ips newsletter fall 2013 - intentional peer support · ips newsle"er fa# 2013...
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IPS Newsletter Fall 2013
Intentional Peer Supportwww.intentionalpeersupport.org [email protected]
Moving TowardsIntentional Peer Support emerged around 1995 at the creative edge where lived personal experience, academic exploration, and a group of people willing to take some risks all met. For many years Shery Mead (the developer of IPS) did much of the work solo (along with creating one of the Eirst peer respites). In 2006, Chris Hansen moved over from New Zealand with a training background and human rights framework to help co-‐create the vision. Since then, Intentional Peer Support has been launched in a number of countries around the world and been adopted by states and organizations in the United States.
We are excited to welcome Steven Morgan onto the IPS team as Operations Manager. Steven brings his own lived experience with using and surviving mental health services, working as a peer worker in a number of settings, running a peer center, and developing a Soteria respite. His passion for human rights and social justice Eits well within the IPS framework. He has both a keen academic understanding of the roots of IPS, and the organizational and management skills that IPS needs to grow and move forward.
Artwork by e.m.6ilson www.em6ilsonsurvivalart.com
Beth Filson is a self-‐taught artist who resides in Western Massachusetts. She facilitates IPS and is a consultant in trauma-‐informed peer support.
Newsletter SubmissionsWe warmly welcome art, stories, and articles related to IPS for consideration in future newsletters! Please email [email protected]
In IPS, we want to pay attention to the stories we are telling each other and ourselves about who we are and how the world works. We want to be curious about the events that have taken place in our lives that shape our personal stories, or narrative. We want to create relationships based on trust and safety where power is shared, and no one person’s story becomes the only story, or the only truth. If we can stay focused on what we both need in order to stay connected, we can begin to explore our old stories and play with new meaning – meaning that has the potential to transform our lives.
In this Issue♦ Joining The Conversation by Steven Morgan♦ Talking In Ways That Can Be Heard by Shery Mead &
Sarah Knutson♦ Upcoming IPS Training Announcement
Joining The Conversation by Steven Morgan
Years ago, I came dangerously close to retiring my aspirations to a prognosis of mental illness. At the time I was having overwhelming experiences that I could not understand, and these left me feeling isolated and apart. The story told to me was that I had a volatile disease in my brain capable of being managed but never overcome. I lost hope that I would rejoin the human family as an equal and instead came to see myself as separate from others — even “less-‐than.” At the time, I attended many support groups for my diagnosis. They helped me realize others were suffering similar problems, but the dialogues were eerily identical to those with my psychiatrist. We came together, reported on our symptoms, shared skills to manage our illness; we even ranted and raved about the newest medications. Something always felt stuck, and while I could not identify what was so heavy, I often walked away with my head hung low. A turning point in my life arrived as I trained to become a peer worker in Georgia. Here was the Eirst time I heard the word “recovery” and concepts like self-‐determination and empowerment. Still, I would try to guess people’s diagnoses because that was how I had related to peers before, but to my surprise no one was interested in them. Instead, we built relationships around our own sense — and language — of what had happened and was happening in our lives. Without focusing on diagnosis, we related through different means, like music-‐making, writing, politics, humor, and storytelling. There was a sense of camaraderie that opened my life to community. However, as soon as I began working in the mental health system, I encountered many institutional structures that adversely shaped my peer relationships. For instance, I had to write notes about people that conformed to Medicaid billing standards, meaning the medical model, meaning I spent several hours each day talking about people’s diagnoses, how they were “doing,” and what actions they were “taking” to address their “symptoms.” I felt like a psychiatric stenographer. I desperately tried to
Intentional Peer Supportwww.intentionalpeersupport.org [email protected]
block this thinking from coloring my interactions, but alas found it impossible. Indeed, in order to be “good” at my notes, I had to look for things to report. And what you see is what you get… Even when a new job gave me more freedom by requiring less documentation, I found myself in team meetings where others talked about people’s diagnoses and symptoms and what they were going to do about it, never in the presence of the identiEied person. Sometimes I heard slanders, prejudices, hopeless predictions, and downright gossip that churned my stomach. Overtime I raised objections and advocated for doing things differently, but I was the only peer worker in that agency, so it was a steep climb. I also noticed that because I was part of “staff,” peers often approached me with reports on their health. Somehow we had landed in a dynamic where I was a model for “recovery” and others were a few steps behind, if only they could do what I had done. All of this felt wrong. Why weren’t we talking together about poverty, trauma, institutionalization, social barriers, family relations, power and privilege? These were huge elephants in the room, yet they seemed sedated by a pretense of mental illness. I started writing about what I
was seeing, challenging my own self-‐conception, and reaching out for new ideas. When I came across Intentional Peer Support, my inspiration ballooned. The material was challenging, but it got me thinking again about contexts, in particular how there are multiple truths and layered ways of perceiving phenomena. I started reconsidering my own diagnosis of mental illness and asking powerful questions: Where did this idea come from? Whose truth is it? How is it enabling or disabling my life? Who beneGits from this diagnosis and why? If I
Intentional Peer Supportwww.intentionalpeersupport.org [email protected]
Connect with IPS OnlineWebsite
Our website is undergoing a renovation and will be re-‐launched in the next couple of months with more resources, information, and opportunities to connect.
