Group vs. One-on-One: Being Aware of Lenses

I've written a few posts about my new job working with teenagers with Asperger's Syndrome. Today, yet another insight dawned on me on the drive home. I've worked in the human services with people in groups before, but never in a psychological setting like this, and of course, the experience is bound to give rise to a few realizations.

Today, I realized that some of my campers aren't too terribly different in age and functionality level from some of the clients I had this year at the university counseling center where I interned. Then I realized that those same campers would look radically different to me in that dyad format.

Since the university is small, I occasionally had the chance to observe my clients interacting with their friends around campus. Occasionally, I was quite surprised to see someone behave quite differently than I expected. Folks I had worked with at the counseling center who were polite and eager-to-please sometimes behaved quite differently with a group of their peers. By the same token, when we counselors have a one-on-one conversation with any of the campers this summer, they almost always come across much more intelligent, kind and aware than they present while in the group.

Though we are taught this in school, it's coming home to me now in a three-dimensional way. As I grow as a counselor, it'll behoove me to bear in mind the settings in which I don't get to see the client. It's often in their day-to-day relationships that folks experience their psychological distress most acutely. If I only see them one-on-one in a quiet room with a professional atmosphere, I need to do a lot of translating while they give accounts of their daily lives.

By the same token, if I only see them working it out within the bump and bustle of group dynamics, I might miss the graceful intelligence or glowing generosity hiding within their quieter heart of hearts.

Now Entering the Swampy Middle-time

I have to admit, for all my high-minded posts lately about how enlightened I want to be in my approach to my campers, who all have Asperger's Syndrome, or something similar (but a few of whom are also just annoying teenagers), I'm not doing very well walking the walk.

I know they might be reaching out for connection through their oppostional behavior, pseudo-violence, and inappropriate or profane language. I know that being a teen is hard, and that being a teen with a disorder that makes you even more "weird" than typical teens feel is even harder. I know that I would be better off "going with the flow," (as I wrote about so elaborately on Sunday) and letting them blow off steam, and come around to us on their own terms.

See? I know a lot of wise things. And I also know that, by the end of the day, it's all I can do to keep myself from yelling my head off at them. They do wear me down.

It's great to remember that various of the less trouble-making kids have taken some wonderful and visible steps forward in just the 10 days since we started. Certain parents have written high praise for we counselors in their responses to our daily notes. And also... tomorrow's another day.

On a more global note, I never cease to be impressed by the difference between knowing all about a disorder intellectually, and actually being in the room day after day with someone who has that disorder. Some of the differences sneak up on me; some have to be pointed out by more experienced counselors, or the clinical director. But when I step back, sometimes I feel the forcefulness of their difference in a tangible way.

I hope I will always feel fascinated and delightfully challenged by such differences.

Williams Syndrome and Big Brains

For all you psych geeks, I recommend a very interesting article on Williams Syndrome in this week’s New York Times Sunday Magazine. WS starts with some missing genes, which leads eventually to “a love of company and conversation combined, often awkwardly, with a poor understanding of social dynamics and a lack of social inhibition.” Williamses (as they call themselves) also have congenital heart problems which lower their life expectancy; they also suffer from a lack of spatial awareness.

The author, David Dobbs, branches off from the syndrome itself, and into various interesting implications. Of course, researchers are drooling over the possibility that genes might directly cause or prevent certain behaviors. That’s the kind of find that people spend whole careers seeking.

In one fascinating, lengthy segué, Dobbs outlines recent research on why the human brain grew so much larger than that of our forebears over the millennia. It has been assumed for many years that the purpose of the larger brain was greater facility at hunting and tool-making. This new research suggests the brain grew in order to allow humans to develop language, which was needed to help us navigate the complexities of ever-larger communities of fellow humans.

From the Darwinian perspective, bigger brains, and the language they made possible, allowed us to both to fulfill our basic longing to affiliate with others, and, at the same time, assess the level of threat those others posed within the confines of the group.

Hey, wait a minute. If understanding people and bonding with each other gives the greatest edge in competitive selection, we therapists ought to end up passing on far more genes than anyone else, right? Woo-hoo! Finally a social advantage to being a geek!