Wednesday 1 November 2017

Can Words Really Be a Form of Violence?

In arguments over “free speech” being constrained or restricted on campuses and elsewhere, these days, the claim by opponents of certain speakers is that their speeches promote hate or their words are a form of violence against others (usually people who are different from the mainstream, white, male, “holders of privilege”). A word commonly used to refer to words that insult, offend, “put down”, or otherwise leave some form of negative perception by the receiver, is “microaggression”.


I worked on “Information Management” policies for a human service organization back in the early 2000’s in which we began to address the way in which knowledge and information could be used in a detrimental way to harm others, including the reputation of the organization itself. As a charitable organization, we were charged with supporting and assisting homeless men, women, families and youth; people with developmental and other disabilities, including mental illness; seniors attempting to remain in their housing for as long as possible; people with physical disabilities trying to obtain and maintain housing in a small-town/rural community; and providing affordable housing to families, seniors and people with developmental disabilities. We had other charitable purposes as well, but the common concern was in ensuring that both those being served by the organization, and the organization itself, could trust that information available to other “townsfolk”, members of service clubs, other charities, and even private citizens standing in the role of benefactors, who also helped with support and assistance, would be guided by certain ethical principles to safeguard the reputations of “receivers” of service, and also “providers” of service. This far exceeded the principle most people understand as “confidentiality”.

We set about doing this by forming a task group representing all levels of the organization and included, of course, service recipients as well as providers. (It is not unusual, for example, in small-town/rural environments, that people providing services to others may also be recipients of other services, sometimes from the same organization. Thus, staff members supporting people with developmental disabilities might live in affordable housing supplied by the same organization).

The task group created a great policy statement with a detailed description of terms, and principles upon which it might be possible to break down whether a breach of the policy was likely intentional or merely accidental, and set out terms and conditions by which an alleged “offender” of the policy could be allowed due process, guided in the positive use of information, and if necessary due to extreme culpability or repeated offending, disciplined in order to ensure the policy was enforceable as well as having the desired effect of fostering highly ethical uses of information and knowledge in the service of others.

Knowledge and information can be passed along verbally as well as in some documentary form, i.e. written form, on social media, via video clip or other media such as podcast. Of course, the importance of transmitting knowledge cannot be underestimated. As the saying goes, “Knowledge is power”. As an educator and counselor, I have made the transmission of knowledge my life’s work. I have also learned, sometimes the hard way, that what you put out there may not always be received as intended. I have also learned that people utilize information, and its presentation, for a variety of nefarious purposes as well as for good. Information is used to manipulate in ways both good and evil. So, how do we judge information and its presentation to be one or the other? Without censoring, which most people seem to acknowledge, is in itself a “dangerous” practice.

Here is a list of ways in which information can be used for nefarious purposes:

  1. To deceive
  2. To mislead
  3. To incite violence, hatred, and/or crimes against others
  4. To denigrate
  5. To disrespect
  6. To perpetrate various forms of psychological and emotional abuse


The policy words we arrived at, about fifteen years ago, were: it is a “grievous infraction of proper and ethical conduct of staff or volunteers when information is obtained in a manner that is unethical or improper, or, however obtained, used against the interests of the corporation, staff or individuals who are served by the corporation”.

At about the same time, the organization was contracted to do a Group Home Study by the Town of Mississippi Mills, an amalgamated municipality composed of a small town (Almonte), a number of even smaller villages (Appleton, Pakenham, Clayton) and farmland governed previously as Ramsay Township. All told the municipality consisted of about 11,000 people, about 1/6 of the population of the County of Lanark at that time. This study suggested a great deal of information mismanagement had occurred surrounding the establishment of a group home for adolescent women in one of Almonte’s neighbourhoods. Much of the misleading and exaggerated information reported by neighbours of the group home was observed to be fueled primarily by emotional reactions and judgments to the myths, stereotypes and fallacies surrounding the establishment of group homes. Factual data was ignored, and people filtered what information there was available according to whether they wanted, or did not want, a group home in their neighbourhood.