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ForumWant to connect and discuss all things IPS? Please consider joining our new online discussion boards!
www.intentionalpeersupportforum.org
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were to stop believing in this diagnosis, what would I be responsible for? These questions Elooded my relationships both at work and home. They opened up powerful conversations where I started speaking and listening differently, and overtime I came to see a bigger
picture of why people end up in certain circumstances. As my focus shifted from “What’s wrong with me?” to “What happened to me?”, I constructed a new narrative about my life. Having a mental illness shifted from a reality to a story, one possibility among many. Eventually I decided that story was not serving me well anymore, so I rewrote it. In the years that followed, I worked to develop alternative programs for people in distress. While the director of a peer-‐run agency called Another Way, I had a unique opportunity to work in community to co-‐create spaces of learning, sanctuary, creativity, and camaraderie. The challenges were many, but so were the possibilities. What I learned most was that community is an opposite of illness — that connections between people and jointed effort literally creates health. Intentional Peer Support provides a framework for building these connections, understanding one another in ever-‐deepening ways, and using relationships to explore and move forward. I believe this framework has the power to change culture, and my
experience with Another Way conEirms it. My work also brought me to the advocacy world. I became passionate about counteracting the dominant messages in mental health that ostracize people. To this end, I developed materials and presentations to refute biopsychiatric paradigms, and I also helped develop the Soteria-‐Vermont project, which is a house for people having an early experience of psychosis that relies mostly on relationships to provide support. In joining Intentional Peer Support, I am joining a big conversation. Because IPS is more a mindset than a skillset, it includes the energies and ideas of all of you. That’s a lot of truths to hold! I look forward to diving in and helping our organization reElect, listen, and grow, for this work of cultural change is exactly the story I want to tell about my life moving forward.u
Intentional Peer Supportwww.intentionalpeersupport.org [email protected]
IPS in the NewsThe Parachute Project in New York City is
creating a network of respites and
outreach teams to support people outside
of hospitals. IPS and Needs Adapted
Treatment Model (the predecessor to Open
Dialogue in Finland) were selected as the
models for training. The project is halfway
through it’s three-‐year startup grant and is
demonstrating how alternative supports
can be implemented at a large scale.
The following article on Page 6 talks about
using IPS in the Manhattan respite:http://www.mhnews.org/back_issues/BHN-‐Fall2013.pdf
Talking In Ways That Can Be HeardBy Shery Mead and Sarah KnutsonWe’ve talked a fair amount about conElict
and provided some examples but I want to think for a minute about “talking in ways that can be heard.”
Do you ever Eind yourself doing all the steps of see, feel, need and ending up with a big disconnect?
It happens to all of us at some point or another. In one way, it’s just part of being human. We all have really different experiences and worldviews. So sometime, somewhere, with some people, sooner or later, we’re going to end up disconnecting.
These kinds of situations happen quite often in work places. Some people just ignore it; some people hide; some agree solely to keep the peace, and others openly (and sometimes loudly) disagree.
