body mechanisms insofar as head organs that generate migraines are inseparably linked to other organs of the body. Both people are not able to cope with their unbearable stresses and see medical doctors in separate clinics, more often than not. But the doctors, as usual, prescribe migraine-related medications for them.

But why cannot the doctors grasp the social-historical genesis of these two patients’ migraines? Are the doctors merely trained to correlate a disease-phenomenon with the problem of an organ? Does it not strike them that an entirely new approach to dealing with the patients would require applying an antidote that is different from the traditional method of prescribing medications? Let us, at this time, think about community health centres.

Among the notable functions of a community health centre may be the rather non-conventional but pragmatic activities of community development workers. The daily duties of these workers are not structured to follow the game of rigorous science. They do not even work like structured social workers but have developed a gift of practicality according to a chain of experiences that connect either directly or in some way with the problems of the clients (or patients) they serve. The community development worker uses passionate interactive communication, unusual tolerance, and, in many cases, the compatible personal experiences of the client and his/hers to reach the goal of curing the client’s problems. And if the said worker does not do such things, then outcomes may be more flawed than successful.

Now, Lucy finally ends up at a community health centre and sees a community development worker, called Rita, for help in addressing her migraine. The interesting thing, coincidental in many respects, is that Rita’s personal background has some striking similarities to Lucy’s. Rita is a single mother and has two kids. She used to work as a part-time cashier in a grocery store. Her meager salary could not support her two kids well, and her constant battle with life together with her kids produced, as in the case of Lucy, an incurable migraine despite her repeated visitations to medical doctors and the subsequent intake of migraine-related medications. Eventually, she joined a woman’s social club that provides emotional, social, and, sometimes, financial support to women of her kind. Her continuous communication, engagement and participation in the activities of the club gave her the redemption, the experience, the exposure and the confidence to apply for a community-development-worker job in a prominent non-profit community agency. She got the job - with a very good salary! Rita, then, could fully support her kids and apply on them the emotional and social support skills that she had acquired from her membership of a woman’s social club. So, here is Rita, working assiduously to save women who may fall astray because life has beating them into a dangerous retreat, a retreat that discourages even minimal interaction with people who may care to listen and help.

The beginning of the healing process, transferred from Rita to Lucy, does not incorporate the standard method of medical doctors that involves prescribing medications for Lucy - at all cost! Rita initiates a passionate dialogue with Lucy by letting Lucy to know that she was once like her but managed to overcome her difficulties, thanks to a woman’s social club she happened to join. The conversational style is informal and reciprocal in scope. The entire process is set in an office environment that is very simple, comparable in many ways to Lucy’s own home except for some desks, chairs, basic office equipment and supplies. Hence, the office environment is not ordered like a doctor’s office where the presence of sophisticated medical instruments and the professional dress code of the doctor and nurse(s) separate the patient from the doctor in terms of who counts as a professional and who constitutes the other compared to the doctor or nurses. Intimidation is ruled out; a sense of self-esteem, of being part of the office is raised in the consciousness of Lucy, and she feels, without being told, that she belongs or is part of the office from which she’s seeking help. Lucy’s ego is uplifted; her cramped psyche attains an instantaneous discharge. When Lucy looks at Rita, Rita appears like a symbol of equality compared to her. Rita’s dress is not like that of a doctor or a nurse. It is very simple, analogous in many respects to that of Lucy’s, so a sense of professional intimidation is simply non-existent.

And this idea of demonstrating empathy and showing some kind of sameness with a client and citing instances of one’s own past experiences that match those of a client creates the kind of equitable relationship that encourages the client to believe that there is someone whose ability to grasp a client’s difficulties is not merely a matter of understanding the difficulties but of feeling them, living them, and absorbing them in order to address them. This is what precisely Rita does for Lucy.

The conclusion that can be drawn here is that the solver of a human problem, of the sort that afflicts Lucy, is best positioned to solve the problem if he/she has felt, lived and absorbed the problems before - in whichever form. Suppose such experiences have not been lived through by the solver, it may be necessary to invent them as a crucial step in the healing course of action. The secret of the palliative for Lucy’s migraine is, at this point, threefold: Rita’s past experiences that appear similar to Lucy’s help in the healing process, the rather “friendly” office environment of Rita encourages Lucy to be forthcoming in stating the details of her problems as the basis for Rita to recommend the desired solutions, and, above all, Rita’s dressing style appeals to the conscience and dispositions of Lucy.

But let it be noted that even before Lucy’s problems had been addressed, explosive forms of tension seated in her head region had dispelled and given room for the soothing effect of relaxed nerves, organs; and this clearly shows that Lucy has acquired a new personality that is gracious for moving her into a new mode of life destined to relieve her of her financial, emotional and social anxieties. There is to be expected the natural subsequent step of Rita, which is an advice that Lucy ought to join a social or a community-based club or organization. Since the healing process has been conversational in manner, very friendly, very shared, and freed from the idea that Rita was the professional to be listened to at all cost, Lucy will likely do as she is told.