Raised in a culture where I was repeatedly told that “sticks and stones can break my bones but names can never hurt me” (which, by the way, after working with children and adults, many with disabilities, who have been abused, is demonstrably false), I have studied the ways in which hurt people can hurt people, but also “typical” people can hurt others both consciously and unconsciously.


Thus, I write this blog about “information management” and how to evaluate whether a person is harming others by their use or misuse of words (information).

Thinking about it again, the effect of words and whether or not they are improper, depends on whether they violate the ethical principles as follows:
  1. Do No Harm
  2. Do Good for others
  3. Strive to continuously improve one’s practice


These principles are hierarchical and no lower level principle can be argued to excuse transgressing against a higher principle. Thus, one cannot fail to do good for others by claiming that one is “learning” (in the act of striving to continuously improve – “lead, follow or get out of the way”), and one cannot do harm to others by claiming to be attempting to “do good”. Thus the primary principle is “Do No Harm”; the secondary principle is “Do Good”; and the tertiary principle is “Continuously Improve”.

Our work group stated the main value that things like “Gossip, rumour, innuendo, unfounded criticism or complaining, or excessively or inappropriately negative discussion of corporation, personnel, or client information is considered unprofessional and may result in serious consequences for those who breach the ethics code, these guidelines, or the oath of confidentiality”.

We tried to take pains to “set out examples of distinctions between unintentional, accidental, or well-meaning errors of information management from deliberate, non-accidental, malicious, or otherwise unprofessional breaches of this information management guideline”.

So, we considered “intent”, recognizing that this might be difficult to objectively discern, or judge; we considered there to be errors of “omission” as well as errors of “commission” – one could passively fail to do the right thing, and by so doing, allow wrong to be done, as well as actively acting wrongly; and we recognized the importance of both context and outcome (some measure of “harm”, mostly) in deciding about the seriousness of an infraction.

Thus, we attempted to define “Major Infractions” and “Minor Infractions” and we attempted to define that a NUMBER of “Minor Infractions” might constitute some form of equivalent to one “Major Infraction”.

A major infraction was considered to be when a person, subject to the policy statement (staff and volunteers who had official standing with the organization and had signed the “Information Management” agreement) had “received without taking appropriate action (error of omission), conveyed or acted upon (error of commission) information that:

1.  Is confidential to client privilege, the disclosure of which has been judged [by a tribunal comprised of a member of staff/volunteers, a manager, and a member of the board of directors] a breach of the oath of confidentiality and without extenuating circumstances (an outright Major Infraction); or
2.  If not confidential to client privilege, the information is judged by the tribunal to be:
a.  False, incomplete, misleading, or otherwise in error; AND which
b.  Has, or in the judgement of the tribunal, is highly likely to have, or ought to have been understood by the employee to have, a negative impact on individuals or the Corporation; AND
c.  Where the tribunal discerns the employee to have shown motive or intent to transmit the information (error of commission) or to have shown disregard for the requirement of checking information for accuracy before acting on it (error of omission).
d.  Where repeated infractions of a more minor nature have occurred over time, and there have been all reasonable efforts made to inform, educate about the policy and correct a person’s information mismanagement.

Minor infractions were considered to be similar to the second condition described above, but where all four conditions have not been met, i.e. there might be absent or unclear malicious or malevolent intent; a reasonable misjudgment of accuracy of information; a reasonable failure to comprehend how any harm may result; a reasonable belief that the information might be correct; a first offence or an offence by a new employee who might not yet be properly oriented to the policy, etc.  

We also defined what kinds of “information management” offences there might be covered by this policy:

“Information” Subject to this Information Management Policy is Information that is:
  •      false or misleading, negligently incomplete or demonstrably factually incorrect.
  •      conveyed with more confidence than it deserves based on readily available facts and other information.
  •      conveyed to people who have no discernable professional interest in the information.
  •      obtained, conveyed or held to be accurate or judged to be correct, without a reasonable attempt to verify its accuracy or correctness before a judgement has been made upon it or actions taken based on it.
  •      confidential, sensitive or potentially harmful to an individual or corporate interest if disclosed to others.
  •      personal, and obtained or conveyed without consent of the parties directly implicated.
  •      obtained in a manner that is unethical, deceitful, or improper.
  •      discussed in public where there is no professional or reasonable rationale for doing so.
  •      utilized with an apparent goal to advance a personal interest contrary to, or with the apparent potential to harm, the interest of the corporation or a person being served.
  •      acted upon, when there is a discernible reason to believe the information is not accurate or reliable.
  •      seen, or should reasonably be seen to bring harm to the public image of the corporation, directly or indirectly, without reasonable cause.
  •      seen to breach a prior agreement to treat the information as sensitive or confidential.
  •      seen to show a callous lack of respect to clients or personnel.
  •      observed, received or conveyed as an infraction of the policy as a “repeat offence” despite counseling or instruction on the information management policies of the Corporation. 

