by Andrew Neufeld | Dec 21, 2017 | Dialectical Behaviour Therapy
It’s that time of year again – time for my annual year-end blog. To say that this year has been a whirlwind, full of unexpected greatness, and unexpected challenges would be a gross understatement. We’ve added more staff in the past 6 months than I ever expected; we’ve expanded our Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) services to double our groups, expand our individual DBT counselling, and we’re starting a youth DBT group in January; and we’re starting more programs focusing on chronic pain and chronic conditions. We’ve networked with treatment centres and continue development of our Recovery and Aftercare Programs launching in January. Not last or least, we’re opening a new office in South Surrey. All amazing things, that I’m incredibly excited about, and grateful for.
And here I am sitting in the Jim Pattison Outpatient Care Centre on December 20th, as Meg endures yet another spinal procedure to try to control her pain. I discovered last night that the workstation I have at home from my pro photography days has had both storage hard drives die, and the backup server I used to have copies of all my professional and personal photographs seems to have bit the dust and I’m going to likely have to send drives to a data recovery company and hope that they recover the images of the last 20 years. And I sit here thinking about all of the things I didn’t get done before leaving the office on “vacation,” until the first week of January. And now I’m supposed to relax.
In Dialectical Behaviour Therapy, there’s a concept called Radical Acceptance. It’s a difficult concept to grasp, but essentially, it means having to accept things that are extremely difficult to accept, and often may challenge logic in accepting. Things that occupy our heart, mind, and soul that take up space and challenge our being and wellbeing. Things that are, that we wish weren’t and things that we can’t change, but wish we could.
Sometimes we get caught up or blocked from accepting because we don’t like whatever it is we’re needing to accept. Things like a bad grade in school, a bad review from our boss at work, maybe even events over the holidays with family or friends that we’d rather not go to. The thing is, acceptance does not mean we have to like it, it means we need to acknowledge that it is what it is and we can’t change it, and deciding what to do about it. Radically accepting means to do this with the really big things.
Here are a few tips on how to Radically Accept what you need to accept this holiday season[i]:
- Observe when you’re questioning or fighting reality – this may come in the form of you saying or thinking, “It shouldn’t be this way!”
- Remind yourself that your unpleasant reality is just what it is, and it can’t be changed.
- Practice accepting with your whole self, which may take the form of positive self-talk, relaxation, mindfulness, prayer, or even using guided imagery to go to a place of acceptance.
- Practice doing the opposite – do the things you would do if you were able to accept these things – you may find that you start accepting them as a result!
- Acknowledge that life can be worth living, and holidays can be survived, even if there is a pain.
For me, this year, there are a few things I’m having to radically accept in anticipation of and to get through the holidays:
- I can’t fix my wife’s pain, and she continues to have to endure procedures to try to help it in some way
- I can’t fix my hard drives and there’s a possibility that some of the things I cherish over the years in photo form may be lost
- I haven’t completed all of the things I wanted to before the holidays hit
But what does this mean? If I accept these things, how does that change anything? Well, it can relieve some of the stress and tension, or anxiety around trying to change any of these things. The reality is that I can’t change these things even if I want to. I can’t relieve Meg’s pain, but I can be there to support her (and this is the main reason I’m taking as much time off as I am this Christmas) because this is something I am able to do, even if it doesn’t fix her pain; I can’t fix my hard drives, although I can work on making sure there isn’t anything I can do, and I can send it to a company who knows how to recover data and pray for the best; I can’t complete everything I wanted to, but I can pick some times throughout the holidays to get some work done for things that really need doing. Perhaps most importantly, I can be grateful that I have the support in life that I do, an amazing staff (including the lovely Anna Hers who will be in the office through the holidays to take your calls so I can be home!), and we have a community we love and live to serve as best we can, which is why there is so much work to be done!
I’m also well aware that there are many of you who will struggle greatly this year over the holidays for many reasons and many that may make some of the above struggles seem rather trivial. Perhaps you don’t have a family to spend the holidays with, or you lost a family member and that memory will be with you during this time; perhaps you’re struggling with anxiety or depression and now feeling like you have to put on a happy face so you don’t ruin everyone else’s holidays; or maybe you’d simply rather not be here, and the holidays just make it worse.
