Open Ears, Open Eyes, Open Mind, Closed Mouth: Supporting Family after Brain Injury – Part 3

Image source not known. Found Quote Lovers
Image source not known. Found Quote Lovers

A starter kit for supporting family after brain injury.

Here are four simple actions that you can practice to better support family after brain injury, with compassion and empathy.

Over the past couple of posts I have talked about being alongside family after brain injury. Firstly the responses and reactions family members might experience and then about responding with empathy and compassion.

How can you put this into practice? It can seem so overwhelming when you begin.

Think Open Ears, Open Eyes, Open Mind, and Closed Mouth

The following are some tips for how you can begin to offer relevant support to a family after brain injury:

OPEN EARS

Listen closely to what each family member is telling you about their own experience and the impact on their family after brain injury. Listen as they talk about their needs, and what you can do to best support them.

Listen, and let the family know you are hearing and understanding them.  Acknowledge that you hear, summarise and reflect back what you have heard: “You feel you have been so long without a break you cannot keep going.”

When you are listening, cancel out any voices in your head that are criticizing, judging, or making up responses to what you are hearing (listen with an OPEN MIND).

Make sure your body language says “I am listening to you”.

If  listening attentively is not natural to you, take heart, it is a skill that can be learned, and it can be improved with practice.

The following is a light-hearted reminder of the skill of listening. It is an advertisement (used here for the content not product) that does appear to mock listening, yet it does stay in my mind when I am thinking about, and practicing listening – ‘a listening face’:

[box style=”rounded” border=”full”]“Listening Face” [/box]

OPEN EYES

Look and see how it really is for each family member.

Look and learn, rather than comment and judge. (CLOSED MOUTH)

Open your ‘Imagining’ eyes.  What might it be like to be in his, or her, shoes right now?

Observe what family members are already doing and achieving. What is going well? What would be the best support you could give?

In interactions, observe not only what is said, but the non spoken communication such as body language, and behaviours.

Observe, and work to understand any cultural differences in its many forms – from family to family, country to country, belief system to belief system etc.

 OPEN MIND

“Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won’t come in.” attributed to Isaac Asimov

We all hold assumptions and biases about just about everything in our lives. The important thing is to try and notice our judgements and assumptions about other families when we are on the outside looking in.

We sometimes judge a family that operates differently, based on  our own beliefs and values. We might think the person with brain injury is not getting the best deal because of the way we view the family is working; and this can lead us to be judgemental.

Family members can find they are receiving a lot of advice about what they should and should not do, without people outside of family, really understanding what it is like, and what they as a family are trying to achieve.

Sometimes it appears to be a little bit like being a parent – when you have children everyone has opinions about how you should be, how your children should be, and how you should parent. When they were young, my boys did not like to wear shoes. One day we were out shopping, a complete stranger came up and said to me ”What kind of a mother are you, that you would let your children out in the cold without shoes on.”

Now I am not talking here about the rights and wrongs of shoe wearing, I am using this to illustrate how other people can feel they have a right to judge.

There are steps you can take to begin to examine your assumptions, judgements and beliefs:

  • Strive to keep an open, non judgemental, and a supportive mind. Not always possible but at least we can each examine our thoughts and where they are coming from.
  • You can think about your own assumptions in family situations. Examine these carefully. When you think or make a statement give some thought to:
  • What is my assumption in this situation: e.g. I believe mothers should stay home with their children and not work.
  • Where do I get that thought or belief from: e.g. when I was growing up my mother stayed home and did not work.
  • How does it affect this situation?  E.g. I hold a belief that the problems in the family I support are because the mother is juggling work and care.

 CLOSED MOUTH

Teacher, author and humourist Leo Rosten is quoted as saying:
“Why did God give me two ears and one mouth? So that I will hear more and talk less”.

Better to say little, and listen more.

Reflect back what the person is telling you to show you understand rather than leaping in with advice.

Think about people throughout your life who have been helpful in tricky situations.  Think about people who have not been so helpful. What did each do, or not do?

In the helpful group I would guess the person listened carefully, they helped you to come to your own decisions, and they did not give advice unless asked. These would be some of the helpful traits.

In an earlier post I talked about what NOT to say to a person with brain injury X, this can also be applied to families. Ideally you would be listening (Open Ears) and reflecting what you have heard so carefully, you would not be talking too much.

AND FINALLY

This is a huge topic and there is no simple answer, no easy one size fits all solution. We will be talking much more in the future about developing a family sensitive approach after brain injury.

You can start by remembering the four steps and what they mean in practice: try to keep OPEN EYES, OPEN MIND, OPEN EARS and CLOSED MOUTH.

The following radio interview has some good insights into working alongside family. The interview is with Dr Ted Freeman whose treatment of people who are in a persistent vegetative state has been at times challenged others. Dr Freeman talks about the difficult circumstance that arises when a family member appears to be not able to respond or communicate.

His telling of his own life, and vignettes of families he has worked with, give insights into how Open heart, Open mind and Open ears can help families. How a family sensitive approach after brain injury can benefit the whole family.

Learning as much as you can and using a family sensitive approach after brain injury

[box size=”large”]Interview with Dr Ted Freeman[/box]

 

And an article from the Brain Injury Association of Canada “Brain injury and its Impact on Families”.