The task group, by way of trying to clarify further, also attempted to provide positive guidance and direction to the proper use of information in the service of others, protection of vulnerable clients, the corporation’s charitable good name and purposes, and so on:

When and How Information Should be Conveyed to Others

If in doubt about whether it is appropriate to convey any information about personnel, corporation or client issues, a staff person or volunteer should be able to answer the following questions in the affirmative:
  •           Does the person I am speaking to need to have this information in the conduct of their responsibilities for the corporation, or are they entitled to the information by their position or responsibilities within the corporation?
  •           Am I professionally required to give this information to this person? Is this the proper time and place to be conveying this information?
  •          Can the information be overheard by someone who does not have a legitimate need to know or who does not have an abiding interest in the information for the good of the person or the corporation?
  •          Do I have any or all required permission(s) or authority to speak about this, to this person?
  •          By giving this information, am I helping the corporation or the person involved without doing harm to them, or anyone else, including the corporation?
  •          By giving this information in this way, am I acting according to the law and the organization’s Ethics Code?
  •          Before conveying this information to another, have I taken all appropriate steps to ensure its accuracy?
  •          If I am unable to ascertain the information’s accuracy, am I properly conveying its level of accuracy?
  •          Do I need to clarify and correct the information that I have, or that I am hearing, before acting on it?
  •          What is the good purpose of giving or receiving this information?
  •          Should I report this information to someone else?


The policy closes with the statement: “Without restricting the generality of the foregoing, a person should manage information pertaining to personnel, clients or the business of the organization with the same degree of care and attention that one would use in assisting a vulnerable and dependent client”.


Recommendations and feedback very welcome!

Thursday 13 July 2017

Resilience Well Depletion - Part 3

In Part 1, I described the "Resilience Well" and how it gets depleted. In Part 2, I explained that the "Resilience Well" is refillable, and how to fill it.

In this, Part 3, I want to talk about how the well is depleted over time and how the well can be refilled over time, while engaged in pretty typical day to day activities.

The well has been designed into us by evolution, so it is calibrated to allow us to survive lengthy periods of adversity. Think flood, famine, drought for example. These events last months and even in extreme examples, years. So, it can take quite a long time to drain the "Resilience Well" to traumatic levels. This is assuming a person engages in a "typical" day to day series of activities, in which over a prolonged period, there is more resilience being "drained" from the well than there is flowing back into the well.

Typically, any lengthy period of time in which there is more "drain" than "gain" is usually followed by a similarly lengthy period of time in which there is more "gain" than "drain", and the well fills back up again.

In today's stressful, somewhat inactive, high-intensity information processing and problem-solving environments, there are many fewer periods of rest and relaxation caused by being physically tired and needing to rest, by lengthy periods with "nothing going on", or long journeys to get to and from places needed for survival, where the mind can rest and for lengthy periods of time, boredom reigns instead of stress and pressure. We have evolved ways of being creative, artistic, athletic and inventive during those times. In a sense, these activities seem to "fill our resilience well" and keep us from being too preoccupied with worry or care. Now, however, such natural "rest periods", for some people in particular, are few and far between.

We now find it necessary to "discipline" ourselves to carve out periods in our day, week or month for "recreation", rest and relaxation, or "filling the resilience well". There are many people engaged in service work, for example, who work far too long for far too many hours, without rest and relaxation. Policemen, nurses, emergency health personnel, teachers, social service workers, especially those who work on the "front lines", are all occupations which in my experience produce people whose "well is depleted". They appear in my practice having "hit the wall" - which I consider the moment people come to the realization, finally, that there is "nothing left in the tank (resilience well)". Usually this comes upon them suddenly and without warning.