Holidays can be hard. I didn’t set out to write a downer blog post, but I did set out to write a post that hopefully acknowledges some of the difficulties of life that don’t respect the holiday and give us a break, and some of the difficulties we face specifically because of the holidays. The malls and Christmas carols would like us to believe the world fundamentally changes and everything is glorious because it’s the holidays, but for many people, this is simply not true, or realistic in their life.
You are not alone. We see you, and we hear you.
One of our newest staff reminded me in conversation last night of the importance of being seen and heard, and this is especially true this time of year. We can’t always change the struggles in our own lives, or in the lives of others. One thing we can do, however, is show empathy toward others, and toward ourselves.
Our office will be essentially closed over the holidays, but Anna will be in the office. If you’re struggling, please give her a call at 604-283-7827 ext. 0 and she’ll be glad to set up an appointment for you as soon as possible in January. From all of us at Alongside You, Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays. May peace, grace, and love surround you this season, and we look forward to seeing you in the New Year!
[i] Adapted from DBT Skills Training Handouts and Worksheets, Second Edition, by Marsha M. Linehan. Copyright 2015.
by Andrew Neufeld | Dec 5, 2017 | Announcements, Press Release
It’s been a difficult couple of months holding back on this announcement, but I’m excited to announce that we will be expanding to South Surrey and White Rock in January 2018! We have wanted to get into Surrey for a while to bring our services closer to home for some of our clients, and we have found a great space in the Morgan Crossing neighbourhood. For those of you wondering, yes, it’s right next to the shopping centre some of you love!
One of the challenges in expanding is that our goal is not simply to expand and build a brand. If we were a retail shop, expansion may come down to different goals and principles, but we’re not – we’re an integrated health clinic and our goal has always been to embed ourselves in the community, find out what the needs are, and try our best to meet those needs. So, our expansion needs to be intentional, meaningful, and to model after our growth in South Delta. We’ve been searching for the right location to allow us to do this, and I believe we’ve found a great space that will allow us to do exactly what we hope to do again – that is, get to know the community of White Rock and South Surrey, find out what the needs are, and bring those services that the community is asking for.
Thus, we are starting small. We’ve found a great space that our colleague, Dr. Jeff Morley has graciously allowed us to come into. It’s one large room that will allow us to provide individual, couples, and family counselling, neurofeedback, registered dietitian services, as well as bring our Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) group program to the area. Over the next year, I’ll be spending a great deal of time, along with my wife, Meg Neufeld, getting to know the community better and connecting with key partners to figure out the best way to serve the needs of the community.
Now, we have a bit of a head start. I had the privilege of working with White Rock Mental Health at Peace Arch Hospital for a number of years and have been able to build relationships with many of the agencies in the area. Scott McNeil, our associate, worked there as well as did Share Forde, who provides Dialectical Behaviour Therapy with us. There are some great resources already in the area, and we hope that, like in South Delta, our services will help to fill some of the gaps and that we’ll be able to work collaboratively with the community agencies that are already serving in the area.
Who is going to work in the new office, you might wonder? Well, that’s a great question. We’re kind of taking the same approach as we did in South Delta, that is, jumping off the proverbial cliff. I’ll be in the office there on Thursdays, and likely spending much of my Fridays in the community networking. We are working on hiring staff for the office, but as many of you know, we are very careful with who we bring on because we don’t want to simply hire a bunch of staff, we want to hire the right staff. So, we are building as we go. We have one staff hired, some of our South Delta staff will be working there as well, and we’ll be adding more soon. Stay tuned for more announcements on that front!
All this to say, we’re excited to be entering another community that is near and dear to our hearts. We look forward to bringing the same heartfelt, evidence-based, collaborative community care to South Surrey and White Rock that we’ve been providing in South Delta since 2015. We’d love your help! If you’ve benefitted from our services and know people out that way, please help us spread the word! We’re working on revamping our website and updating things, but in the meantime, here’s a google map of our new location, and the address:
208 – 2630 Croydon Drive
Surrey, BC
V3Z 6T3
Phone number and fax numbers, emails, and everything else remain the same!
We look forward to serving the community in White Rock and South Surrey as we grow out there, and if you are a service provider in the area and would like to connect with us, please give me a call or contact us; and if you know of one we should connect with, please let me know!
by Andrew Neufeld | Nov 30, 2017 | Announcements, Recovery and Aftercare
At Alongside You, we’re always looking to see where needs are in the community and how we might be able to meet those needs. Together with our associate, Richard Somerset, we’ve found that there are areas of need in recovery and aftercare programs. Richard and I have worked for many years in addictions and recovery and one of the needs we’ve identified is services for people once they have come home from treatment centres. Of course, treatment centres are wonderful and needed, but what happens to clients when they come home?
