One of my readers wrote about how coaching or mentoring is frequently being used in the world these days:

Mentoring is all the particular rage today. We don’t have administrators in our businesses anymore, we now have trainers. I was already relocating the route of coaching prior to demographic study showed how the younger generations doesn’t want bosses and executives, they desire coaches or mentors. For anyone who is ready regarding leading or creating other people in the organization, developing mentoring skills is usually your personal greatest possessions.

The idea of coaching has come out of the sports area. We types of use a view associated with coaching being a relaxed process just where everyone really should be having plenty of enjoyment, although this isn’t always the case. When I do instruction workshops I will often start them by requesting the questions from their sports experience, “What really makes a great coach?  “What constitutes a bad discipline? ” As people list off of the attributes it becomes really clear that the thing that makes true instructors in the sports activities arena holds true within the workplace.

Very good coaches concentrate on skill as well as team development and they receive training to help these groups using this. Why should our objectives and support of coaches at your workplace be almost any different? Still coaching on the job could, and does, neglect To be able to falls flat, it is almost always for 1 of a pair of reasons: often the coaching did not stick to sound mentoring technique or the coach didn’t take responsibility for their role in achieving solutions.

Simple steps can help you overcome inertia and move forward,

             even when you’re down.

http://www.everydayhealth.com/depression-photos/get-things-done-despite-depression.aspx#/slide-1

http://www.everydayhealth.com/depression-pictures/depression-myths-debunked.aspx?xid=nl_EverydayHealthLivingWithADHD_20130522#/slide-2

Why Skills Coaching for Brain Injury Survivors?

After a brain injury, life changes. One day, everything is fine, and then suddenly one has to deal with a comprehensive shift in reality – neurologically, psychologically, emotionally, socially and even spiritually. Survivors go from life as “normal” to dealing with deficits that extend into all aspects of their existence.

Without helpful interventions, brain injury survivors have their deficits predominate in their personalities. This often renders them socially unacceptable, awkward and unemployable. Many tend to withdraw and isolate themselves. Others may act out or exhibit behavioral issues. Chan, Hudson & Parmenter (2004) found that it is becoming increasingly evident that brain injury and criminal behavior are linked. Certainly, when left to deal with the complications of brain injury alone, the burden on the individual can be overwhelming. Studies also have shown that the tendency for survivors is to self-medicate with drugs and/or alcohol. In Advances in Mental Health’s research, Chan et al. (2004) suggests an urgent need to consider early-intervention.

Gray Matters Survivor Outreach – Support Services

This program proposes a quality intervention of personal, one-on-one coaching.
Gray Matters Survivor Outreach already provides three monthly support groups in San Diego and North County. The coaches are trained and made available to work with survivors after they leave the hospital or after having struggled with living independently for some time. In reaping the benefits from this coaching program, divergent behaviors can be “nipped in the bud.”

Gray Matters’ coaches can be a genuine resource for people who have recently sustained a brain injury. The coaches are long-term survivors of brain injury themselves. Just their simple presence and understanding serves their partners in helping them to cope! They can share what helped for them in regaining daily living skills and they can help the partners strategize how best to get by in their specific circumstances. Coaches can also rehearse and familiarize the partners with the accommodations that suit their needs, so that they can put them to use on their own. Additionally, they (and the Program Director) can refer the partners to local resources for services.

To further a person’s sense of wellness, survivors need to cope with their condition and approach psychosocial issues. Lerner, (2006) thoroughly articulates the psychosocial symptoms of a brain injury in her book, Gray Matters, Brain Injury, the Inside Perspective. Many of these symptoms (see list below) are less obvious to the average eye, they are enduring and hard to address. Psychosocial distress is emotional, social, behavioral, and psychological. The very act of interacting one on one via coaching will help to identify issues that would otherwise be difficult for the brain injury survivor to be aware of. Once the issues are identified, they can then be addressed with useful interventions.

The following is part of a seemingly endless inventory of possible ongoing psychosocial challenges:

• Increased emotionality
• Poor self-awareness
• Social inappropriateness/awkwardness
• Frequent mood changes
• Feelings of unworthiness
• Involvement with alcohol and drugs
• Inability to inhibit oneself
• Inappropriate behaviors
• Takes too many risks or acts impulsively
• Depression
• Anxiety
• Disintegration of self-esteem
• Loneliness
• Egocentricity/self-importance
• Impulsivity
• Decreased sense of discernment or judgment
• Poor anger management
• Insensitivity or oversensitivity to others
• Unawareness of how actions impact others
• Lessened ability to interpret emotions & read situations
• Easily frustrated
• Lowered tolerance for frustration
• Inappropriate manners and mannerisms
• Inability to understand humor or “size up” situations
• Inappropriately affectionate or unaffectionate toward others
• Impaired ability to see others’ viewpoint (egocentricity)
• Limited insight into own abilities and behaviors
• Limited ability to correct behavior after feedback
• Gets stuck on one thought or behavior
• Apathy
• Is seemingly unmotivated
• Acts fearful
• Gets angry out of proportion to cause
• Is verbally and/or physically aggressive
• Appears anxious or depressed
• Laughs or cries for no apparent reason
• Isolates self
• Seeks attention, even with negative behaviors
• Is demanding
• Is irritable
• Gets tired easily
• Denies problems
• Seems passive and unmotivated