Some may call this "burnout" or "brownout", or a "nervous breakdown", or "agitated depression", or some other "mental illness" and there would indeed appear to be similarities between what I have read about these conditions and what I am calling "resilience well depletion". But I am of the opinion that "resilience well depletion" is not a mental illness as much as it is an opportunity to realize lifestyle patterns of work without rest and relaxation and filling the resilience well, for too long a period of time (usually measured in years in my clinical experience), resulting in an "empty tank" ("resilience well").

I usually begin with an explanation of the phenomenon to clients in this state. This is followed by a "prescription" to carve out time in their days, weeks, and months for "joyful activity", rest and relaxation, time for themselves without interruption or distraction, especially from people who make demands upon them for problem-solving, executive functions like planning, decision-making, or multi-tasking.

The goal will be to ensure that in each three month span of time, there has been a rough "balancing" of the expenditure and revenue of resilience - in favour of revenue if the well needs to be filled after a lengthy period of adversity when it has been emptied too far.

Monday 27 March 2017

Resilience Well Depletion - Part 2

In my last blog post, I described the "resilience well" and how we may find ourselves "on empty". I said that the well is refillable.

The bad news is, that once it gets near empty, it takes a long time to refill - it is a slow process at the best of times. The best thing is to never let it get even close to empty in the first place. But making sure it stays mostly filled, and keeping the revenue and expenditure of resilience relatively balanced and stable, is a commitment to make to yourself and keep.

How Does the Resilience Well get Filled?

The essence of what fills your resilience well is: "Joyful Activity". Activities which bring you personal joy, contentment, peace, and happiness. For everyone, the list of what activities do this for you will likely be different. For me, it has been some of the following things:
1. sitting and thinking, with no interruptions or distractions
2. having "nothing to do"
3. paddling in my kayak with or without company
4. riding on a bicycle going nowhere in a hurry
5. reading - especially fiction, adventure stories
6. traveling through the Internet looking at good news stories, humourous memes and videos
7. cross-country skiing, making my own trail, on a quiet day in the woods, even at night
8. camping
9. watching (and sometimes re-watching) action movies and especially series and epics

I think you can see where I take my resilience back. Your list will be different. Start now, "refilling your resilience well". Put a piece of paper up on your fridge - every time you think of something you have once enjoyed, now enjoy, or might enjoy in future, put it on your list. This list is both a prompt and a reminder to take time out of your "responsible" day and take some "me time".


Monday 20 March 2017

Resilience Well Depletion - Part 1

"Resilience Well Depletion"

In this, and my next several blogs, I will be explaining my understanding of, and treatment for, "resilience well depletion".

I see this phenomenon in mothers of children with special needs; policemen; teachers; nurses; daycare providers; child protection workers; paramedics; personal support workers and care staff of all kinds in nursing homes; in fact, first responders and service people in human services of all kinds. These are where the risk is highest - but of course, "resilience well depletion" can be found in anybody where "demand on the person" has totally, and seemingly permanently exceeded, "supply of the person".

I have suffered from this myself, in fact, during my 30s - and promised myself then I would never again allow myself to let my "well get low", by ensuring I paced myself and took better care of myself from that point on. (So far) I have kept my promise to myself.

As I have seen more and more people in my practice with "resilience well depletion" I have honed my understanding and my explanation of it to people suffering from it. So now I think it is high time to write it down and make it more accessible to others.

What IS "Resilience Well Depletion"?

Imagine we have a cone-shaped well within us that is normally filled to the brim with a liquid I will call "resilience". Imagine further that the cone is marked in thirds, with the bottom third coloured red, the middle third coloured yellow, and the top third coloured green (see the picture below):


When the well is filled to the brim, there is maximum resilience available. There is also a (more or less) balance between resilience being lost (spent) and resilience being received (earned). Every day, imagine your psyche climbing the ladder to the top, and filling a large container with resilience. Then, your psyche climbs back down the ladder and goes off into life, using the container to pour out resilience on life's many challenges. Some challenges take little dabs of resilience, like scheduling appointments and completing chores. Some challenges take large amounts, like coping with a difficult boss, moving, grieving the loss of someone important to you, or coping with a medical diagnosis. All challenges, great and small, use up resilience. When your container is empty, up the ladder you go (which also spends resilience) to get some more. When you get to the top your psyche looks out on the great expanse of resilience, imagining it to be an essentially limitless supply.