In order to fill this need, we have been working on developing comprehensive Recovery and Aftercare programs for clients once they return home, as well as developing relationships with the major treatment centres to provide referrals for treatment for those that need it. The goal is to have a seamless transition and experience both going to, and coming back from treatment to support each client in their recovery.
One of the advantages we have at Alongside You is being able to provide all of these needed services under one roof. We’ll be able to handle individual, couples, and family counselling, neurofeedback, occupational therapy, yoga therapy and trauma-sensitive yoga, registered dietitian assessments and nutrition planning, therapeutic arts programs, and group therapy that incorporates process groups and dialectical behaviour therapy. Along with our community partners, we’ll be tying in exercise and martial arts programs, sober living activities, sober coaches, and more. Recovering from an addiction or problematic use of a substance is a long-term recovery process and we are here to provide the long-term support. We attended the Recovery Capital Conference of Canada this past September and one thing that was highlighted, that we see daily in our practice, is that it takes an individual’s brain two to five years to recover from misuse of substances. A 45-day stay at a treatment centre is a great reset and start to a recovery program, but it’s only the beginning. Our hope is that our Recovery and Aftercare programs will fill the void and support clients on the two to five-year journey it will take for their brain to rewire itself.
We can’t do everything at once, and so we’re starting with a three-month, recurring program that addresses the core needs we see from clients returning from treatment – that is, continued group work and individual counselling. Additional treatments and services are available as add-ons based on client need and interest to support the core program. We also want this program to be open to those who may have been able to stay at home and recover. We will be providing an assessment to see if our program is a good fit for those who may not even have gone away to treatment and are looking for an ongoing recovery solution closer to home.
We’re excited to launch these programs and meet more of the needs that we are seeing. At the end of the day, the number one focus for us is complete and comprehensive client care that is client-centred and recovery focused. Recovery Capital is the sum total of the resources available internally, and externally to people in recovery and our goal is to increase recovery capital in our community and with our clients. Recovery capital is client-centred, trauma-informed, and strengths-based. It builds on the internal resources of the clients, helping each of the clients rewrite their story and to have a life worth living. If we have a life worth living, we have a life worth striving for.
For more information as we launch our program in January 2018, please see our website. If you are interested in signing up, please give our office a call or contact us and we will be glad to start the intake process with you!
by Andrew Neufeld | Oct 6, 2017 | Chronic Illness
Last week my wife, Meg, wrote about her journey with her invisible illness and chronic pain, in her article titled My Life With Chronic Pain; the feedback has been phenomenal. We’ve heard from people close by, and as far away as New Zealand who appreciated her candor and vulnerability in sharing her struggles and what she has learned over the last 6 years since the car accident. So many people struggling with invisible illnesses feel isolated, alone in their journey, and feel as though they can’t share their struggles because it’s viewed as complaining, or because people simply do not understand.
This week, I want to share a bit of my story over the last 6 years, as a husband to a wife with chronic pain, and father to our two beautiful daughters who have also been a part of our journey. As little information as there is from those suffering from invisible illnesses, I come across even less information from those who are alongside those struggling with the illness, such as partners and family members. I hope that sharing my story can be helpful to those who are also wrestling with this complex, often heart-wrenching journey.
As I was driving into Vancouver this morning, I was trying to figure out how to start what I was about to write – how to sum up concisely the impact of the accident, and my wife’s struggle with her chronic pain. I’m also fairly guarded in sharing my emotional world publicly for many reasons, but I came up with a very succinct and specific conclusion: it broke my heart. Even as I sit here at the Railtown Café writing, it’s all I can do to hold back the tears.
You see, for better or for worse, I have always put Meg on a pedestal. If you’ve met me in person, you’ve likely heard me refer to her as my “far better half,” or comment on the fact that she is the “smart one.” This isn’t pithy banter on my part – it is truly the long-held belief about Meg that I have held, and still do. What I wasn’t prepared for, however, was the impact of seeing my brilliant, high functioning wife, laid out on the couch for weeks on end, unable to function in daily life, and struggling to figure out how many plates she needed to put on the table for dinner. I can’t begin to describe how seeing this changed my life, and changed my focus.