When this happens, a lot of us wonder: What’s going wrong? Why isn’t IPS working? I’m trying my best and disconnection is still happening. Are there some relationships that are just too difEicult? Are some dynamics just too hard? What if no one could connect here, not even the most skilled IPS practitioner using all the IPS tasks and principles?
We’d like to explore these questions with you.. We’d like to see if there’s a way to use IPS to connect or reconnect in some of the most challenging situations That’s a lot to bite off so we’ll do this in a series of articles -‐ rather than just one.
Connecting Across Worldview Differences
Today, we’re going to start with a conversation that involves really big worldview differences. It also involves other challenges, including differences in power and privilege and differences in the core values and life vision that the participants in the conversation are moving toward. However, for today,
Intentional Peer Supportwww.intentionalpeersupport.org [email protected]
we’ll keep the focus on the worldview differences and try to see what we can learn from that. The example we chose here involves a clinician and a peer worker in an institutional/ professional setting. We chose this example because it’s one we hear about a lot. We know a lot peer workers who are trying to stay true to IPS values, but also are sometimes trying to negotiate very different worldviews that are part of the organization or professional environment they are working in. You can listen to the example or read a transcript of it at the links we provide a little later in this article. The example involves a clinician and peer worker who have very different perspectives on their work. The clinician tells the peer that she is extremely concerned about the new changes she sees happening in the hospital. She is afraid that people are getting their hopes up and being set up for a fall.
She has worked at the hospital for many years and done her best to follow the best practices of her profession. She has worked hard, been devoted to her job and made many sacriEices to be a good employee at the institution. She believes this was in the best interests of her “patients” and has protected them from a harsh reality that she feels they were not prepared to meet.
This is the clinician’s told story: it is her reality and how she sees the world. The peer is trained in IPS and has a very different worldview. She is faced with a double challenge. She needs to Eind a way to connect with the clinician. But, also, she honestly has a different perspective and would like to share it. However, she knows this would make the clinician uncomfortable.
So, here is the question: how can the conversation get to a place where there is enough connection and mutuality to allow for some discomfort and some real sharing of different perspectives? We think the peer in this audio (https://docs.google.com/Eile/d/0B5_1547QnkrfemZMLTc5clhMYjQ/edit?usp=sharing) does a pretty good job of getting to this place. How does she do this? Listen to the audio or read the transcript. What do you notice?
Intentional Peer Supportwww.intentionalpeersupport.org [email protected]
Write your observations down if that helps you remember. Here’s the transcript if you prefer to read rather than listen: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HrMce-‐c9Ra4n6LWgH4Hm8BTZxJn57jWrRPUafXr9lRY/edit
Now, let’s compare notes on what we see happening:We used this example to demonstrate talking in ways that can be heard because of the inherent
worldview difference between the two people in the audio. They happen to be a clinician and peer worker and they have very different perspectives on their work.
The clinician’s told story is that the new changes she sees happening in the hospital are troubling. The peer workers are poorly trained and are giving false hopes to people who really do need the protection of a hospital setting.
The peer does not agree and eventually gets to a place where she is able to share this with the clinician in a connecting way. How is she able to make this happen ?
Here’s some things we noticed.
Connecting Across “Alternate Realities”
Right from the beginning the peer worker shows curiosity about the clinician’s told story without being defensive. She validates the clinician’s experience by getting inside it and says, “It sounds like you really care about people here.”
Why does she say this? Clearly, the peer worker doesn’t see the facts in the same way. To the contrary, she has a totally different told story about the hospital changes. She believes life is becoming a lot better for people receiving services. This story is producing very different feelings for the peer worker (e.g., hope and optimism) than for the clinician (resentment and fear).
So why does the peer worker show curiosity and validate the clinician’s story instead of withdrawing, changing the subject, or presenting her own point of view?
Intentional Peer Supportwww.intentionalpeersupport.org [email protected]
We think it’s because she recognizes that she and the clinician are experiencing “alternate realities” and she knows how to connect across them.