But you notice from the picture, as you look toward the bottom of the cone-shaped well of resilience, the overall volume of available resilience is dramatically less the lower you go. If you continue, over a long period of time, to "spend" more resilience than you "earn back", your resilience supply will begin to drain. And the drain will accelerate. This "acceleration" of loss is not really understandable from your psyche's view. The rapidly decreasing amount of resilience is hidden from your psyche's top-down view and its ability to predict how much is left is skewed in favour of mistakenly thinking there is more than there actually is. Add in "denial" and "self-sacrifice" and your psyche will simply behave as if there is a "limitless supply". So your psyche does what it has always done, scoops up a container and heads back up and down the ladder, essentially blind to the increasingly fast loss of resilience as time goes on.

If you don't replenish the well, the level of resilience falls, faster and faster, until you're in the yellow zone. You need to get a smaller container to get resilience into, and you make more trips up and down the ladder. You begin to get more and more tired, but hey! you've been doing this for a long time and you still harbour the idea that your resilience is essentially infinite in supply. You are starting to get little "signs" that your resilience is waning, but you just keep going.

Once your resilience gets to the "red zone", however, you are now in really big trouble. Your body's survival reflexes begin to trigger on and off, seemingly to your psyche, unpredictably. You begin to wonder what's wrong with you. You find yourself unexpectedly exhausted from what used to be simple tasks and problems. Your autonomic nervous system begins to trigger on, putting you in "fight or flight" mode - where your heart races, adrenalin flows, breathing is fast and shallow, and seemingly you are unable to take a deep, relaxing breath. You suffer digestive system discomfort such as nausea, diarrhea or both. As the blood is directed by your ANS to the larger muscles, flowing away from your extremities, you may feel light-headed or faint, your hands and feet getting cold and clammy, or shaking uncontrollably. You may break into sweats and your hair stand on end, giving goose pimples on your flesh - probably your body's way of cooling yourself down in case, through running like hell or fighting, you overheat. These are all the ANS's built-in behaviours for helping you survive a predator or danger - except, looking around, you don't see any such thing. The danger, which your body may recognize and your mind may not, is that your well is in danger of running dry! Your parasympathetic nervous system may also begin to "misfire", making the same appraisal that you are under threat and need to go into survival mode. You may be "paralyzed with inaction", lose your initiative and "get up and go". You wonder if you are "losing your marbles". But that's not it - no, you are losing your resilience.

If you run yourself right down below a "safe" threshold of resilience, you might simply wake up one morning and you can't get out of bed, not even to help your child with a disability, or put on your uniform to go out and save people from themselves, or "answer the call".

In my next blog, I can tell you that there is good news. The "resilience well" is REFILLABLE. And, there is a way you can work to keep it filled, by making sure there is enough resilience flowing back into the well to make up for any deficit in resilience that has occurred over time. And the really good news is that how to earn resilience is actually FUN!

Saturday 29 June 2013

It's Not About The Nail

Wednesday 4 May 2011

Thursday 20 January 2011

We need to understand where we all could end up


Model of the Canadian Museum for Human RightsImage via Wikipedia
In Tuesday, January 18th's Ottawa Citizen, Gail Asper wrote a piece she called "We need to understand where we came from". Gail is national campaign chair of Friends of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. The piece caught my eye based on a breakout section that announced that "Canada is one of the few western countries that does not study the Holocaust in its national institutions".  Gail's father Izzy (Israel) Asper is a noted media and philanthropic figure whose name I would have more easily and quickly recognized.

First, I must say I would have, in the past, skipped over this section, like I suspect many Canadians not of Jewish descent would do. Secondly, I would have to agree with Gail, that most Canadians have not been taught anything of importance about the Holocaust, or for that matter, any of the other extreme Human Rights abuses of past cultures, civilizations and modern times particularly.