I immediately went into survival mode. I was working for the Fraser Health Authority at the time, and immediately started seeking out jobs closer to home as I was suddenly the only functioning adult in our house, with two children under the age of 4. I was Dad, Mom, housekeeper, breadwinner, and more. Now, I have to say that we have been so fortunate to have an unbelievably supportive family and friends who have given us an amazing amount of support for which I am extremely grateful. I honestly have no idea how we would have survived without them.
Even with all of this help, and even as we started seeing improvements, I was and quite frankly, still am heartbroken. When I’m working with kids, parents, and families I often explain that one of the hardest things in the world as a parent is to see your child in pain; I’m not sure, however, which is worse: seeing your child in pain or your spouse. At this point, I was seeing both and it was overwhelming.
If we fast forward to present, things have gotten significantly better and while Meg can never return to her career, she is forging a new career using art and helping people recover. Although it’s still difficult, it’s amazing to see the changes and to be able to see the proverbial, “light at the end of the tunnel.” What I’ve discovered though is that I’ve been stuck in “emergency mode,” since 2011, and as a part of this, haven’t processed a lot of the emotions involved and the personal trauma involved in the experience.
Part of my struggle and what I’ve been working through is how to move from heartbreak to acceptance (and Meg will find this hilarious because acceptance is a regular topic of conversation between us, mainly my encouragement to her to find acceptance in her new life and role). I’ll admit, I do not want to accept that my wife has chronic pain, and that the wife I knew prior to 2011 is never coming back. I don’t want to accept that our lives have changed irrevocably through no fault of our own, but because of a car accident. I don’t want to accept that my children have had to endure two parents in emergency mode for 6 years and have had their own challenges in response. I don’t want to accept – well, a lot of things. But as I preach to my clients almost on a daily basis, I have to choose to accept because the alternative isn’t helpful. I can’t change the situation, and fighting it isn’t going to bring positive results.
As I’ve wrestled with this for the past 6 years, I’ve learned a few things that have been, and continue to be helpful to me in managing our family life and my own emotional world. I haven’t mastered any of them yet, but hopefully they’ll be helpful to those of you sharing the struggle as a partner of someone with an invisible illness and/or chronic pain.
- Talk to your partner with the chronic pain about the impact it has on you
For many years I struggled to share with Meg how her journey impacted me. To be honest, it’s something I still have a difficult time with. When faced with a partner who is in constant pain, it’s hard to justify your own sometimes. I’ve had times where I told myself, “Your pain isn’t important; look at how much pain she is in,” or, “If you tell her how you’re feeling it’s going to make things worse for her,” and many other variations on this theme. What we’ve discovered in discussing this point is that she has had many of the same things running through her mind and we didn’t realize it. Being able to talk about our fears in disclosing to each other has opened the door to a much more honest and helpful dialogue.
If you won’t let yourself go there, please hear this from me – your pain is just as important and your ability to connect with your partner and be supportive depends on being vulnerable.
- Feeling helpless is normal and part of the process
Anyone who knows me well, knows that I am a fixer. I look for problems and try to find solutions – I probably would have made a good engineer that way if it wasn’t for the math. I have had to wrestle with my own helplessness over the past 6 years and sit with my own fears and anxieties about the future in ways I’d never experienced before. As a husband, I want to save my wife from experiencing pain but I can’t. I’ve had to accept this, even though I don’t like it. I’ve had to come to terms with the fact that I can’t fix her body, I can’t fix her brain, and I can’t save her from the pain. But, I can be there consistently, unwavering in my love for her, even if I can’t make it all ok.
- Empathy is more important than fixing things
We sometimes struggle to differentiate between sympathy and empathy. Brené Brown has a great video on empathy, and I encourage you to watch it here. In short, empathy is the best thing that we can offer a partner who is in pain. It’s being able to say, “I don’t even know what to say or do right now to help you, but I’m here.” It’s realizing that even though we can’t truly understand what our partner is going through, we don’t have to. If we can allow ourselves to be vulnerable with them, we can connect with their experience of the pain, not try to fix it, but be there. Being with someone on a deeper level is far more important than any fix we can offer. It cuts down on loneliness, isolation, disconnection, and thus, reduces anxiety, depression, and actually, it reduces physical pain. So, it’s true – we can actually help our partner’s pain by showing them empathy, being with them where they are at, and accepting the situation we find ourselves in and wrestling through it together.