What does that mean?, you might ask. Clearly, no one is talking about “Elying to mars” or receiving “messages” from the President or the Pope. So, why are we talking about alternate realities?
Well, its a lot easier to see in more extreme cases (we’ll give you an example soon). But the idea is this: the clinician and peer worker are seeing the world from different perspectives, and therefore experiencing different feelings and responses. When that happens – and it happens all the time – people experience “alternate realities” – rather than “consensual” (agreed) ones.
Not surprisingly, in these situations, connection often squeals to a halt. People stop listening to understand and, instead, start trying to get the other person to hear them. Both people insist that their view of reality is “the right one.” They both honestly disagree, and communication breaks down.
So what can be done? How do we build connection when there are really big worldview differences? Fortunately, in IPS, we already have a framework for talking about alternate realities. For
example, suppose you see snakes on the wall and I don’t – what do I do? If I don’t see any snakes right now, I can’t pretend that I do. That wouldn’t be honest, so it wouldn’t lead to real connection for either of us. However, there are still a lot of other ways that I can try to connect if I want to. The Eirst step is to put myself in your shoes and try to imagine what I would feel if I saw what you saw, heard what you heard, experienced what you experienced, felt what you felt, etc. For example, if I saw snakes in the room we are sitting in:• I would be really scared. • I’d want to do something about the snakes. • I’d want to do something to feel safer – like get rid of the snakes or get out of the room.
Intentional Peer Supportwww.intentionalpeersupport.org [email protected]
Any of these are starting points for connection. For example, I could say: “Wow, that must be terrifying...”
Depending on your response we could go from there. So let’s go back to the clinician and the peer worker. If the peer worker gets caught up in arguing
which version of the facts is right, then they will probably never connect (“There are snakes on the wall” – “No there aren’t!” yada, yada). However, if the peer worker listens to the clinician’s told story, she may well Eind a point of connection. Indeed, the clinician’s story is a very human story that many of us can relate to. For example:
The clinician is talking about the human experiences of:• Being dedicated to a profession• Trying to do a good job• Investing a lot of one’s life into something that, now, other people are threatening or challenging• Feeling misunderstood and not valued by the next generation
These are all common human experiences, and the peer worker could start with any one of them to make a connection. This might be a good time to go back to the audio and listen again to how the worker responds....
Did you notice the place where she says, “At the risk of prying, it sounds like you really need and want some recognition.” Which of the above experiences does the worker appear to be focusing on? To us, it seems like 3 and 4 above. Both 3 and 4 have to do with putting in a lot of effort and feeling criticized, misunderstood or not valued. Exploring a need for recognition seems to Eit. But, how did the worker get there. How does she know where to focus? And, equally important, how does she know that it’s not time yet to share her own opinions or worldview...?
Getting Past the “Told Story” to the “Untold Story”
Before you get to an untold story you have to go on the told ones. Untold stories are like personal treasures. Told stories are a treasure map the person gives you. The map is written in the private language of their experience. But, by listening and drawing on your own experience, you can begin to learn how to read it.
The worker in the audio does this beautifully. She listens to the clinician’s “told story” about the changes to the hospital being “wrong” and people getting hurt or left behind. She tries to understand what the clinician is feeling and why the emotion makes sense to her.
Intentional Peer Supportwww.intentionalpeersupport.org [email protected]
To do this, she puts herself in the clinicians shoes and asks: “If I saw the world in the way that she’s seeing it now, how would I feel?” The worker realizes that when she feels others are making wrong choices and hurting people or leaving them behind, she has strong feelings too. With that information, the worker can make a leap. She can begin to test out with the clinician the deeper feeling connections around both of their experiences.
Here she says: “ At the risk of prying, it sounds like you really need and want some recognition.” Notice also how the clinician responds. She doesn’t directly acknowledge wanting recognition, but
that doesn’t mean the worker was wrong. Maybe the feelings were just too vulnerable. The important thing is that the clinician keeps revealing more about her experience, and, as the worker keeps validating it, connection continues to build.
The fact that the clinician keeps talking, revealing more and that the connection is building – these are all signs: the worker is understanding the map. The path she is on is leading to relational connection.