One characteristic exhibited by brain injury survivors is an extreme sensitivity to others. Because of this sensitivity, coaches, or others who have the experience-base to understand their partners, are so important. Oftentimes, the professionals who are interacting with the survivors appear to be cold and distant. Therapists may know the professional techniques, but they do not understand the personal complexities of brain injury, hence, survivors retreat and often isolate themselves from the very individuals who are trying to help them. The introduction of a coach can help to counter such negating experiences.

A coaching relationship can be a catalyst that helps brain injury survivors rejoin the world. In interacting with the coach, they will learn to proactively socialize. Coaches are not administering a professional protocol, they are there because they care and they are there to individualize strategies to work for their partners. Coaches have a feel for what their partners are going through, because they have walked that path themselves and they can be the connection for their partners to find their way back.

Gray Matters Survivor Outreach

Our name serves as a double entendre. We serve to outreach to survivors and we are survivors reaching out. This country is searching everywhere for solutions to brain injury (and is utilizing a lot of the tax-payers dollars). Gray Matters Survivor Outreach, I say a very effective solution is right in front of us. The supply is available in bulk. That is, other survivors.

The intervention of coaching touches areas that are hard to reach (areas such as social skills, personal attitudes, etc.) and if they are not intervened on, they can become problematic. Survivors are more willing to trust someone who has walked the path they are on. In knowing this, the training for Community-Based Skills Coaches involves teaching strategies and interventions, as well as learning to be an “active listener” and other communication skills.

The protocol for Gray Matters’ is empowering for the coaches and serves in healing for the long-term survivors, themselves. “Give, and it will be given to you.” (Luke 6:38). Such restoration can happen in ability to communicate, self-confidence, self-worth and in better socializing. When matches are made, outreach is in process, Gray Matters Skills Coaching presents a win-win relationship.

Heidi Lerner
Founder and Program Director
Gray Matters Survivor Outreach

Right here, in this blog, GRAYMATTERS4U.ORG!!!

Thanks to one of my readers who said:

“This web site is known as a walk-by means of for the entire info you needed about this and didn’t know who to ask. Glimpse right here, and also you’ll undoubtedly discover it.”

Sometimes things go bad and people get sad. This is not depression.

Depression hovers. It’s hard to shake off.

The mind can be a hole that just sinks deeper and deeper.

We’re up again!

Lets be thankful to that great Magician in the sky (and my web host, Netfirms had something to do with it)!

Is someone doing a magic trick?

Am trying to work out the kinks.

AWESOME

It’s been quite some time
I’ve been traveling on this route,
No one ever told me
What it was all about,
I’ve been probed to my core,
Sometimes I wonder
What it’s all for,

I’m affected on the inside
Morning, noon and night,
My friends and family
Say it will be all right.
But what do they know?
They’ve never been down this road,
All they know
Are the impressions that I’ve showed.

Oh Lord,
Help me.
No one ever told me
How complex all of these difficulties would be.
There are no signs pointing the way,
How can people say it’ll be Ok?

They may know of my problems with memory,
But they couldn’t possibly know
How widespread it affects me!
What about my sense of disorientation
And the disappearance of my dreams?
How come no one ever told me about these things?

There are potholes along the road,
My abilities have seemed to corrode,
No one ever paved this road for me,
I trip over obstacles I can’t even see,

Sometimes,
I feel the doctors are only guessing,
I think
Some may need
More knowledge and skill
To be assessing!

I don’t want the doctor
To paint the picture
What my outcome will be…
He may be having a bad day,
I believe much more in me!

I may be making it up as I go,
But I best accommodate for myself,
This I know.
I trust in my instincts,
Get a little help along the way,

Trauma to the brain,
Neurological traffic,
…Blocks do let up
Along the unpaved road.

Symptoms abounding:
Behavioral,
Emotional,
Sense of self,
Psychosocial,
Cognitive,

Untying knots,
Braiding myself back together,
Rehabilitation.

Therapy -
Knowledge rebounds in the aftermath,
Recognizing new parts of myself,
Healing is in flow,
Internalizing,
Developing,
I’m traveling down that road.