Just Roll With It

Just Roll With It

What do you do when a key player in your recovery needs to move on and leave your team?  That is the question I face today.

In my years working as a treatment team member for the clients I served this was a fairly common occurrence.  People in the field of community mental health services do not typically stay in one position for very long, many get promoted or move on when they finish their educations.  Although it was frequent for us, we always made sure to mange the client’s loss as best we could.  Try to prepare them to accept this change and give them the tools they need to adapt.  Of course not every transition was smooth because this is real life and given all the variables not every theory will work in practice, but we did the best we could.

Today I learned that one of the most significant players on my treatment team has left.  That is correct left, as in past tense.  Whoa, curveball.

I had used my knowledge of treatment teams to establish the perfect team of players.  I took my time and put in a lot of thought when putting my team together and carefully chose service locations and affiliations to customize my team.  When given the option I would choose the best player on each servicing team.  This particular member was handpicked and loosing him will have a significant impact on my team.

 This brings us back to the question of what to do about it.  My first reaction was fear of failure, on my part.  That without this perfect team I assembled I would not be capable of succeeding with my recovery.  After the panic subsided, I realized this was just life and all those unforeseen variables that go along with it.  I have no control over this, which brought me to another of my favorite tools, the Serenity Prayer.

Recalling this made me bust out into a laugh as I had a flash of the time I used this technique just prior to an inspection at the site of my very first managerial position in a group home, as they called them then.  I was so green!  I was practically running up and down the halls rechecking everything just before they were scheduled to arrive.  I was reciting the Serenity Prayer in my head as I checked bedrooms, or so I thought.  You would not believe some of the things you can find in a resident’s bedroom just prior to an inspection, especially if they do not like you or are currently annoyed with you.  I fly up the stairs to check the second floor bedrooms, still reciting the Serenity Prayer.  I hustle down the hall and as I turned to come back I saw one of the residents looking at me with a very strange expression.  “Are you okay?  You have been running up and down the halls chanting, do you have a PRN?”

For those of you who do not know, PRN stands for “as needed” in the medication world.  Many residents had PRN medication for an increase in symptoms, to help manage them beyond their regular dosages. 

That put things in perspective then, and again just now.

~ Just roll with it.