Listening to Understand, Appreciate and Validate
Notice there is a place in the audio where the clinician calls service recipients her “patients”. This is a place where the conversation might have come to a fast close (big disconnect). A pretty natural response for a peer worker might be to “correct” the other person: “We’re not patients -‐ we’re people!”
Interestingly, at this point the peer worker responds by adopting the clinician’s language and also referring to service recipients as “patients.” She focuses on the “meaning” of the word to the clinician (a service role I have dedicated my life to). She shows that she appreciates this meaning by validating it and using the same word herself. This is very different from focusing on and validating the meaning of the word for herself and the peer movement – for example, by pointing out the word and its association with peer experiences of being
Intentional Peer Supportwww.intentionalpeersupport.org [email protected]
o p p r e s s e d , p u t d o w n , p a t r o n i z e d , d e n i e d c h o i c e s , e t c . What is going on here? This clearly isn’t the worker’s chosen language – the words may even be
politically offensive to her. So, why do you think the worker does this? Is it just “sucking up” or is there something bigger at stake? (There is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ here – it’s just interesting to think about the choices in the conversation and the many possible outcomes).
The bigger thing at stake for the worker is building a deeper connection. How do we know that the peer’s response led to a deeper connection with the clinician? Well, here’s what the clinician says:
“I just don’t know what to do anymore, we’ve been here for 30 and 40 years doing what we thought
was really good work and then you people come along and tell us we’re not. I don’t know what to do
or where to turn anymore.’
What about the clinician’s response helps us tell whether connection is building or not?The Eirst thing to notice is the level at which the clinician is willing to be vulnerable. Her energy
has begun to shift from attacking, defensiveness and self-‐protection to inviting the peer in. The clinician is showing softer, more vulnerable emotions – things like helplessness, confusion, and loss.
What we seem to be seeing here is a subtle transition. The clinician is moving away from more high intensity self-‐protective feelings (like anger and frustration). These emotions tend to keep people pretty much at a distance. They say, “Don’t mess with me. I’m a force to be reckoned with – agree with me or else!”
In contrast, the softer, more vulnerable emotions that the clinician is moving toward here tend to invite people in. They say “Help me -‐ I’m lost here.” They give an impression of wanting relationship and of seeking support.
Again, we have a sign that the peer worker is understanding the map. The path is leading to even more relational connection.
Being Really Sure of Connection
The peer worker’s honoring of the clinician’s worldview seems really like something of a turning point. To many of us, this would also seem like an opening for some “real honesty.” We might be tempted to take the opportunity to share our perspective – and perhaps even go full on to make our point. How many of us have found ourselves in a big disconnect after doing just that?
The peer worker here, however, proceeded much more cautiously. So cautiously that you might think she almost hadn’t noticed the change.
Intentional Peer Supportwww.intentionalpeersupport.org [email protected]
But she did. The difference was that she interpreted the change differently than many of us might. Instead of viewing the change as an opening for full-‐out personal sharing, she again paused to see things from the clinician’s frame of reference. She asked herself, “How would I feel if I opened myself up and became more vulnerable, and then someone unloaded their whole worldview on me?”
If that happened, the peer worker realized she would probably clamp up and shut down in a split second! So, instead, she just kept validating. She made a deliberate choice to appreciate and honor the gift that the clinician was giving her in beginning to open up, invite her in, and show more vulnerability.
Gently Tiptoeing into the Water of Mutuality
A little bit later in the audio, you may notice another shift. The clinician asks the peer outright for her opinion. When the clinician has asked questions in the past, they had more of a “just agree with me and tell me I’m right” feel to them. But this time, the clinician seems to be sincerely trying to make sense of reality. While she never says this directly, her tone seems sincere about wanting real answers: Why are these changes happening? Why do you people seem to want change so much?
The peer notices the invitation and ultimately responds to it. But, again, she does so with great care. Her Eirst response is just to keep validating. She sees the clinician as asking really big and important questions – and works hard to validate what it must feel like to be the clinician’s shoes. This builds even more connection and trust. The peer can tell this because the clinician continues to open up and invite the peer into her process.