- Have fun together
There’s a saying that we all know – laughter is the best medicine. I’m not sure if it’s the best medicine, but it sure does help. Physical and emotional pain often shifts our focus off of living life and from the patterns and ways of relating to each other that have made the relationship successful. Meg and I have always had a healthy dose of humour in our relationship – mostly laughing at idiosyncrasies in life, mistakes we’ve made, or situations we find ourselves in.
One thing that chronic pain does is make it difficult to find humour in the current situation. Who laughs about pain, right? Well, we should. It took some time, but now Meg and I can laugh about some of the things we experience in life due to the chronic condition. Whether it’s laughing when a plate drops because of ulnar neuropathy, or laughing when I ask her to do something that is very obviously not possible for her and she just stares at me with that look that says, “What part of that looks like something I’m able to do,” or laughing about things that have nothing to do with our situation but make us laugh and relieve some stress, the humour allows us to lose sight of the pain for a while and get back to “normal life,” again.
- Don’t be afraid to ask for help
I have had to lean on more people in the past 6 years than ever before in my life. Asking for help is not something I’m particularly good at. My family, my friends, and my professional colleagues have all stepped in to help in so many ways and I can’t thank them enough. I’ve also had to do some counselling, and continue to do so because there are aspects of my life and my wrestling that I need someone to walk through it with. My counsellor has shown empathy, skill, and also challenged me when I need to be challenged. Whether you’ve sought counselling before or not, I can’t emphasize enough how important it has been to my journey.
- Adjust your expectations, and redefine “normal life”
As much as I’ve tried to take a positive spin in this piece, there is no escaping the fact that chronic pain and illness brings an incredible sense of loss with it. There’s no escaping the fact that the life we had prior to 2011 is, to the best of our knowledge, never coming back. I have mourned this fact for years, and to be honest, I’m still in that process. What I’ve come to, however, is that in accepting the situation I’m able to redefine our new normal and my expectations. What does this mean for me, and us a family?
It means that I’m the only one unloading dishes from the dishwasher and I do most of the loading because bending over is too hard for Meg most days. The upside is that I can load it however I want and make it efficient, which gives me joy.
It means that many nights, Meg isn’t able to put the kids to bed because she is lying on the couch downstairs and making it up the stairs isn’t in the cards that night. The upside is I get 1:1 time with my daughters, which is time that I cherish and probably wouldn’t have had otherwise.
It means that most nights, we find ourselves on the couch in front of the TV watching some silly TV show because we’re too tired and brain dead to do much else. The upside is, we get to sit in close proximity to each other, and laugh at the shows we are watching, and sometimes when we both have the energy, the TV doesn’t go on and we sit and talk for hours like we used to and connect on a deeper level. This doesn’t happen as often as either of us would like, but when it does happen, it breathes life back into us and into our relationship.
It means that having gone through the past 6 years, I am convinced that I am incredibly fortunate. I have two beautiful children who I adore, and who love Meg and I unconditionally. I have a wife who, despite all my shortfalls and mistakes I’ve made both before, and since the accident, chooses to love me for who I am and all my limitations. I have been forced to spend more time with my family and around the house because I’m needed there to pick up some of the slack – time that I may not have otherwise taken if Meg was functioning at 100%.
Last but not least, the accident was a major motivating factor to launching Alongside You, where I get to see peoples’ lives change on a daily basis. And because of our experience through the accident we can say that we understand the pain of many of our clients because we also live it on a daily basis. While I won’t speak for Meg, although I’m sure she’d agree, Alongside You has provided meaning for my pain. While I still don’t like the situation and the pain Meg is in, there is an emerging sense of purpose. I know that our experience has allowed me to help others through their own journeys in an authentic way that I would not have otherwise been able to.
At the risk of being repetitive, I want to repeat the quote from my daughter Ava because she has been a great source of wisdom for me in our journey, and I honestly can’t put it any better than she did.
Just because you have a hard life, it doesn’t mean you have to have a bad life. With challenges or disabilities, you can still have a great life. – Ava Neufeld, age 9
As hard as it has been, I am grateful for our life. I am grateful for the support we have received, and for the personal growth I’ve gone through as a result of the accident and the journey through chronic pain. I’m also grateful for the chance to make some meaning out of our experience through our work at Alongside You. Meaning is so important in our lives, and in processing our pain.
Thank you for reading this, and thank you for allowing us into your lives as Alongside You.