The Liberation of Belsen Concentration Camp Ap...Image via Wikipedia

As a child, I remember the advent of TV, and I distinctly remember watching with childlike fascination the bulldozers pushing bodies into mass graves, and other footage of massive piles of bodies, these pictures no doubt taken in killing fields and in death camps in Nazi Germany. Keep in mind that I would have been just entering grade school at the time, and at 58, my memory for details (okay, it's NEVER been that good) is poor. I was unable to process the horror but it certainly has stuck in my mind, similar to the way news of John F. Kennedy's assassination and what I was doing at the time, has also stuck in my mind. I would have been just turned 11 at the time.
Dr. Fritz Klein stands amongst corpses in Mass...Image via Wikipedia

Frankly, I didn't get to appreciate the importance of this information until I attended a lecture by David Hingsburger who spoke of the way in which people with disAbilities were killed at, I think, either Bergen-Belsen or Buchenwald (something with a B). Am I making the point that we have not been students of the Holocaust in Canada? Dave was riveting in his descriptions of the methods that were used to "euthanize" the sick, disfigured and disabled. And how these helped the Nazis develop the methods and probably also numerous rationalizations by which Jews, Gypsies and others were destroyed in later years at death camps in Germany. I also read a powerful piece by Dick Sobsey (think it might have been in the magazine of ARCH (Advocacy Research Centre for the Handicapped, Toronto) back in the 1980's or early 1990's on how Hitler's physician was asked to examine a disAbled child to see if he should be "euthanized", back in the early 1930's. The physician agreed that he should be, and Dick makes the point that the "mercy killing" of a young disAbled child led to the Nazi killing camps which eliminated 6 million Jews.

So, because of this connection with those who I have pledged to support, and when necessary, defend, I have this connection now, in my heart and soul, with Jews and the Holocaust, indeed, with a variety of peoples who have been selected for elimination or inhumane treatment simply on the basis of some devalued characteristic, such as skin colour, religion, sexual orientation, language, gender, cultural heritage, and so on.

With the wisdom born of lived experience, I can have a greater appreciation for the dishonour done to others by ignorance, arrogance, simple-minded notions of "us" and "them", and the part of the human psyche that harbours evil.

Because of this connection, I absolutely agree with Israel Asper that "in order to understand why a country is worth having, you have to know where it came from and that the rights we enjoy today are as a result of the heroic efforts of many ordinary people who took responsibility for the advancement of our human rights..."

Do I think we should study the Holocaust? Yes. Is the Holocaust the only example or even the best (worst) example of extreme human rights abuses? I don't know - it's a strange conversation to compare the extent of man's inhumanity between one event or series of events and another. Does an exhibit about the Holocaust elbow other extreme human rights abuses such as mass exterminations, starvations, and so on to other peoples, of other cultures, religions, etc. out of the way? No, I don't think so. Thanks to all cultures who have taken great pains to preserve the written, recorded, photographic and video archives of this filthy disgusting display of human behaviour, whether individually by secular or religious leaders, by formal organizations of a religion, tribe, state, or government, or by a whole ethnic group against another, there are reminders of the lessons to be learned today. It is not only history, it is also the future, if we do not take the required actions to prevent such atrocities.

Dick Sobsey is a regular writer on abuse, maltreatment and death-making of people with disAbilities. Wolf Wolfensburger coined the term "death-making" in his histories of treatment of people with disAbilities. I recommend the reader to both authors for how people with disAbilities are still at risk in today's bright, well-educated societies of the West, which prides itself on being the rescuers from tyranny and extermination, as Allies during the second World War. Both remind us that the framework of laws that were used in Germany to justify the "mercy killing" of the disAbled boy, and later millions of Jews, were imported from the State of Virginia, in the United States of America.

Reports of abuse of the elderly, and various forms of euthanasia discussion, including withholding of treatment as well as assisted suicide, for those with impairments of old age, bring to mind that we are all aging and may find ourselves living with the phenomenon of being unwanted, unproductive, and unable to defend ourselves. So we shouldn't be smug about things like this. Those who don't remember their history are doomed to repeat it.
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