After a while, when this has happened enough times, the two of them begin to develop trust. The peer worker senses then that their connection can handle a little more truth. She feels comfortable enough to begin to introducing a bit of her worldview. Again, this is a very gentle, tentative process. The peer worker does this in a non-‐threatening, cautious way. She allows herself plenty of time and space to check out whether the connection is still holding in the relationship.
Here are some steps she takes:1. Asking Permission
You might notice that the peer worker starts the process is by asking for permission. She asks the clinician if it would be ok to share a bit of her own story around making sense of the questions she hears the clinician asking her. Only after conEirming that the clinician seems open to this does the peer begin to share her own story.
Intentional Peer Supportwww.intentionalpeersupport.org [email protected]
2. Using a Personal Story
Using a personal story can be a way to build a deeper connection. It can also introduce a bit of mutuality, because it asks the other person to enter our experience and try to understand something about where we are coming from. At the same time, it’s important to pick our story carefully. It needs to capture the point we want to make. But, it also needs to be a part of our story that’s pretty easy to be heard. The peer worker in the audio does this. Notice that she doesn’t share a story about “how much your hospital hurt me.” That story would be really threatening for the clinician to hear, and probably make for a big disconnect. Rather, she shares a different type of story – one that includes and validates both their perspectives. On the one hand, the peer shares her own journey from “fragile patient” to a person who could take risks and meet life challenges.
This gives the clinician new information and invites her into the peer workers’ experience. On the other hand, the story involves the peers own efforts to re-‐evaluate long-‐held beliefs, make
sense of challenging questions and come to see things in a new way. This is exactly what the clinician is trying to do now. Thus, the peer’s story also join the clinician as a human being and invites her to come along on this human journey. We can see that the peer worker again “understood the map.” Although the clinician certainly doesn’t do a 180, she does continue to share and explore her own worldview without seeming threatened or defensive.
The peer worker has succeeded in sharing her own very different worldview in a way that could be heard. Connection was maintained, mutuality was introduced, and their relationship has held
Intentional Peer Supportwww.intentionalpeersupport.org [email protected]
together. In fact, the relationship has even grown a little stronger. This bodes well for possibly having some more “challenging conversations” in the future.
3. Long View vs. Short ViewA really hard lesson for many of us to learn related to “talking to be heard” is to speak with the
“long view” in mind. It can be really tempting to go for clear and obvious immediate gains. Uncertainty and ambiguity are uncomfortable to sit with. But then so is the big disconnect we might end up with when we “go for the gold” but end up “dropping the ball” instead.
There is a really good example of long view versus short view in the audio. There’s a place where the clinician asks (rhetorically) if what the traditional staff has been doing has been hurting people. The peer may worker well have experienced some hurt in traditional medical settings – perhaps incredibly painful hurt. So, she easily could have responded: “Well, if you really want to know what I’ve been experiencing, in a way, YES!”
If she had said this at this point, do you think the clinician could have heard her? Did they have a strong enough connection?
At the same time, for some people, that may seem like a cop out. Why isn’t the peer worker “speaking truth to power” and standing up for her own experience?
It’s important to note, at this point, that there is probably an untold story going on behind the scenes for both people. It may go something like this: I’m really uncomfortable with you and this conversation. Our viewpoints and life experiences are extremely different and that’s very scary to me. But, I
also know our future depends on us getting along. For many of us practicing IPS, this “getting along” is more than a practical (pragmatic) survival
strategy. It’s a deeply held respect that everyone’s worldview – everyone’s – peers, clinicians, janitors, politicians, teachers, revolutionaries, prisoners, parents, kids…everyone’s – is unique and valid for them. For those of us who feel this way, understanding and appreciating these human worldview differences is critical. It’s gives us a toehold – a place where we can seek out and Eind connection even when other vast differences exist. This connection, in turn, can be nurtured and grown. At some point, we notice there’s enough energy from trust and goodwill to tolerate a bit of mutuality. Then we can begin to negotiate a world that can work for all of us – which, for many of us, is the only world that’s really worth creating.
With this in mind, the peer decides to take the “long view.” She gives the relationship the space it needs to evolve in connection and trust over time rather than having to deEine “the truth” right away.
