Community Leader Assigment

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School

Boise State University *

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Course

302

Subject

Communications

Date

Jan 9, 2024

Type

docx

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Uploaded by EarlWolf863

For this assignment, I interviewed a woman named Marlena Derkacz. Marlena works at Anthropos, a non-profit organization serving the tri-valley area. She supports mental health challenges for people in the community such as children and families and provides a sliding scale dependent upon their income and wealth. She explained that as a child of poverty, she always knew that helping others in lower socioeconomic statuses would be something she was interested in. She explained that mental health is also something she was very familiar with throughout the entirety of her life so being able to support and offer help to others who are struggling in similar ways that she did offers her great reward and satisfaction. She described how growing up in poverty was humiliating as using food stamps and things of this nature caused her to be judged by her peers. Due to this, she had a passion for helping others and being in a field that was free from judgment. This organization is needed for individuals who can not seek professional help due to insufficient funds. It offers professional help and support to a range of people within the community and does not exclude any people. Marlena is visibly very passionate about this organization and strongly values assisting those in need. Anthropos serves the whole community including children, seniors, families, couples, low-income, high-income, or all socioeconomic statuses. It serves people with mental health challenges, and relational problems, and helps individuals explore their problems and concerns by providing comprehensive short and long-term counseling services. Marlena explains that the most rewarding aspect of her work is, “Being able to watch people overcome challenges that have impacted their lives and reduced suffering and hardships.” She expresses that oftentimes she will be able to physically see her

clients walk out of the room carrying themselves in a whole new way. Being able to watch her client’s confidence in themselves and their ability to tackle life increase in a matter of hours is the most satisfying and rewarding feeling. She also noted that it is extremely rewarding when the validation she provides to her clients seemingly helps, her requested advice hits the right spot, or she is able to connect the dots that her client has not been able to connect. She described this as almost being able to see the light bulb go on in their head and it provides her clients with hope and courage to continue aiming for greater success. On the other hand, while Marlena was able to express the most rewarding aspects of her position, she was also able to share the challenges and barriers to it as well. She described her job to be “a delicate dance to find what each client needs to find healing.” She says that it is often difficult to support some clients without overstepping, especially when a client isn’t ready to acknowledge or face something. She allowed me to understand that It is difficult to balance what people need to hear and want to hear as not everybody wants to fix the posed issue but rather have somebody to listen to them and their struggles. This makes it difficult to listen without giving suggestions for change when change isn’t necessarily the main goal of a client. She states, “I plant the seed and let the clients choose when to water and harvest it.” Essentially this means that she begins the thought process of how and when to change to avoid pain and suffering, however, she does not push for it until the client is ready to accept the change themselves. Marlena navigates these challenges by directly asking the client what they have tried before, what they believe would be helpful, and what they would be willing to

change. She also allows the client time to accept change and prepare for a shift. Instead of going straight to problem-solving, she spends many sessions getting to know the client in order to understand them as a whole and what they are able to hear to understand where their head is at in terms of acceptance and the desire to change and take action to change. She also explained that she uses differentiation with each client. She keeps a strong mental note that each client is entirely different, processes information differently, has different goals with their sessions, and so much more. With this in mind, she is able to use different strategies and approaches for each client in order to meet their specific needs. Strategies and approaches she uses with families consist of maintaining open communication, establishing a foundation of trust, offering healthy coping mechanisms/ tools, encouraging self-love/self-worth, allowing each family member to state their challenge in the family system, and remaining neutral within the family system which means there are no teams as the goal is to blend the family rather than further divide it. She explains, “Many families come in with a large divide even within their body language as two of the family members will be across the couch away from the others. Since they are coming in with such a large divide already, my main goal is to mend this divide and I do so by remaining neutral, playing games, and giving each family member an equal amount of spotlight.” Marlena was able to explain that families are an extremely dynamic system and in order to reach mutual understanding, everyone must feel seen, heard, and appreciated. The dispositions/character traits that Marlena views as most valuable or important to develop in their field include empathy, compassion, the ability to be nonjudgmental, problem-solving skills, and strong communication skills.

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