Two colleagues in their early 20s ran a program for 135 young adults with schizophrenia and emotional disturbance. Their youthful naivete led to breakthroughs and failures alike, teaching them to accept helplessness, let go of outcomes, and practice humility in their work.
Our friendship started in earnest when we were in our early 20s, I'd say we were 23ish. And we had the opportunity to run a program for about 135 schizophrenic, emotionally disturbed young adults, 18, 35 year old adults. We dove in, we dove in at the beginning of our understanding of psychology, our training, formal training, maybe not our informal training, but I'm just. And reflecting back on that. What do you see at that time and how do you see it coming forward into your life?
Because we were so young and so fortunate to have the interns that came in and the program really go as well as it did. I think we really were very innocent in wanting to create healing. It was the innocence itself, not necessarily the psychological intelligence, because I don't think we had a very developed sense of psychological intelligence at that point. But the innocence itself is such a healing ingredient and a refreshing quality. And we were really interested in what the schizophrenic patients and clients and what we experienced at that time, almost like friends that were suffering were going through. So it was kind of a combination of innocence and curiosity that was a healing ingredient.
It's interesting you say innocence, because I recall some of the people that were there that had been more experienced looked at it as naivete. Was there a naivete or was there an innocence?
Well, again, percentage wise, I would say it was about 75% innocence and 25% naivete and maybe even some grandiosity where we went in with a genuine desire to love these people and to try to understand what they had gone through in life. And we were naive to think that we could make breakthroughs and maybe a little grandiose, like I said, to think we could make breakthroughs. And as I'm sure you remember, we had Hundreds of breakthroughs and 90s of breakdowns after the breakthroughs. And so it was such great training, not only for seeing some of the healing qualities of innocence, but also some of the helplessness that we needed to be able to tolerate and stay open to, to develop ourselves in being good counselors, which is on one level feeling helpless, on another level, still staying loving and present.
Do you in that helplessness think that that training ground of seeing 90 out of 100 insights crash within hours or.
Days.
Prepared you for the kind of detachment from outcome or letting go that you see as useful in your life now?
I mean, it's such a great question and the answer is definitely yes. And I think that in the world we live in, anybody that gets attached to being able to make major breakthroughs in the area of awareness in any population has to crash, has to be disillusioned. I mean, if Jesus is going to get crucified, or if the population itself of the world is always going to be at war, how can you, as an individual believe that you can heal the majority of people? So the best you can hope for is. Is a small percentage of outcome, no matter what population you're dealing with. So I think that humbling, in spite of the fact that I wouldn't necessarily say I'm humbled, is a critical part of being a counselor or a friend or a lover, and that without that, there's a tremendous imbalance. It.
