Teaching "Coping Skills" to Vocational Rehabilitation Clients with Disabilities

As part of my work, I hold a contract with the state vocational rehabilitation agency to tutor agency clients in "coping skills." Through this contract I can introduce persons with a variety of disabiltiies to Eden Energy Medicine and Energy Psychology tools, knowing that these skills can be of tremendous benefit to them, and that this population would not be likely to come across these tools otherwise.

Although I’ve held a contract with the agency since 1999, that alone does not guarantee me any work. I have to market myself to the local offices in my area, and, as is true of the public sector in general, there have been severe funding cutbacks since 2008. In marketing these services I use very mundane and pragmatic language. Rather than presenting the details of how I go about effecting change, I address the kinds of situations that present themselves (stress, a trauma history, poor interpersonal relationships, attention and focusing issues) and describe potential benefits. I emphasize that this approach is not for everyone, but that clients will self-select. I furnish staff with a brochure for their waiting room.

I’ve noticed an increased openness to these tools on the part of both vocational rehabilitation counselors and the population they serve. And I can anticipate that the handful of people who reach me this way are likely to be resourceful and persistent. They have to find the brochure in the agency office, and follow through to request the service from their counselor. Sometimes I think the brochures are actually the agents who find appropriate prospective clients, who often understand more about the nature of the service I offer than do their counselors!

One reason I get so much pleasure from working with this group is that they remind me of my own tangled energy and stress when, in my thirties, I was a single parent with a young child and had been recently diagnosed with an adult-onset disability. Ten years later, at 40, I was terminated from my employment of seventeen years because, according to my employer, it “would be easier for all concerned” if I collected disability benefits." Because many of this consulting company's contracts were with the federal government their action was illegal even then. However, the three attorneys I consulted all concurred: I could only sue for my old job back. Since they wanted me out, I knew that insisting they let me stay would not ultimately be in my best interest. Looking back, now that the immediate stresses of that era are behind me, I feel grateful that, by “terminating” me, this company gave me permission to find the path to work much closer to my heart, more in line with my soul’s purpose.

At the time, so many years ago, one lesson learned was that disability is a social, political, and economic concept, and not a medical one. I had been successfully working part time, but my company, which would have considered itself generous and enlighened at the time, thought accomodating my part time work schedule created a difficult burden for their managers.

Each new client reminds me in some special way of my earlier self. One in particular comes to mind as I write this. People at the office where she received services found her difficult. Yet she and I hit it off immediately. But I soon heard in her narrative hints at what was making things difficult for her. Her life experience had taught her that she had to fight for everything. She became a very successful self-advocate, but to do so she had cast everyone in her orbit as a potential adversary. To prevail, she needed to win every encounter. From that stance it is difficult if not impossible to have empathy for those around you.

How well I could remember feeling pushed to interact with others in a similar way. I had no concept that the power lay within me to set the tone for such interactions.

A bumper sticker in my work space says: “Begin Within.” I admit it is not original; I saw it on the back of a pick up truck and had a few of my own made up. This woman, an artist with many talents, understood the concept of subtle energy immediately. When she came with a tale of how a vendor, a landlord, a gallery owner, or her sister were persecuting her, she was easily able to see the pattern that was repeating. She could also grasp that all of these actors might simply be mirroring her adversarial stance back to her. She clicked with a phrase I think I first heard quoted by Joe Vitale: “Have you ever noticed that whenever something happens to you, you are there?”

One day after we’d been working together several months, the first thing she said when she came to see me was: “When my mother and sister say mean things to me or my daughter is hard to manage, I figure they’re letting me know I need to do more inside work.” How thrilled I was to hear those words!

This client has gone on to receive a full scholarship to the Museum School, affiliated with the Boston Museum of Art. Her former counselors (she’d gone through several) remarked recently at how much easier she was to get along with. I refrained from suggesting that she may well have been mirroring their own foibles.

As rapport developed between me and my artist client, I strongly felt the gift of being able to share what I’d learned about life with someone thirty years younger and receptive. This was but one of the many reflections derived from my own life combined with the study of applications from Eden Energy Medicine that has guided me in offering new skills to those who can benefit from applying them. The corollary is discovering, and being able to accept,  that not everyone is able or interested in learning these skills.

Judith Poole, EEMCP