In the graduate student nurse consultation experience I felt helpless,
confused, unwanted, guilty, anxious, and unimportant. It was a
passion-filled experience for me. As a nurse-student consultant among
interdisciplinary nonstudent-consultants I experienced dependency for my
being and doing on persons I viewed as anxious, critical, nonempathetic,
and inadequate. We were attempting to offer consultation to a
professional group of nonpsychiatric mental health oriented consultees
who were anxious and felt inadequate in this area. I felt forced into an
observer rather than participant mode of being, and my recorded data
support this. Impotency comes to mind when I recall this experience, as
well as a racking rage and suffering that obliterates feelings of love,
good-will, tenderness, or hope. About that time I was reading
Nietzsche's eternal recurrence phenomenon[15] and viewed it most
pessimistically--all was awful, it would continue to be awful, life was
just a vicious cycle of awfulness.
Defense or health, it is questionable. Suddenly, perhaps it was having
hit feelings of rock bottom, I began to view Nietzsche's eternal
recurrence phenomenon optimistically. Did the polarization of my
negative feelings magnetically call forth my opposite feelings? All,
now, contained the new, it would continue to contain the new, life was a
series of similar and yet different cycles that always contained the
new.
Now my reflections let in hope, positiveness, comradeship, good
feelings, and progress made by myself and others in our year and a half
together as consultants. During this period we met with the consultees
for an hour once or twice a week. The group had continued over this
period despite its components of psychiatric mental health professionals
and nonpsychiatric mental health profession culturally, professionally,
and historically having been quite alienated from one another.
Attendance had improved some over time. Toward the end of the year and a
half, during the last three months, the focus of discussion was on
patients and their worlds for longer periods of time. There was less
defensive acting out in which things, fees, time, and mechanics consumed
the hour.
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Toward the end of these sessions the consultant chief found more
acceptable space in which to meet for the consultation. Eating lunch
became part of the session. Food can be looked at in many ways. In this
case it seemed to be a cohesive force, rather than a distracting,
socializing force. Was this because of the underlying meanings food had
for these people? Or was the meaning of food in this situation concrete?
Now the consultees could have their lunch served to them while receiving
consultation. This latter saved their time and meant money to them. This
was a giving gesture on the part of the consultants even though the
lunch monies did come out of the project funding source. The meaning of
food was never discussed in the group. I wonder if this feeding was done
with deliberate awareness or was just serendipitous.
During the last three months of meeting I began to feel related on a
deeper level with a few of the participants, consultants and consultees.
Individual to individual we began to communicate collaboratively with
one another as professional colleagues. We discussed both patients'
lived worlds and the meaning of psychiatric mental health terms and
ideas. I can conceive, now, that this may have occurred between other
group members before or after sessions. Initially there were often only
two to three consultees to five or six consultants. Later the total
group contained fifteen to sixteen people. Now I would project that the
very existence of this group could influence future groups positively.