Intentional Peer Supportwww.intentionalpeersupport.org [email protected]
In the process, we Eind the mutual respect and tone of the conversation has changed as well. In the beginning, the clinician seemed to be coming to the peer only as a matter of politeness before taking her concerns to the “higher ups.” Now, there is a real quality of mutual respect in the conversation – even though their worldviews still remain, well, “worlds” apart.
What might happen in their next conversation? Do they have a strong enough connection for the peer worker to be a bit more frank?
Saying things in ways that can be heard involves getting past superEicial connection into really building some trust in the relationship. But, for most of us, it works best if we don’t push for change too quickly. Instead, we might ask ourselves: Have I ever changed my deeply held beliefs? How long did it take? What enabled me to do that?”
And So... What are the Learnings Here?
When there is a tense moment with very different perspectives, listen deeply. Try to hold the other person’s perspective until they feel heard. Rather than taking advantage of vulnerability, honor it with validation. When the time comes to share your perspective, test the waters. Go slowly and pay close attention to what happens to the trust and connection between you. Be patient – it will always take more time than you’ve got. It’s worth every minute.u
Intentional Peer Supportwww.intentionalpeersupport.org [email protected]
Upcoming IPS 5-Day Core Training
Intentional Peer Supportwww.intentionalpeersupport.org [email protected]
Burlington, Vermont
March 10th – 14st, 2014
Venue to be decided
Cost: $850
For further inquiries:Steven Morgan802-‐498-‐4190
“For me the IPS Training was like someone dropping a Eistful of pennies. It truly is a life-‐changing experience... like being taught how to play one of the most beautiful instruments known to man… a mutually beneEicial conversation.”
-‐ Dan Cole, Coordinator, PRA Harvey Bay Queensland, Australia
About the IPS Core TrainingOur Core Training is a 5-day introduction to the IPS framework and is designed to have you practicing right away. In a highly interactive environment, participants learn the tasks and principles of IPS, examine assumptions about who they are, and explore ways to create mutual relationships in which power is negotiated, co-learning is possible, and support goes beyond traditional notions of "service." IPS is all about opening up new ways of seeing, thinking, and doing, and here we examine how to make this possible.
Our Core Training is for anyone interested in peer support and has been widely used as a foundation training for peers working in both traditional and alternative mental health settings.
Specific topics covered include:
• The 4 Tasks (Connection, Worldview, Mutuality, and Moving Towards)• The 3 Principles (Learning vs Helping, Relationship vs the Individual, Possibility vs Fear)• Listening differently and with intention• Understanding trauma worldview and trauma re-enactment• Rethinking old roles and ways of relating• Working towards shared responsibility• Examining power and privilege• Negotiating boundaries and limits• Creating a vision• Navigating challenging scenarios• Using co-reflection to maintain values
“As peer support in mental health proliferates, we must be mindful of our intention: social change. It is not about developing more effective services but rather about creating dialogues that h a v e i n E l u e n c e o n a l l o f o u r understandings, conversations, and relationships.”
-‐ Shery Mead, Founder of IPS
What is Intentional Peer Support (IPS)?IPS is a way of thinking about and creating powerful and transformative peer support relationships. It is a process where both people use the relationship to look at things from new angles, develop greater awareness of personal and relational patterns, and to support and challenge each other as we try new things.
Intentional Peer Support Core TrainingRegistration Form
Please Gill out the following registration form for each participant and email to [email protected]
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Please plan to arrive in Burlington on Sunday, March 9th in order to begin at 9:00am on Monday, March 10th. Training is from 9:00–4:30 from Monday–Thursday, and 9:00–3:00 on Friday.
Registration FeeRegistration is $850 and covers training, manuals, and lunch on each training day. Hotel accommodations and travel arrangements are the responsibility of applicants.
To pay online with PayPal:Make a payment via PayPal to [email protected]
To pay with a check:Make check payable to: Shery Mead ConsultingMail application and payment to: Chris Hansen / 187 Jerusalem Rd / Bristol, VT 05443
Intentional Peer Supportwww.intentionalpeersupport.org [email protected]